Henderson's carrier concept under treaty limits

The Royal Navy's preferred carrier combined Ark Royal's air group with the Illustrious class's armored box, structural protection, and torpedo defense, but treaty tonnage limits prevented building enough of those ships for worldwide commitments. Ark Royal sacrificed protection while relying more on distance and speed as a strike carrier. Illustrious accepted a smaller air group, restricted hangar dimensions, and difficult deck-parking tradeoffs to survive land-based air attack and remain repairable far from British industry, especially in the Mediterranean and Far East. The later Implacable design could move closer to the ideal once treaty constraints loosened, showing that the earlier compromises reflected policy limits rather than ignorance of the desired ship.