A captured Bearn would have constrained a German surface group rather than strengthening it. At 21.5 knots, the carrier would have slowed any Bismarck task group and given the Royal Navy far more time to shadow the sortie and concentrate superior forces. The joke is that Britain might have preferred the Germans to keep such a burden instead of immediately bombing it. The counterfactual turns a design statistic into an operational lesson: the slowest indispensable ship can erase the speed and initiative of an entire formation.
Notable Point · 1:03:51-1:04:50
Bearn as a drag on a German sortie
A captured Bearn could have hurt a German surface group by forcing every accompanying ship down to her 21.5-knot pace.