Global commitments complicate theater labels for British carriers

Britain's global empire made narrowly theater-specific carrier fleets difficult to sustain because a specialist ship would have to remain available and based where its design assumptions applied. Ark Royal's resemblance to American and Japanese carriers encouraged the later label of a Far Eastern carrier, while the Illustrious class was correspondingly described as Mediterranean. Contemporary program language from Stanley Goodall and Admiral Reginald Henderson instead described strike and fleet-carrier functions. The discussion acknowledges D. K. Brown's later interpretation, then returns to the terminology and design influences used by the people who shaped the 1930s carrier program. Fighting Japan remained a major consideration because Japan was the principal power against which Britain expected an Eastern Fleet to operate. It could not be Britain's sole design criterion because the same ships had to serve wherever imperial commitments created a crisis.