Why battleships still made sense in the late 1930s

The aircraft, engines, weapons, and search systems available in 1936-1939 were far less capable than those of 1945. Two-thousand-horsepower engines helped turn carrier aircraft into machines able to carry dangerous loads over useful distances. Taranto exploited night conditions, while the Force Z strike reached its targets at extreme range with torpedo bombers short of fuel and without defensive guns. On this reading, even early carriers such as HMS Hermes, USS Langley, or Hōshō could have put enough fighters over Force Z to break up that attack. Battleships therefore remained the more certain way to destroy heavily armored opponents if they could reach gun range, making mixed capital-ship procurement a rational prewar hedge rather than blindness to aviation.