Plan Z could not freeze the Royal Navy in 1938

Professional German naval officers such as Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz knew the Royal Navy had continued building and had already laid down the King George V class by 1937. In a no-war counterfactual, Britain could add the Lion class, Vanguard, later successor designs, and roughly ten to twelve carriers for the Home, Mediterranean, and Eastern fleets. With established yards and a decade of warning, it could replace its First World War capital ships and, on the illustrative arithmetic used here, approach thirty modern capital ships while Germany struggled to finish six H-class battleships. Naval construction would also aid industrial recovery, while Italian and Japanese programs and eventual knowledge of Yamato's 18-inch guns would increase the pressure to keep building. The balance in 1948 would be very different from a comparison between Plan Z and the Royal Navy that entered the historical Second World War.