Why Henderson stockpiled designs before war

The Lion class was not simply an unready design; wartime pauses encouraged repeated changes until restarting with a new design became more sensible than completing the original ships. Henderson also kept Vanguard concepts and other contingency studies available for changing circumstances. The method assumed that wartime would not allow leisurely design work, so promising options had to be explored and rerun in peace. Carrier studies repeatedly returned to a 27,000-ton ideal combining armor, subdivision, and a strike-sized air group, then documented the compromises needed for particular programs. Many apparently sudden wartime ships could therefore draw on several years of prior investigation instead of appearing from nowhere.