In July 1942 the Royal Navy formed the Future Building Committee, chaired by the Deputy First Sea Lord, to examine the fleet's requirements for the rest of the war.

Another important consideration was the change in carrier tactics from the earlier doctrine of more attacks with smaller numbers of aircraft to the use of large, single airstrikes.

[1] Sir Stanley V. Goodall, Director of Naval Construction (DNC), proposed a variety of designs, both open and closed hangar.

On 8 October 1943, the Board of Admiralty selected a closed-hangar design with an armoured flight deck and five propeller shafts.

Design Y was too short for efficient operations with the larger aircraft the committee anticipated, and the First Sea Lord selected X1.

Because the unarmoured flight deck required an expansion joint about amidships, the Maltas' island could not be a single structure and was split into two, each section with its own funnel.

[5] The carriers would have been fitted with 16 arrestor cables that were designed to stop landing aircraft up to 20,000 lb (9.1 t) in weight, at speeds of up to 75 kn (139 km/h; 86 mph).

[Note 1] The ships were designed with four 30,000-pound (14,000 kg) capacity lifts for rapid movement of aircraft between the flight deck and the hangar.

[6] The turbines were designed to produce a total of 200,000 shp (150,000 kW), enough to give them a maximum speed of 33.25 knots (61.58 km/h; 38.26 mph).

The Malta class was designed to carry a maximum of 7,000 long tons (7,112 t) of fuel oil and diesel fuel (for the emergency generators); this was intended to give the ships a range of 7,100 nautical miles (13,100 km; 8,200 mi) at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) or 5,600 nautical miles (10,400 km; 6,400 mi) at 24 knots (44 km/h; 28 mph).

To form the armoured citadel the belt was closed by three-inch (76 mm) transverse bulkheads fore and aft.

The underwater defence system was a layered system of liquid- and air-filled compartments, backed by an inclined holding bulkhead that was four inches thick at the top and tapered to a thickness of two inches (51 mm) at the bottom,[15] and was estimated to resist a 1,200-pound (540 kg) explosive charge.