Why the Royal Navy did not begin with Malta-sized carriers

Repeated redesign can slow wartime production, even when each revision appears better on paper. The discussion uses Axis construction as an example of constant changes reducing output through delay and inefficiency. The light fleet carriers followed the more productive approach by adapting the HMS Unicorn design through closely related classes that could be built in quantity. Malta was different because it was intended as a new, large carrier at the centre of global Royal Navy deployment. Its wartime authorization may also have protected a long-term capability from the severe spending cuts expected after victory, much as the Admiral-class battlecruisers had embodied an earlier bridge between war and peace. In the closing counterfactual, three or four ships of one Malta class could have standardized the strike-carrier force across several post-war decades and perhaps remained useful into the 1980s.