The Royal Navy's possible case for retaining carrier aviation

The counterfactual separates the small carrier-operating element of the Royal Naval Air Service from its much larger wartime organisation of overseas, Western Front, and heavy-bomber squadrons. Most of those units would have been difficult for the Admiralty to retain when the Royal Air Force was created, while maritime patrol might plausibly have become a shared service. Carrier aviation offered a narrower case based on shipboard command, control, and discipline, with technical and joint staffs shared across services. RAF advocates might have accepted that exception rather than risk a broader Admiralty campaign against transferring the RNAS. Bargaining over institutional boundaries could have shaped interwar naval aviation as much as ships and aircraft did.