The Future Building Committee and the post-war fleet

After Henderson's death, wartime construction management made it harder to sustain long-range naval planning. The officers rotating through the Third Sea Lord's post could supervise immediate building work but lacked Henderson's long tenure, carrier experience, and ability to look well beyond current orders. Admiral Sir Charles Edward Kennedy Purvis therefore chaired the Future Building Committee and chose members for their expertise rather than rank. The committee recovered earlier Henderson-era concepts through Director of Naval Construction Stanley Goodall instead of starting with a blank page. That continuity appears in the comparison between the Daring-class destroyer and Henderson's 1938 L70 study: apart from changes to the bow, radar, and guns, the drawings align remarkably closely. Malta and Daring came from an institutional effort to carry pre-war design knowledge into the Royal Navy's future fleet.