Leaving every admiral in post would block promotion immediately below and eventually congest lower ranks with officers unable to advance. The bottleneck would cascade from flag rank through captain, commander, and lieutenant commander. Wartime service needed promotion both to fill expanding commands and to recognize newly demonstrated experience. Reginald Henderson's reported 16- to 18-hour days as Third Sea Lord provide one measure of the workload imposed on senior officers. Retirement also acknowledged that older leaders could not sustain such hours indefinitely, regardless of their ability.
Notable Point · 2:13:18-2:16:18
Retirement kept wartime promotion moving
Vacancies at flag rank allowed proven wartime officers to advance and prevented the entire promotion pyramid from bottlenecking.