Essex refits and the limits of wartime carrier modernization

Did the US Navy overstretch the Essex class, and could Royal Navy armored carriers have lasted longer?

The Implacables might have handled heavy aircraft better if modernized first, but all wartime carriers faced severe limits and new construction was the sounder long-term answer.

Clarke favors modernizing the Implacables before Victorious and combining them with the two Audacious-class ships. He argues that making the flight deck a structural strength deck offered an advantage in accepting heavier aircraft. The same armored construction made major rebuilding difficult, especially in the smaller earlier carriers. He describes Essex as an efficiently producible development of the Yorktown concept, giving it different design priorities. Another participant qualifies the comparison by stressing how poorly wartime carriers generally accommodated later jets. Agreement settles on the continuing need for new carriers, despite the political difficulty of replacing hulls that seemed recently built.