Clarke suggests that politically resonant names could have made Type 45 cancellations harder to defend. Diana and Dunedin are proposed as names that would give opponents of cancellation a recognizable public association. He imagines deliberately placing a less sensitive name, Decoy, where it could absorb a cut while protecting the rest of the order. This is a speculative procurement tactic, with jokes about manipulating the decision, rather than evidence that a particular name would have saved a ship. The recollection of existing Type 45 names is uncertain and is corrected later.
Notable Point · 3:42:00-3:45:08
Could a ship's name make cancellation harder?
Proposed Type 45 names become a speculative tactic for attaching political costs to cancellation.