Well when your involvement has been limited to the deck operations side of naval aviation for the last 20 years and you have none of the necessary decision making structures in place for deciding what is needed in the future, it is kind of difficult to make immediate changes. Organisational change doesn't happen overnight. Much as you might dislike the notion, change takes time. A new Air Division had to be set up within the Admiralty. New Departments to handle Air Personnel, Air Material (incl aircraft acquisition) and Aircraft Maintenance and Repair.And until you have complete control of an organisation changing it is in fact impossible.
And remember that the RN began in 1939 with almost nothing in terms of support. They received 4 airfields in Britain. They had to plan for how they could support what they had around the world, let alone the expansion that was already in the pipeline for the new carriers then building. So you find papers in the archives in the first half of 1939 about new facilities at home and abroad for repair & maintenance of naval aircraft. That is in addition to looking at aircraft production numbers, the numbers of slots on carriers and projections through until 1942 under various scenarios.
Aircraft acquisition policy is just one aspect and one where the RN was probably least experienced because that had been reserved to the RAF and Air Ministry, and defended jealously. Forming new staff requirements for everything needed, including aircraft, was the responsibility of the Directorate of Air Material created in Jan 1938. And you very rarely design and get a new aircraft into production in 18 months. So what do you do until you can decide exactly what you want? Just cancel everything in the pipeline? Or continue with what is already planned until you are clear about the new direction of travel? And by late 1939 the Admiralty had concluded that a new direction had to be found for its fighters. Hence all the confusion with industry as to what was actually being sought to fulfill N.8/39 and N.9/39.
There is an saying "act in haste, repent at leisure". And yes there is a balance to be struck and it would have been nice to have had things go faster. But everyone was working to a schedule that didn't foresee a war in Europe until about 1944. That included Hitler. The way things snowballed from Autumn of 1938 was just not in anyone's plans.
Well the truth is that for the USN, IJN and the RN the battleship was king throughout the inter-war period and everyone was focussed on how to destroy those of the enemy. The carrier was simply an enabler to allow that to happen. But the tactics used as a means of enabling were different because the circumstances faced by each navy were different and for the USN changed over time.
Between the wars the USN planning for a war against Japan was based around War Plan Orange which involved an advance across the Pacific to break the blockade of the Philippines. In the 1920s the carriers were closely linked to the battle fleet. By the 1930s, the carriers would operate individually and independently of the battle fleet, each with its own cruiser escorts, to firstly locate an enemy fleet and secondly to destroy his carriers to stop them from finding the US fleet. So firstly reconnaissance / scouting which while essential was difficult (Fleet Problem XI in 1930. 4 days of futile searching by both sides!). And the weapon to disable/destroy the enemy carriers grew to be the dive bomber (which itself grew out of hanging bombs on fighters). And fighters were to try to ensure that an enemy did not get the first hit in on its own vulnerable carrier i.e. attempting to control the airspace above their own ship within the limitations of the day. The spotting function was moved entirely to floatplanes on cruisers and battleships because the carriers were operating independently away from the battle fleet. As I noted the expectation for the USN was that its carriers would probably very quickly be disabled/destroyed. For a time in the early 1930s the USN virtually abandoned the torpedo bomber viewing it as ineffective.
War Plan Orange - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Using single carriers to attack places like Los Angeles and the Panama Canal, while spectacular, only served to demonstrate how vital it was to keep an enemy away from the vulnerable US coast. The real drive for USN carriers to attack land targets in the 1930s was to assist the Fleet in capturing enemy island outposts during a slow advance en route across the Pacific to relieve the Philippines and not "strategic" targets like the Panama Canal. And then the danger to them was the carrier strike aircraft being outranged by the land based variety or the same problem faced by the RN.
Inter war the RN expected to operate in much more confined waters under attack from land based bombers and outwith the range of the fighters of the day. And except against Japan wasn't going to encounter other carriers. So the role of the carrier could be much more focussed on attacking the enemy battle fleet. They weren't going to be supporting land campaigns or becoming involved in strategic bombing. Those were roles for the independent RAF, something not present in the USA. And the RN never lost faith in the torpedo, seeing it as the primary airborne weapon to at least slow down an enemy fleet. The purpose of the two seat fighters and later dive bombers was effectively flak suppression to allow the torpedo bombers to carry out that task.
Like the USN the RN did carry out annual exercises, usually with the Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets in combination. They just didn't give them grand names like "Fleet Problem". And in those exercises they did seek to develop carrier tactics far beyond that achieved in 1918.
Night flying from carrier decks became a regular feature of FAA operations from the mid-1920s and explains why the FAA could carry out night operations from the earliest days of WW2. That necessitated development of appropriate flight deck lighting etc. From as early as 1928 Britain had begun to experiment with multi carrier forces. That had to include flying off, forming up concentration of aircraft for attack and orderly and safe return to the right ship. And they sought to use those multi carrier groups to seek out the enemy, not at sea, but where he thought he was safe, in his own ports. In 1932 for example the air groups from Courageous & Glorious combined to attack the Med Fleet in a Greek harbour (shades of Furious at Tondern in 1918 but on a far greater scale and a precursor to Taranto in Nov 1940 and Pearl Harbor in 1941). The IJN began multi carrier operations with the formation of the Kido Butai in April 1941 and the USN not until 1942.
Ah I hear the cry! If only they had bigger carriers in the first place. But what is better? A single flight deck that the USN expected to lose almost immediately or multiple decks offering an increased chance of survivability if only by splitting the attention of the attacking force?
So again we come back to different navies facing different threats, or perceiving the same threat in a different way, and having to formulate solutions to meet them. And really until the mid-1930s all nations are experimenting and developing carriers, the best types of aircraft to operate from them and the best tactics to employ. Yes from being the world leader at the end of WW1 the RN fell behind in carrier operations. But of the Big 3 carrier nations in WW2, it was the only one not to have full control of its naval air service during the inter-war period.
The Royal Navy never took attack by aircraft seriously and convinced itself, in cahoots with the RAF- that attacking ships at sea was too difficult except with torpedoes and low angle gunnery defences were more than adequate. Some did not agree, but they were siren voices quickly told to shut up.
Rear-Admiral [Aircraft Carriers] Sir Reginald G.H. Henderson , 1932
These 'exercises' were laughable - highly choreographed, the 'air attack' would culminate with a Queen Bee drone to be launched off a cruiser to be duly despatched by the massed fires of the Fleet - or not as the case always was.
With the introduction of the new HACS anti aircraft gunnery directors in the 30's, (they were rubbish) the Home Fleet conducted an excise to validate the massively more lethal anti aircraft gunnery capability with the rapidly deteriorating situation in Europe.
For two and a half hours, the entire Home Fleet banged away at the circling Queen Bee with zero effect, eventually, fed up of all this, the Queen Bee lost its radio link and was last seen heading off to a quieter life over the horizon.
This exercise was declared a 'great success'.
