A Book or Two to Review (16): Carrier, A Century of First-Hand Accounts of Naval Operations...

Published in 2010, Carrier collects first-hand naval aviation accounts from pilots, observers, fitters, and other ratings.

A Fleet Air Arm account places Ark Royal's aircraft over Mers-el-Kebir and shows both the tactical sequence and the moral shock of attacking a recent ally.

Mers-el-Kebir and Taranto show why one strike carrier could do only so much, while earlier British operations demonstrate established multi-carrier practice.

British and American carrier forces exchanged ideas in the Pacific, with each navy adapting useful lessons to its own operational culture.

CPO Richard Griffin's account from HMS Illustrious shows the violence of carrier damage control during heavy air attack near Malta.

After Illustrious reached Malta, surviving 815 and 819 Squadron personnel dispersed, returned to Alexandria, and rebuilt an operational air unit with airborne aircraft and replacement spares.

The book ranges beyond its vivid Second World War accounts to carrier operations in war and peace through the postwar era and the opening of the twenty-first century.

A treaty-design thought experiment asks how a 25,000-, 26,000-, or 27,000-ton limit might have enlarged British armored-carrier air groups without abandoning protection.

The closing design argument compares British and American carrier choices through geography, industrial distance, Mediterranean choke points, Midway, Audacious, and Malta-class thinking.

A comparison with Mediterranean capital-ship design explains why confined waters and predictable choke points rewarded protection more than battlecruiser-style reliance on speed and maneuver.

A 25,000- to 27,000-ton treaty limit could have produced a longer, more powerful armored carrier approaching the Implacable class earlier.

The final aside brings the historical debate forward by noting that modern air groups look smaller partly because aircraft are larger and carrier replacement is harder.