Spares and workshops become a combat constraint

Maintenance was a fighting capability aboard Formidable. Aircraft and Merlin engines wore rapidly under continuous patrol work, while replacement parts had a long route around the Cape and Fleet Air Arm stores in Coventry had been damaged. The carrier's workshops could perform demanding repairs, but the ship lacked the spares and industrial throughput needed to overhaul eleven worn aircraft at once. The engine-maintenance spaces lay ahead of the forward lift, outside the protected hangar, an arrangement that mattered when the ship was bombed. Wartime demands also eroded the ideal of keeping the hangar clear, with propellers, airframes, and other stores lashed wherever room could be found. A dedicated repair carrier such as Unicorn could rebuild engines on that scale and add its own small flying and anti-aircraft contribution. By the end of the Tiger convoy, Formidable had only four operational Fulmars.