Good steel for WW2 RN carriers.

IIUC the RN used whatever ordinary steel it could get in 1942-5 to build it's carriers, as a result the Eagle and Ark Royal didn't keep as well as they would if they hade been built in peacetime whith high qualitiy steel. WI Britain had decided to gather a certain amount of high quality steel for use in the Audacious and Malta class carriers? As late war cancellations occured could the Eagle and Ark Royal have used the good steel allocated for the cancelled carriers? Would the use of high quality steel have allowed these ships to remain in good condition for a decade longer?
 
I think you are making a lot of assumptions. The largest one being that the British have some idea that the war is going to be over by 1945 in 1942. If they need the ships as soon as possible why shouldn't they use the steel that they have immediately on hand?
 
I think that what the RN put on top of the decks was much more important than the decks themselves. That the most noteworthy aircraft they had in WWII service was the Stringbag says it all.
 
I was thinking that by 1942-3 when the Audacious were laid down the threat of invasion was gone the RN could think in the slightly longer term and allocate high quality steel to key areas, perhaps something like 10-15%. When the Maltas were ordered in 1944 the fraction of high quality steel could be increased, perhaps to 20-25%. When the cancellations started, the Audacious class Africa was re-ordered as Malta in 1944 so priorities were beginning to be shuffled even then, some of the high quality steel gathered for slower building ships could find its way into Audacious/Eagle during the war. During the building suspension at the end of the war as much of the high quality steel gathered for now cancelled ships could be incorporated into the Eagle for the early 1946 launch. The Ark Royal was suspended for much longer than the Eagle at the end of the war and could incorporate even more high quality steel and higher standards of workmanship into her construction.
 
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