Why Malta and Midway converged

Malta and Midway emerged from wartime lessons that brought British and American carrier design closer together. British enclosed armoured hangars restricted the ventilation needed to warm aircraft engines below deck, while American open hangars made that possible before aircraft reached the flight deck. American experience also showed that a large air group could be lost with the carrier's flying capability when a bomb or kamikaze ignited aircraft on an unarmoured flight deck. An armoured deck could preserve aircraft below and allow operations to resume after wreckage was cleared, even when aircraft parked above were lost. Both design traditions therefore moved toward an armoured flight deck and a hangar that could admit enough air for engine operation. Wartime experience also weakened the case for heavily armoured hangar sides: cruiser encounters were rare, and side armour would offer little protection once heavy gunfire caught the carrier.