Japanese battleship Ise
On 12 April 1922, while at Yokohama, "Ise" hosted a delegation which included the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VIII), who was accompanied by his second cousin, the future Lord Mountbatten of Burma. Captain Kanna Norikazu relieved Nagasawa on 1 December. The ship aided survivors of the Great Kantō earthquake in September 1923. From the early 1920s through the late 1930s, "Ise" mostly cruised off the coast of China. Little detailed information is available about her activities during the 1920s, although she helped sink the obsolete destroyer during gunnery training on 10 August 1926. The ship was overhauled in 1928–1929, during which her forward superstructure was enlarged and her aviation facilities improved.
Ise-class battleship
The sinking of the British capital ships "Prince of Wales" and "Repulse" by Japanese land-based aircraft on 10 December 1941 led the IJN to realize that battleships could not operate in the face of enemy aircraft and required friendly air support to protect them. The loss of four Japanese aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway in June 1942 severely limited the ability of the IJN to provide any air cover and alternatives were sought. Earlier proposals to convert one or more battleships into carriers had been made and rejected at the beginning of the war, but they were revived after Midway. Plans for more elaborate conversions were rejected on the grounds of expense and, most critically, time, and the IJN settled on removing the rear pair of turrets and replacing them with a flight deck equipped with two catapults to launch floatplanes. The "Ise"-class ships were selected for the conversion because "Hyūga" had suffered an explosion in Turret No. 5 in early May that virtually destroyed the turret and their Turret No. 6 could not elevate to the full +43 degrees deemed necessary for the long-range engagement anticipated by the IJN. The "Fusō"s were scheduled to follow once the first two were completed.