Furious with Hood and Prince of Wales in the Bismarck hunt

During the Bismarck hunt, Victorious was the carrier available to the force built around King George V. The counterfactual asks whether an earlier change to Furious's ferry and refit schedule might instead have made her available to Hood and Prince of Wales. A carrier paired with fast capital ships matched established British thinking for countering a surface raider. Furious could still make about 30 knots and could have contributed a strike package without necessarily dictating the battle's outcome. The example shows how maintenance, losses, new construction, and prior tasking determine the force packages a navy can assemble at a particular moment.