The loss of Courageous shows how a successful peacetime exercise can generate a dangerous false positive. Exercise submarines and aircraft concentrated on battleships because sinking the highest-value target produced the result needed to win the exercise. In war, attackers did not have to ignore a destroyer or exposed carrier while waiting for the ideal target. The difference between scoring rules and wartime incentives helps explain why a carrier-centred anti-submarine group that looked effective in training proved badly exposed in combat.
Notable Point · 1:13:28-1:14:55
How exercise incentives concealed wartime risk
Interwar exercises rewarded attacks on capital ships, masking the willingness of wartime submarines and aircraft to destroy any valuable target they could reach.