The real weakness in this argument is then the timing and focus on mission. The RN-FAA hadn't yet experienced the inadaquacy of its aircraft or anticipated the need for an aircraft to establish air supremacy.
Prewar the FAA never thought that their carrier borne aircraft were going to attain "air superiority". The FAA did not establish itself as an independant air service until 1938, it was consequently dominated by RAF imports, and the RAF was dominated by ideas of the "bomber always gets through".
Norway had virtually no impact on FAA thinking, because the few LW attacks made on RN ships were thought to be handled reasonably well by AA, which was considered at that time to be the only effective defence against air attack. The fact that AA ships did not seem to be enough doesnt seem to have sunk in. Even as late as November 1940, standard operating procedure for the FAA if a carrier was attacked was to strike down all aircraft to the hangar, clear the fuel line and fill them with CO2. The AA support would close to within 700 yards (inside the safe TD of a cruiser or a carrier) of the carrier, and a maximum of firepower put over the carrier to protect it from air attack.
The person most responsible for the turn around in FAA atitudes was Cunningham. Eagles CAG was initially 3 Sea Gladiators, which were promptly shipped ashore to malta to become "Faith Hope Glory". I believe they were replaced by 6 ex RAF machines held in Storage at Alexandria. These machines had similar problems to the Buffalo, no multi role capability and no wing folding, but they could at least land on the carrier with a reasonable margin of safety. That was obviously considered more important than the obvious higher performance and firepower of the buffalo. The F2As that had been trialled on the Eagle somewhere about that time had been landed because of problems in their deck handling abilities, lack of wing folding and constant problems in the armament. (Ive also read from one source that they leaked fuel incessantly). As a result they were shipped off to Greece and Crete, where thankfully, and mercifully, they never returned. They were given a good review there, to be fair, but I believe that F2As spent most of the campaign there grounded and with jammed U/S armament.
The RN NEVER operated on the principal of attaining "air superiority", not even on a localised basis, until much later in the war, when the resources and the carrier deck space was there to make such a concept an attainable goal. Seaborne air superiority is a a uniquely American concept (not even the Japanese believed they could achieve and hold air superiority from seaborne platforms) . The RN operated on the principal of providing credible air defence, of which ship board fighters are a part (right from the beginning). The RN never envisaged its carriers having toi operate within range of land based single engined fighters, and even though there were exceptions during the first year of the war , this remained substantially true. Where those exceptions did arise, it was generally against either weak opposition, or in conjunction with a specific operation....get in get out, as fast as you can. The RN was very successful at that kind of mission for the first two years of the war, and its apparently under performing a/c more than adequate to meet the requirements of that doctrine. And the so-called "inferior" types (such as the Skua and the Fulmar) proved highly successful as elements of that doctrine (no British carrier ever succumbed to air attack) . After the war in the RAN we adopted exactly the same strateegy. In a different age, with thankfully nobody actually shooting at us, we were among the first to adapt the A4 (a bomber) to the air defence role, and in the mission profile that we had for our carrier found them to be very good in the role. We used the A4s during the very first Afghan war (1979-81), when over 30 Bears were deployed to Yemen to provide armed recon for the Red Navy over the Indian Ocean, to intercept and escort out of our no-fly zones every "strike" the Russians simulated against us. Why did we use A4s? Because they could do their primary mission (Air strike) very well, and could be adapted to undertake a secondary role (air defence) reasonably well and cheaply. The RN in 1940 had the same issue...a very limited number of seaborne slots, and a need to make aircraft to do more than one thing per airframe. They also had to be reliable, stable platforms with as much firepower as could be brought to bear. performance was very much a secondary consideration.
For large navies, like the USN, this is dinky and obsolete. For small navies it was, and still is, the way to go. F2As as a concept did not fit that philosophy, and they still wouldnt.
I believe that first became critically apparent during the Norway campaign. However it looks like the Sea Gladiator was incorporated into the FAA stable prior to September 1939 which suggests there was some institutional awareness of a deficiency in that area.
I can see the BPC, which I assume started its search for North American produced aircraft in late 39 - early 40, would have been seduced by the same prospect as the USN and at about the same time: the advent of the F2A-2 and wanted to get aboard that train too, not forseeing the end result once the aircraft was made acceptable for British service.
I would agree that some less well informed officers in the RN might be "seduced" by the concept of having a dedicated fleet defence fighter. In 1943 there was a detour via the Seafire in that very direction. However in 1940, the realities prevented any such strategy....limited numbers of pilots, no prospect of a rapid expansion and a limited number of at sea billets. It was rapidly deduced that the F2A was not really suited to RN fleet defence requirements because of its poor deck handling and lack of wing folding. Think about Cunninghams problem, and you will rapidly deduce that the decision to not ship the F2A was absolutely the right thing to do. He received no FAA pilots from June until November from memory. He had a single carrier with just 22 slots available. He managed to scrounge a few ex RAF aircraft and possible 3 or 4 pilots from the RAF to fly them who I assume were taught how to fly them on carriers at some point. He was outnumbered at sea, needed to primarily keep tabs on the RM, and undertake offensive strikes as well. With such limited resources, there was absolutley no place for an aircraft that could only do one mission, reduced the air capacity of the one carrier available even more (down to 16 a/c from memory if wing folding was not available) and which seemed to have had reliabilty and deck safety issues.
It strikes me that the real issue, that hindsight has obscurred, is that in mid to late 1939, when such a decision would have to have been made to faciliate introduction of the F2A-1 into the FAA in time to see action in early to mid 1940, no one really knew what the war would require of its aircraft.
Correct to a degree, but there were enough officers in the service who were aware of the need for ship borne air defence to make this statement untrue. What damns the concept of an F2A led air defence inititiaive are the charactisitics of the aircraft iteslf, coupled with the massively restricted resources available to the RN FAA at that time.