Some RNAS officers argued as early as 1916 that the Navy should discard battleships and rely on aircraft. The Sopwith Cuckoo made an aerial torpedo threat more credible, but contemporary weapons still required many aircraft to hit manoeuvring warships reliably. In this assessment, the strategic intuition ran roughly fifty or sixty years ahead of what the technology could deliver. The example cautions against allowing enthusiasm for an emerging system's future potential to erase its present operational limits.
Notable Point · 17:50-18:52
Aircraft advocates were decades ahead of their machines
Calls to scrap battleships for aircraft in 1916 mistook long-term naval aviation potential for the limited torpedo and strike capability then available.