Royal Navy Tribal-class destroyers entered service with low-angle 4.7-inch main guns partly because exercise experience suggested aircraft would bypass small ships for carriers and capital ships. That pattern was a false positive created by the incentives of peacetime training. A pilot risked no life by pressing toward the largest target and gained more prestige from a simulated carrier hit than from attacking a destroyer. British, American, and other navies then treated this behavior as evidence about wartime targeting. Combat exposed the cost of designing destroyer air defence around an opponent who was not making peacetime choices.
Notable Point · 28:57-31:17
How fleet exercises underestimated attacks on destroyers
Interwar pilots repeatedly chose prestigious capital-ship and carrier targets in exercises, encouraging several navies to understate the air threat to destroyers.