Competitions accelerate fighters and night flying

Several competing fighters entered operational trials before the Flycatcher emerged as the preferred aircraft, while spotter and torpedo designs repeatedly borrowed from one another. Reused names and second-generation designs can conceal the pace of replacement because a familiar designation might cover a substantially revised aircraft from another competition. This naming practice could even make the Treasury believe an airframe had remained unchanged for longer than it really had. Night flying added life-saving equipment, navigation demands, and extra crew weight to the naval specification. Increasingly versatile spotter-reconnaissance and torpedo designs grew from the same experimental system.