French paper studies preserve interwar carrier thinking

France built few interwar carriers but generated a large succession of studies and redrawn proposals. Navies that actually constructed ships often absorbed yard experience informally, so the paper record jumps between designs without preserving every reason for the change. French designers instead kept reacting on paper to domestic requirements and foreign developments. Their studies provide historians with an unusually continuous record for reconstructing how carrier ideas circulated and evolved across several navies.