London Treaty scope for a larger sloop force

The treaty rules permitted ships of up to 2,000 tons without a total-tonnage or numerical cap, provided their designed speed did not exceed twenty knots and they met gun restrictions and carried no torpedoes. Such vessels could still carry anti-submarine equipment and perform convoy escort and minesweeping duties. A ship built below the individual limit could retain room for later modernization. In the counterfactual, matching annual destroyer orders with roughly sixteen to eighteen sloops could have produced about 180 escorts before 1939. More escorts might have strengthened patrols at Scapa Flow and prevented some early losses, although saving Royal Oak or Glorious is explicitly uncertain. Building them in Britain and across Canada, Australia, India, and South Africa would also have reduced the later pressure to interrupt larger-warship construction for an emergency escort program.