Britain entered war while combining modernized older ships with an incomplete generation of new battleships. A war beginning in 1941 or 1942 would have encountered a different Royal Navy, with the King George V and Lion programs further advanced. The British planning horizon was 1942, while the outbreak in 1939 caught the fleet in transition. The King George V design also reflected competing ideas developed during the years when the navy had been unable to build its intended new capital ships.
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The Royal Navy's unfinished transition and its 1942 planning horizon
The outbreak of war in 1939 interrupted a fleet transition intended to put more modern British battleships into service.