Interwar navies did not regard an inactive warship as automatically wasted or obsolete. Placing older battleships in reserve conserved their machinery while retaining hulls for a conflict that would require more ships than the peacetime establishment could crew. Naval reservists supplied the personnel needed to mobilize those ships when war expanded the fleet. This readiness model explains why Britain could retain Revenge-class ships outside the most active squadron without treating them as valueless burdens.
Notable Point · 1:40:47-1:45:23
Reserve squadrons preserve wartime fleet depth
Keeping older capital ships in reserve conserves machinery and provides hulls that trained reservists can mobilize when wartime demand exceeds the peacetime fleet.