Aerial torpedoes and the fleet-in-being problem

The Short Type 184 was the first aircraft designed specifically as a torpedo bomber, but earlier aircraft had already been adapted to carry torpedoes. British planners were responding to the possibility that Germany's outnumbered fleet would remain protected in harbor as a fleet in being. Britain's margin rested on a balanced fleet: it combined a dreadnought advantage with far greater numbers of cruisers and destroyers, while Germany's capital-ship programme squeezed those supporting types. Aircraft-dropped torpedoes offered a way to attack shallow anchorages or slow an enemy fleet that tried to escape. Work on buoyancy, stabilizing fittings, and controlled water entry therefore began well before the famous carrier strikes of World War II. After Jutland, night attack and harbor-strike concepts became still more urgent within the Royal Navy.