Carrier building as Depression-era economic policy

The scenario keeps the 1929 Wall Street Crash because removing it would sever too many links with actual interwar history. Governments instead adopt a more active Keynesian approach and treat naval orders as one form of economic intervention. Stanley Baldwin replaces Ramsay MacDonald and Al Smith replaces Herbert Hoover because the counterfactual assumes they would be more willing to fund defence and employment. Those political changes supply the demand needed to keep carrier construction, design work, and skilled maritime labour moving through the Depression.