Malta and the timetable for invading Japan

A wartime building pace could plausibly have put Malta-class carriers into service around 1947 or 1948. That date seems too late only if the Pacific War's historical ending is assumed in advance. A planned invasion of Japan would have required time to move, assemble, train, and prepare enormous forces before the landings, followed by an uncertain period of fighting ashore. Unlike the invasion of Western Europe, the Allies lacked a staging area equivalent to Britain close to the Japanese coast. Malta's possible wartime role is therefore a logistics-dependent counterfactual rather than evidence that the ships were likely to enter combat under the events that actually occurred.