The First World War had exposed a shortage of escorts and submarine hunters, which helps explain the attempt to prioritize them again. The Second World War began with roughly one hundred Flower-class corvettes and one hundred Hunt-class escort destroyers already ordered, alongside Black Swans, existing sloops, V and W conversions, and hundreds of trawlers being activated. Flower design work dated to about 1938, with construction preparations and orders preceding the war. Some histories based on Churchill's account describe these as wartime emergency ships while omitting their ordering dates. Those dates matter when judging whether stopping larger warships created the escort program attributed to the decision. Moving workers between yards could require retraining in different methods, including a return from welding to riveting. Transferring labor therefore introduced delays and complications into production already under way.
Notable Point · 9:45-11:55
Prewar escort orders complicate the emergency-building rationale
Flowers, Hunts, sloops, destroyer conversions, and trawlers were already planned or ordered, so moving labor out of major-warship yards disrupted an existing escort program.