The Imperial Navy had experimented previously with seaplane carriers, though these earlier conversions were too slow to operate with the High Seas Fleet and carried an insufficient number of aircraft.

[3] Regardless of the preference toward airships, several small merchant vessels were converted into seaplane carriers during World War I; these included Santa Elena, Answald, Oswald, and Glyndwr.

[1] The boilers would have been vented through a single large funnel that would have been placed on the starboard side of the top flight deck, along with a small island.

According to naval historian Erich Gröner, the ship was designed to carry either 13 fixed-wing or 19 folding-wing seaplanes, along with around 10 wheeled aircraft.

[1] The historian Peter Schenk concurs, stating that ten wheeled fighter aircraft would have been kept on the deck, along with thirteen to nineteen floatplanes that would have been used for reconnaissance, torpedo attacks, and bombing.

[4] Rene Greger estimated the ship to carry eight to ten fighter aircraft and a combination of fifteen to twenty bombers and torpedo-floatplanes.

[1] The demands on labor and resources the war imposed on the German economy reduced the shipbuilding industry to barely being able to cover the maintenance and repair needs of the High Seas Fleet.

[7] As a result of the growing importance of U-boat construction and a moratorium on new surface ships imposed by the Reichsmarineamt (RMA—the Imperial Navy Office), the conversion project was abandoned.

[1] The Treaty of Versailles that ended the war prohibited Germany from maintaining any military aircraft, including naval aviation.