Exercise incentives distort destroyer air-defence lessons

Exercise pilots could attack the largest available target without facing the lethal risk of an operational attack. Carriers and capital ships offered higher scores and greater prestige, so peacetime results encouraged the belief that destroyers would escape attack. Limited wartime experience pointed the other way, including attacks on exposed ships around a formation. The exercise incentives had biased the evidence used to assess destroyer protection. Some early dual-purpose mounts therefore lacked the elevation needed to engage aircraft attacking their own ship. At realistic task-group spacing, low-angle guns could still engage aircraft heading toward more distant ships, which helped the mistaken assumption survive.