How pausing capital-ship work disrupted British output

The argument is not that escorts were unimportant: Flower corvettes and Hunt-class destroyers were already in production. The problem was abruptly pausing large projects and trying to move specialised labour into different work, which created delay before the submarine threat reached its later scale. Workers accustomed to large yards and capital ships could not instantly accelerate small-warship construction, and integrating them may initially have slowed the escort programme. Restarting capital ships and carriers was much harder than stopping them, especially once wartime experience encouraged design changes. The resulting disruption left Britain with fewer modern units for early-war operations without producing the immediate escort windfall Churchill expected.