How carrier growth could reshape Fleet Air Arm control

Sustained construction of numerous carriers would alter the institutional struggle over British naval aviation. The Royal Air Force as a service is distinguished from the Air Ministry, whose assumptions often constrained the Fleet Air Arm. One Air Ministry concept treated carriers as transports that could deliver land-based aircraft to the Far East and then send naval aircraft ashore to reinforce expeditionary air operations. That single-service logic risked leaving the fleet without the aircraft needed for reconnaissance, air defence, and strike work, making control of naval aviation an operational question as well as a bureaucratic one.