The class challenges the simple idea that Second World War navies were merely unprepared. Forty-two Black Swans were planned, with thirty-seven completed and five cancelled, under programmes beginning in 1937. The orders show a navy preparing for a conflict whose timing overtook its construction programme. Britain had already begun building the escort force that wartime demand would make indispensable.
Chapter · 0:01-2:01
A wartime sloop planned before the war
The Black Swan class illustrates how naval preparedness depended on pre-war construction programmes that were still incomplete in 1939.