There is a practical physical limit to what armored hulls can do. It is about 90,000 tonnes or the size of a Nimitz.
That is a function of power plants and practical hogging size limits. (See above.)
Can you seriously look at the Lexingtons as battlecruisers, as a foreign shipwright, and not ROTFLYAO? C and R were smoking hemp.
Meet USS Puritan. To fool the US Congress, the ship was rebuilt on the old USS Puritan. Yup, I think it was the ship's bell that allowed her to be legally a "rebuild".
That physical limit is why I find the G3/N3s so interesting. Without WNT sooner or later you are going to hit that physical limit and start looking at creative compromises. I could easily see a situation where the fast battleship gets pushed to one side as those ultra heavy ships have to pick speed or fighting ability. While I honestly doubt ships would get that heavy before aircraft surpass them all in the 40s, designers would have to be thinking about it.
The Lexington BCs make some sense in that cruiserless USN context. They are a big ship with big guns and you have to respect that if you are smaller than a Hood. And they are a first go. First goes are always flawed. The laughable (and terrifying) bit is how the US could go all in with 6 ships on a first go.
Ahh the Puritan. That is the army's fault. If they had been on the ball all that Navy money could have been going to them