Merchant-hull dependence exposes the preparation gap

The ending returns to the full mobile-basing system in which port and air-base facilities would interface with support ships such as HMS Unicorn before those ships rejoined the fleet. Without dedicated tenders, the Royal Navy depended on merchant hulls that could be hired or requisitioned only after war began. That made movement and support contingent on wartime availability instead of a prepared peacetime institution. The closing exercise asks viewers to revisit decisions that have never made sense to them and reconstruct which arguments were actually made to the audience with authority to decide. It tests simple hindsight explanations by asking whether the historically preferred option ever received its strongest audience-specific case.