An emergency-built ship could still come from a capability that navies had long expected to mobilize once war began. Escort-carrier concepts had appeared in anti-submarine doctrine after the First World War, often as stripped-down merchant conversions. Building them in peacetime risked treaty complications and could let treasuries argue that larger fleet carriers were unnecessary. The Royal Navy's existing HMS Argus supplied a practical baseline, while wartime merchant hulls allowed the dormant concept to be tested at scale.
Notable Point · 1:36-3:57
Escort carriers were planned before the emergency
The exclusion of escort carriers reveals that navies already understood merchant conversions before 1939, even when treaty and treasury pressures kept the ships off peacetime programmes.