Cannon armament and carrier-aircraft trade-offs

Why did early aircraft not simply adopt cannon, and how might larger Royal Navy carriers have changed the answer?

Cannon installation and reliability created real technical problems, but larger carriers could have made twin-engined naval aircraft and fuselage-mounted cannon more viable.

The exchange opens with the 1939 Hispano's risk of jamming, the British search for heavy machine-gun armament, and a 13.2 mm FN-derived alternative used in Sweden and Finland. Early cannon were not ignored; fitting them and keeping them reliable at altitude was the problem. Wing installation avoided propeller synchronization but exposed the weapon to cold, while mounting it near the engine introduced other mechanical compromises. Twin-engined aircraft could instead place weapons in a heated fuselage. From there, the discussion imagines a Royal Navy carrier force built around larger hulls, where a preference for long-range, night-safe aircraft might have made twin engines and earlier cannon armament more attractive.