Air-attack exercises and misleading lessons for destroyers

Exercises can mislead when participants face different risks from those encountered in war. Pilots practising attacks without a substantial risk of death preferred carriers, cruisers and battleships to less prestigious destroyer targets. Repeated exercises consequently suggested that destroyers mainly needed to engage aircraft attacking other ships. That target-selection pattern is one explanation offered for their low-angle gun arrangements. Recognition took about fifteen years and reached senior discussion through a Third Sea Lord who had previously served as Rear Admiral Aircraft Carriers. Other navies also encountered misleading exercise results. The same problem requires attention in modern training, where the risks participants accept can differ from those they would calculate on operations. Professional competence does not mean everyone will press an attack regardless of danger in the manner associated here with special forces.