Escort-carrier ideas before the war

How early were escort carriers being considered?

British planners had worked on merchant-carrier conversions during the 1930s, with HMS Argus helping to test the ideas.

British planners had considered converted merchant carriers well before wartime escort carriers entered service. During the 1930s they drew up proposals for converting merchant ships and worked through the basic requirements for a carrier. HMS Argus remained useful partly because it provided a way to test these ideas. The later ships therefore drew on an existing body of planning and experimentation.