Assessing the Fairey Fulmar by the job it was built to do

The Fulmar recorded more Fleet Air Arm air-to-air victories than any other aircraft and helped create several aces, despite a reputation shaped by unfavorable comparisons with land-based interceptors. It entered a late-1930s procurement crisis in which the Skua was primarily a dive bomber, the Roc was ineffective, and a planned single-seat naval fighter depended on Supermarine. Wartime priorities kept that fighter and the later Firefly from arriving on schedule. The Fulmar became the stopgap through which the Royal Navy tested and revised much of its prewar carrier-air doctrine under combat conditions.