A war arriving early reordered British shipbuilding

Would Henderson's survival have brought Audacious and Implacable into service earlier?

Perhaps at the margin, but the early war and the Battle of the Atlantic still forced Britain to prioritise immediate survival over its long-term carrier programme.

Henderson might have challenged Churchill's pause on capital-ship and carrier work more effectively than his successors. British planners nevertheless expected likely opponents to complete their rearmament in the mid-to-late 1940s and built their case around that timetable. The resulting programme aimed to replace carriers, cruisers, destroyers, and the battle fleet over roughly a decade. Much of the slow work lay in design and development, while British yards could construct an approved ship comparatively quickly. War in 1939 therefore interrupted a programme that had mature concepts but had not reached its planned delivery years, and even Henderson could not remove the need to protect supplies crossing the Atlantic.