At any moment, major ships were divided among modernization, minor refit, training, and active presence, requiring nearby dockyard infrastructure and continuous funding. A fleet's paper total therefore concealed a large rotation of hulls through maintenance and readiness states. With 15 or 16 capital ships, a turbine failure could be covered by another available hull, so contemporary records might barely mention a problem that would dominate news about a two-carrier fleet. Older battleships also suffered machinery failures, but large fleet size made those failures less visible by supplying spare hulls. Just-in-time logistics and minimum fleet size are especially fragile where salt water continually creates maintenance demand.
Notable Point · 1:01:19-1:06:17
Why fleet numbers conceal maintenance problems
A large capital-ship pool let the interwar Royal Navy absorb refits and failures without the public scrambling visible in a two-carrier fleet.