Light cruisers were especially useful carrier escorts, but the United States did not have enough of them when war arrived. Although the final Second London Naval Treaty did not retain cumulative tonnage limits, earlier negotiating assumptions and confidence that war remained distant encouraged slow construction. Predictions that war is only a year away can distort procurement by excluding ships or aircraft that take two or three years to obtain. Buyers can then be pushed toward equipment available immediately, even when its lack of demand reflects poorer suitability. A delivery queue can reflect the desirability of a system rather than a reason to abandon it. Richardson's warnings about Pearl Harbor posed the same readiness problem: either move the fleet back or fund the base properly. The 1942 task forces fought with the interwar fleet Congress had purchased while stronger designs were still entering production.
Notable Point · 1:09:14-1:13:42
The light-cruiser shortage exposed prewar procurement lag
Treaty-era assumptions and slow peacetime spending left the 1942 carrier force fighting with too few modern light cruisers and the ships actually built in the 1920s and 1930s.