Single-carrier limits and multi-carrier practice

Mers-el-Kebir and Taranto frame a wider argument about carrier concentration. Early-war aircraft could not deliver enough firepower in one wave to guarantee decisive results, so repeated attacks or several carriers mattered. The Royal Navy had practiced multi-carrier operations for roughly a decade before entering the Second World War, yet worldwide commitments usually left only one carrier available for an operation. Indian Ocean deployments, Mediterranean convoys, and an operation off Norway are presented as examples that predated the British Pacific Fleet. This watch point distinguishes limited force concentration from a lack of multi-carrier doctrine.