Treaty displacement constrained British carriers to three engines even though designers preferred four for redundancy. The planned Audacious class approached the ship Henderson and Stanley Goodall might have wanted without those restrictions. Its concept combined greater machinery resilience with protection, aircraft capacity, and endurance. The comparison shows that British design began with an ideal operational ship and then negotiated down to what treaty tonnage allowed. Audacious therefore provides a clearer view of the underlying requirement than any single compromise forced into the 1930s limits.
Chapter · 1:20:20-1:21:27
Audacious as the unrestricted carrier ideal
The planned Audacious class shows how Britain might have combined four engines, protection, capacity, and endurance without treaty limits.