The initial case against pausing carrier construction rested on the Royal Navy's need for aviation in anti-submarine warfare. By the end of 1940, wartime experience had also established the need for carriers in air defence. By the end of 1941, the argument had become one of fleet survival. The light-fleet-carrier program answered these accumulating losses and operational lessons. Within the counterfactual exercise, contemporary arguments supplied a case for continued carrier construction even without knowing the later course of the war.
Chapter · 2:20-3:06
Carriers became essential to Royal Navy survival
The case for maintaining carrier construction broadened from anti-submarine warfare to air defence by the end of 1940 and fleet survival by the end of 1941.