And of those four were clapped out Revenge class. Dark days indeed.
The R class were younger than the Queen Elizabeth class but were slated for replacement.
It's too bad Britain ran down its shipbuilding capability between the wars. One could argue that in those days of post-WW1 naval treaties, government war debt repayments and depression economics that a rundown was inevitable, but it was not in the nation's interest for the government to facilitate the industry's decline. The UK went from a nation that in a span of
ten years from 1906 to 1916 could build AND complete thirty-five dreadnought battleships, eleven battlecruisers and over fifty turbine-powered light cruisers (20x
Town, 14x
C-Class, 8x
Arethusa, 3x
Active, 2x
Boadicea, 2x
Blonde) to one that struggled from the mid-1930s onwards to build for the new war. For example, Britain needed five and half years (65 months) to complete the carrier HMS Implacable, even though by autumn 1942 Britain had lost five carriers and was desperately short of the type.
As Ewen has pointed out the big bottlenecks were guns, mountings and armour, as well as size growth. The early RN dreadnoughts were about half the displacement of the WWII King George V, with about a fifth the installed power, no directors, no AA capability and minimal underwater protection (see HMS Audacious in 1914). Yes the WWII programs were curtailed by the rise of the aircraft carrier but the pre WWI were largely peace time builds as everyone tried to avoid battleship gaps. The economic strain can be seen in the way the British and Germans largely stopped laying down new dreadnoughts after WWI began.
USN, South Carolina in 1908 to Idaho in 1917, 17 Dreadnoughts, plus 2 more in 1919. 10 in WWII.
IJN Kawachi in 1912 to Mutsu in 1921, 11 Dreadnoughts plus 1 built in Britain. 2 in WWII.
The Kriegsmarine had an even bigger drop off.
Given a 20 year lifetime all the dreadnought construction programs were unsustainable, throw in the 1920's building bans and lots of big gun ship capacity was going to be lost.
The British ship building industry had the post WWI shock and then the great depression shock. At its peak in 1932 there was over 13,500,000 GRT of merchant shipping laid up. The British Empire in 1914 had around 20,500,000 GRT of merchant ships, down slightly to 20,400,000 GRT in 1937, but in percentage terms of the world fleet 47.6% to 32.5%, if the British had kept their percentage of world shipping it would have had another 10,000,000 GRT and a much healthier ship building industry. The US had gone from 2,000,000 GRT (4.7%) to 9,350,000 GRT (14.9%). Though by the late 1930's the Maritime Commission had been created to deal with the size and age of the US fleet and in 1937/38 over half the laid up world merchant ship tonnage was US.
Pre WWI the army made little demands on industry, artillery was hard to destroy, ammunition expenditure low, horse power in use, pre WWII artillery was easy to destroy, ammunition expenditure high, vehicles were replacing horses and "medium" tanks cost about the same as a fighter aircraft, and all those vehicles in turn needed more vehicles for repair and enabling vehicle movement (Bridging for example), horses and men can swim.
Pre WWI the air force demands were non existent, pre WWII they were high. This helped prevent new investment in ship weapons production etc.
If you look at the 1920's and 1930's arrangements almost all the British Empire ships were under the RN, only a handful were being paid for and run by the Dominions. So the British were trying to run a navy bigger than the USN on an economy about half the size. With a government limited by WWI debts.
The Fall of France meant the RN building program had to be radically altered, the big ship building programs abandoned or delayed. Not counting the older destroyers the RN ended up with around 600 ocean going escorts (including US built), after losing 100 or so. The USN ended up with about 100 less ocean going escorts, but more like 200 given the conversions to transports, after losing less than 20 of them. How many cruisers and above could be built and crewed for 200 to 300 Flower to Hunt class ships, including shipyard upgrades.
If you want a hindsight solution for the RN, update the Hood design to Vanguard, which used spare mountings, call in the mountings on the monitors, then as the Vanguard class builds pull in the R class, strip them of guns and armor to use in the Vanguard class, no need for new guns or mountings and much less new armour and have each slip build 2 as repeat ships take less time.
