Naval air engineers restore Illustrious's damaged air group

Restoring the salt-water-soaked air group took long enough to miss the next full-moon opportunity. Returning the aircraft to service required a substantial engineering effort with limited personnel and facilities. Many Fleet Air Arm engineers had come from the RAF but now worked within the Royal Navy's command structure, bringing technical information directly into naval decisions. Their success prompts a counterfactual question: having those personnel inside the fleet throughout the interwar years might have influenced aircraft development and the designs available for war.