Project B rules and competing aims

Project B was contested before the bombs fell because the services wanted different answers from it. The Navy accepted the exercise to inspect bomb damage, improve ship design, and learn what crews would need for stabilization. Mitchell wanted proof that aircraft could sink ships under warlike conditions. The Navy required pauses for inspection, barred aerial torpedoes whose effects were already understood, and supplied old unmanned targets. Those choices made the program useful for technical study, but they could not reproduce combat at sea.