Exercise incentives concealed air-defence weaknesses

Exercise participants preferred attacking battleships, carriers, and cruisers because those were the prestigious targets. In war, an attacker could still claim a useful success by destroying an exposed destroyer, so the exercise incentives produced a false picture of escort vulnerability. That bias made a 4.7-inch low-angle gun appear adequate when it could engage aircraft attacking a nearby capital ship but could not protect its own destroyer as effectively. More realistic exercises might have accelerated adoption of the 4.5-inch dual-purpose gun across the fleet. Even after the Third Sea Lord pushed the weapon, understanding, approval, and installation took years, so distorted exercise lessons compounded an already slow procurement cycle.