An interwar sloop program could have transformed convoy defense

Wartime escort shortages followed the Ten Year Rule and the failure to replace aging First World War Flower-class sloops after that assumption was relaxed. One counterfactual program has Britain building eight vessels annually while Canada, Australia, India, and South Africa each build two. Designed around roughly twenty knots and anti-submarine work, these ships would have traded destroyer speed for the qualities needed in convoy defense. Sustained from the mid-1920s, the program would have maintained regional yards and produced enough purpose-built escorts to organize numerous convoy groups around the empire.