Carrier limits, total tonnage, and Royal Navy numbers

Would a 24,500-ton limit have been better than the supposed 22,000-ton practical carrier limit?

The relevant later limit was 23,000 tons, and raising it without increasing aggregate tonnage would worsen Britain's shortage of carrier hulls.

A check of the treaty texts places the 23,000-ton individual limit in the Second London Naval Treaty, not the first. The officially declared displacements of Ark Royal and the Illustrious class show how closely published figures followed treaty thresholds, although those figures deserve caution. The larger British problem was the 135,000-ton aggregate ceiling: a global navy needing carriers in the North and South Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and Far East could not simply build five large ships. Larger carriers were more efficient because propulsion and other fixed requirements consumed a smaller share of a larger hull, leaving proportionally more room for hangars, aircraft, and personnel. Britain wanted either a lower individual ceiling that constrained rivals in the same way or a higher total allowance that could support more hulls across its worldwide commitments.