Wartime mileage can exhaust a carrier force before its ships look old

British carriers travelled around Africa to reach the eastern Mediterranean and covered long distances between theatres during the war. Such intensive use could exhaust a relatively young ship's machinery and structure. Clarke argues that this accumulated wear made a case for building the proposed Malta-class carriers after the war, because the existing carrier force had already worked so hard. Putting 100,000 miles on a new car in its first year provides a comparison for that intensive use. Calendar age alone therefore gives an incomplete picture of a ship's remaining useful life.