Colossus class after the British carrier pause

The Royal Navy's light fleet carrier problem is tied here to Churchill's early-war pause of large-ship construction and the later realization that carrier numbers would matter badly once Japan entered the war. Churchill justified the halt as a way to concentrate on escorts, although Hunt-class destroyers and Flower-class corvettes had already been ordered before the war. Moving skilled workers away from major warships did not immediately accelerate escort construction because they needed retraining and relocation, while restoring a dispersed shipbuilding workforce proved much slower than breaking it up. Reversing the decision imposed delays of roughly six to eighteen months on larger carriers already in the programme. Director of Naval Construction Stanley Goodall supplied the purpose-built Colossus solution from Unicorn's design lineage. Removing the forward support ship's major maintenance facilities left a ship organized around combat aviation.