Earlier high-power engines transform the Fleet Air Arm

How could British carrier aviation have been improved before the Second World War?

Royal Navy control helps, but accelerating reliable high-power engine development would make the largest difference to aircraft capability.

Royal Navy control helps align aircraft engineering with carrier requirements and gives naval planners earlier visibility into what industry can deliver. Very large Admiral-class conversions are useful only if Britain can still afford the carrier numbers its strategy demands. Powerplant development is therefore more decisive than concentrating everything in a few enormous hulls. Reliable engines producing roughly 1,500 to 2,000 horsepower by 1938 would permit materially better carrier fighters and strike aircraft before the war.