An interwar Empire-wide program of roughly twenty-four sloops a year is proposed as an alternative to emergency wartime construction. Britain would take about twice each partner's share, while Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India also ordered ships. The program would preserve a steady flow of escort and anti-submarine hulls instead of waiting for a crisis to restart production. This is a counterfactual procurement recommendation, and governments did not adopt it.
Notable Point · 54:38-55:19
The case for a continuous Empire sloop program
Recurring Empire-wide sloop construction could have preserved escort-building capacity before the wartime emergency.