A 27,000-ton carrier could approach Henderson's ideal, but five such ships could not cover the British Empire's global commitments. Reducing individual displacement toward 22,000 or 23,000 tons could increase the total toward six carriers, with seven suggested only as a possibility depending on how treaty arrangements worked out. The cumulative treaty ceiling was therefore the harder constraint: a navy could tolerate imperfect individual ships if it could build enough of them. The same logic applied to battleships, where a 35,000-ton unit limit mattered less than the total number a treaty permitted. Treaty arithmetic thus became a force-structure problem of presence, coverage, and procurement tradeoffs.
Notable Point · 1:29:04-1:30:33
Cumulative treaty tonnage governs carrier numbers
The total 135,000-ton carrier allowance constrained Royal Navy force structure more sharply than the maximum displacement of one ship.