How documentary sources and design experience shape this history

D. K. Brown and Roger Moore's Rebuilding the Royal Navy provides the documentary starting point for this design history, though it is not treated as the final word. His father entered naval design in the late 1940s, worked on early computer-assisted design and testing, and remained involved through the Type 26 programme. Shipyards still consulted that accumulated judgment when computer output appeared doubtful. This background combines published evidence with practical memory of how design offices evaluated emerging tools. Later judgments distinguish official design logic from personal interpretation without treating either as unquestionable.