Crown Colony cruisers were prewar designs, not emergency ships

The Crown Colony class originated in treaty-driven design work begun in 1936, with the first ships ordered and laid down in 1938. That chronology separates them from true war-emergency construction even though commissioning continued after the war began. The video's own elapsed time then becomes a practical measure of the recall delay at Crete. In forty minutes, ships can steam many miles, aircraft can repeatedly cross the area, and anti-aircraft batteries can expend a large fraction of their remaining ammunition. Because the detached cruisers and the main force were moving apart, each minute outbound added more than a minute to the effort required to recover mutual support.