Carrier doctrine as a test of officer education

Royal Navy carrier construction complicates a simple battleship-versus-air-power account. Night, weather, sea state, and visibility could leave early carrier air groups unavailable for much of the time, while their aircraft added heavily to the ships' cost. British requirements in the Mediterranean and Far East encouraged survivable armoured carriers that could sustain operations near land-based air power or after damage far from home yards. Treaty tonnage forced navies to trade air-group capacity against armour, endurance, and ship size. Without tight carrier limits, Britain might have built enlarged Implacable- or Indefatigable-style armoured carriers, the United States a super-Essex air group, and Japan something between those approaches. Officers shaped by the education reforms became the commanders and technical decision-makers who had to reconcile those constraints during the Second World War.