High-speed operations wear out destroyers and shape postwar fleets

Destroyers and early aircraft carriers spent far more time above cruising speed than battleships because screening, threat response, zigzagging, and flight operations demanded constant repositioning. That operating tempo wore machinery rapidly and left the Royal Navy needing to repair, replace, and cycle much of its destroyer force after the First World War. Large late-war programs such as the British V and W classes and the American flush-deckers therefore served an interwar purpose as well as an immediate wartime one. The navy built while emergency funding was available because it expected both a worn-out existing fleet and sharp postwar budget cuts.