Churchill's capital-ship pause and the Scharnhorst threat

Churchill's capital-ship pause is criticised as a misreading of the North Sea war through a First World War analogy. The allegation is that he pressed the Admiralty to reclassify Scharnhorst and Gneisenau from fast battleships to battlecruisers so that Cabinet colleagues would accept the claim that existing forces could contain them. Renown had exchanged fire with both ships, and Hood or Ramillies might have opposed them under some conditions, but a sustained gun action would still have been dangerous. The criticism extends to the delayed Implacable class, for which a later comparison with Illustrious suggests a possible 1942 service date.