Argus and Furious let the Royal Navy test carriers without conventional island structures. On Furious, exhaust trunking had to run through and along spaces that otherwise could have held aircraft. Routing the uptake directly into an island was simpler and preserved more usable hangar volume. The later islands on Hermes, Eagle, Courageous, and Glorious therefore represented an operational design lesson, not merely a visual preference.
Notable Point · 1:01:29-1:02:32
Why carrier islands preserve hangar space
Experiments with flush decks showed that routing funnel trunks through a hull consumed valuable hangar volume that an island could preserve.