Royal Navy retains the 'Fleet Units' of Royal Naval Air Service in 1918 - an Alternate History

The alternate-history premise keeps the RNAS fleet units under Royal Navy control, changing carrier operations, interwar choices, and the pace of aviation development.

Douhet's city-destruction vision and later nuclear weapons show how extreme arsenals changed the ceiling and ambiguity of conflict rather than ending war.

Air-power theory overlooks a practical naval problem: aircraft must land, rearm, and remain close enough to sustain reconnaissance and combat air patrols.

Some naval leaders assumed the RAF would train every pilot and make every aircraft carrier-capable, or that Admiralty influence could reverse the arrangement later.

The wartime RNAS supported fleets, anti-submarine patrols, air defence, and overseas stations, giving the Royal Navy an experienced aviation organization to preserve.

The wartime Fifth Sea Lord demonstrates that the Admiralty already treated aviation as a senior institutional responsibility, offering a leadership model for a retained fleet air arm.

The Royal Navy's experience supplying small motor craft offered a ready-made model for contracts, engines, spare parts, and overseas aviation support.

Different treatment of spare engines and components made the RFC expect a surplus for strategic bombers while the RNAS saw only enough production to sustain aircraft already planned.

Calls to scrap battleships for aircraft in 1916 mistook long-term naval aviation potential for the limited torpedo and strike capability then available.

World War I seaplanes could search for surfaced U-boats, force dives, and reduce submarine endurance even when they did not score a confirmed kill.

Aircraft at Jutland mattered most as radio-linked scouts and artillery spotters, but failed communications and Campania's absence limited their effect.

The proposed settlement retains a small ship-operating aviation core, including scouts and Cuckoo torpedo aircraft, while leaving most aviation to the new air service.

A retained naval air arm would build a network of fleet-supporting stations and use squadrons sized around sustained patrols, maintenance, and carrier damage control.

A Royal Navy able to buy aircraft directly could preserve naval priorities, but would also clash with Air Ministry control of factories and designs.

The alternate treaty scheme pairs larger fleet carriers with a separate class of roughly Hermes-sized scout carriers, multiplying the Royal Navy's carrier options.

An Admiralty reference to Cammell Laird as a large-carrier specialist supports a tentative theory that the yard studied converting an unfinished Admiral-class battlecruiser.

The revised treaty arithmetic gives Japan, France, and Italy new scout-carrier allowances, while likely Japanese under-declaration makes paper tonnage an imperfect guide to the ships built.

Peacetime carriers and squadrons compound the aircraft, experienced trainers, engineers, commanders, facilities, and industrial capacity available for wartime expansion.

Interwar British governments resisted extra defence spending but usually funded the Royal Navy to its treaty allowance, making authorized scout carriers politically plausible.

With numerous small carriers already distributing aviation support, the Navy might omit HMS Unicorn or build a scout-carrier-hull auxiliary instead.

A higher treaty limit could let the Royal Navy combine more of Ark Royal's air-group capacity with the protection sought in armoured-hangar designs.

More naval flying and dive-bombing practice would expose weaknesses in anti-aircraft weapons earlier and push the fleet toward better elevation, fighter cover, and air-defence doctrine.

Possibly: an additional naval research customer could support jet work earlier, with later spillover into gas-turbine warship propulsion.

The torpedo-spotter-reconnaissance aircraft anchors a scout-carrier concept built to find surface raiders, support cruisers, and sustain fleets across imperial stations.

Carrier aircraft carry structural and survival weight that raises their power needs, giving a naval purchaser reason to pursue more capable engines and specialized dive bombers earlier.

Continuous naval fighter procurement from 1918 could leave the Fleet Air Arm with a more capable late-1930s aircraft instead of an urgent, late catch-up.

A scout-carrier tradition could produce larger British escort carriers early, giving convoys aircraft for U-boat searches, fighter cover, and a smaller Atlantic air gap.

Examples from Illustrious, the County-class cruisers, and Nelson-class battleships show how designers reserved useful margins within treaty definitions.

Carrier-borne reconnaissance in the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean, and North Atlantic could make German surface raiding more dangerous and less sustainable.

Even with a stronger engine, harbour-attack requirements could preserve a slow, stable biplane and the Swordfish's specialized low-level torpedo-release gear.

Emergency carriers derived from a proven scout-carrier design could be capable enough to reduce or redirect Britain's historical light-fleet-carrier programme.

Purpose-built scout carriers could take routine anti-submarine duties from fleet carriers while a larger carrier service develops more officers trained in carrier-specific damage control.

Interwar multi-carrier practice and more available aircraft could turn Taranto into a larger combined torpedo- and dive-bombing attack against the Italian fleet.

Reduced carrier losses and a weaker Italian battle fleet could affect Crete, Malta, North African supply, British capital-ship deployment, and early U-boat pressure as one connected campaign system.

A weaker Italian fleet and safer supply routes could shift modernized battleships and carriers toward the Atlantic and Indian Ocean while lighter forces contain the Mediterranean.

By about 1941, accumulated enemy reactions make the exercise a defensible chain of possibilities rather than a forecast of one inevitable wartime outcome.

If the treaty system recognizes scout carriers, they could become desirable national symbols alongside cruisers and prompt other navies to pursue similar ships.