Layered air defence at sea

Carrier aircraft were expected to disrupt an attacking formation, while heavy and medium anti-aircraft weapons further scattered the raid into easier individual targets. The goal at each outer layer was not necessarily to destroy every aircraft but to break coordinated attacks into isolated approaches that individual ships could defeat. Radar made fighter direction more practical and replaced reliance on aircraft observers scanning the sky. The loss of Force Z illustrates the vulnerability of ships left without the fighter layer that the doctrine expected.