Carrier construction pause and Far East consequences

Contemporary reports warned against pausing carrier construction, so the argument does not depend on hindsight. Henderson's continued influence might have produced a compromise in which some ships kept moving while others paused. Carriers already further along could then have been completed sooner when the program restarted. A carrier with Force Z would not have guaranteed survival, but Mediterranean experience had given the Royal Navy a coherent carrier air-defense system by that point.