"If we did not have those ships how do you know that something else would have not come up? While I am sure that it is true that the Flower class did exactly as you say how do you know that, had that class not have been built, something even more effective would have been? You don't. I don't. No one does." - Gnome

1: How do you know that something else would not have come up? Asks Gnome.

It takes time to design and built a ship? The shortage of Escort vessels compelled the Admiralty to adapt an existing design and all of this was done in 1938. They did not look at anything else perhaps that is why it can be said with a fair degree of certainty that had they not gone through that exercise in 1938 then there would have been nothing to come up with in 1939 to make good our escort losses.

2: "how do you know that, had that class not have been built, something even more effective would have been?"

Well Gnome as said above if the idea had not been taken and acted upon in 1938 the ships would not have been available at all. So war starts and you find yourself dependent on convoys bringing in food and essential raw materials and supplies. You find yourself losing merchant ships and escorts. You only have a finite number of shipyards and a quantifiable ship building capacity so Gnome what do you build merchant ships, or escorts? Could you also tell me why it would be easier to come out with better ideas under wartime conditions than it would in time of peace? Tally up the losses in escort vessels and then take away the 294 Flower Class Corvettes - had they not been built our convoys would have been sailing unprotected. The Corvettes, thought of in 1938 and built in 1939 bought us time to do two things:

1: Provide convoy protection from the start
2: Design and build the later classes of Sloops and Frigates that replaced them.