Merchant losses exceeded replacement at the point when an escort carrier program would have needed suitable commercial hulls. Audacity became an early opportunity because a captured German ship did not remove a planned British merchant vessel from service. The counterproposal was not simply to sacrifice cargo capacity for a flight deck. Tanker or merchant-aircraft-carrier designs might retain a useful transport function beneath the aviation structure. The tradeoff was whether accepting less capacity in one hull could protect enough other ships to improve the convoy system as a whole.
Notable Point · 50:12-51:31
Escort carriers versus merchant-hull scarcity
Britain knew how to convert merchant ships, but Atlantic losses made every suitable hull part of a difficult choice between immediate cargo capacity and convoy air cover.