Delete/uninstall MacOS without wiping volume?

I have variants of MacOS installed on external SSD's (using APFS) that I no longer need, mixed with large data sets that I do need.

I'd like to wipe the OS on a volume without erasing the whole volume, to avoid the hours-long data copy/archive before wiping the volume to wipe the OS. Is that possible?

Moving forward, I can try to segregate data to other volumes, but the production deployment is OS and data on the same volume (again, to avoid copies), so it's not ideal.

(I realize it's not a high-traffic use case and unlikely to be supported.)

Thanks...