Ark Royal's loss is attributed here partly to personnel who distrusted the instruction to counter-flood. They treated admitting water as the enemy's job and believed the manual must be wrong. The explanation specifically invokes a carrier's high metacentric height as the reason for the prescribed procedure. The practical lesson is that damage-control instincts can conflict with a ship's written stability instructions.
Notable Point · 4:43-5:17
Ark Royal's counter-flooding instructions
Ark Royal's loss is linked to a failure to follow written counter-flooding instructions when letting water aboard seemed instinctively wrong.