Some members of the United States Congress doubted that Britain could still build an ambitious capital-ship programme. Naval professionals did not share that assumption because British industry had spent decades constructing large warships. The serious question was whether Britain could afford and sustain the programme, not whether its yards knew how to build the ships. American misunderstanding of British economics could still distort political estimates of how Britain would respond to an arms race.
Notable Point · 3:29:01
The American debate over Britain's shipbuilding capacity
American planners had to separate Britain's ability to build major warships from political assumptions about whether its economy could fund them.