How limited overseas infrastructure shaped Royal Navy deployment

The 1939 deployment map places cruisers across the Royal Navy's worldwide stations while concentrating most battleships and carriers near major support infrastructure. Large, complex capital ships required dockyards, workshops, supplies, and trained support that many distant stations could not economically provide in peacetime. HMS Unicorn's extensive aviation workshops illustrate one answer for supporting aircraft on the China Station. Cruisers offered a more sustainable form of forward presence while remaining close enough to imperial trade routes and political interests. The Town class therefore answered a global logistics problem as much as a combat requirement.