Why carriers should avoid surface action

HMS Formidable at Cape Matapan and HMS Unicorn off Korea show why a carrier's guns did not make surface combat a sound role. Formidable was armoured and armed, yet the British still tried to keep her out of the gun action at Matapan. During the Korean War, Unicorn was providing engineering support to light carriers when enemy fire prompted her to close the coast and answer with four-inch guns. Both cases were exceptions made dangerous by aviation fuel and flight operations. British practice reduced that danger by draining fuel lines into protected storage below the hangar deck and isolating them from ignition sources. Those precautions grew from First World War fire experience, while American interwar development began from a different body of operational experience.