Why fleet carriers were poor early ASW hunter ships

Are carriers unsuitable for anti-submarine warfare?

Carrier aircraft are useful for ASW, but early hunter groups risked valuable fleet carriers; escort carriers made the later wartime approach much more acceptable.

The answer distinguishes the anti-submarine value of embarked aircraft from the danger of using a fleet carrier as the centre of an early hunter group. Courageous had only a thin close screen while most destroyers searched outward, allowing a submarine to penetrate and attack the irreplaceable carrier. Aircraft still provided effective submarine search and attack capability, so the concept itself was not discarded. Escort carriers later made hunter-killer groups practical because their loss, though serious, did not remove one of the fleet's scarce first-line aviation ships.