在所有庆祝英国皇家空军百周年的活动中，人们基本上忘记了建立独立的空军是要付出代价的——而付出代价的是皇家海军。1918年，它在海上使用飞机的技术和战术上表现突出，但一旦失去了对自身空中力量的控制，它就难以让英国皇家空军优先考虑海军利益，在这个过程中，它输给了竞争对手日本和美国的海军空军。这本书记录了20世纪20年代和30年代的艰难经历，最终在1937年海军重新控制其航空，但为时已晚，无法为即将到来的战争做好充分准备。然而，尽管缺乏资源，英国海军飞行取得了进展，尤其是在推进航母打击理论方面。威廉·露西中尉的经历清楚地说明了这些发展，他将成为英国在战争中第一位获得认可的空军“王牌”，并领导世界上第一次成功地对一艘大型军舰进行俯冲轰炸。这本书还广泛利用了家庭档案，从露西的相册中复制了许多以前看不见的照片，展示了直到挪威战役结束前舰队航空兵生活的许多方面。虽然这超出了本书的范围，但1940年11月，意大利舰队在塔兰托遭到空袭，这一战争期间对航母打击的关注得到了惊人的证明——第二年，这激发了日本人在珍珠港进行更大的努力，但皇家海军已经证明了这一点。
Dawn of Carrier Strike
Among all the celebrations of the RAF’s centenary, it was largely forgotten that the establishment of an independent air force came at a cost – and it was the Royal Navy that paid the price. In 1918 it had been pre-eminent in the technology and tactics of employing aircraft at sea, but once it lost control of its own air power, it struggled to make the RAF prioritise naval interests, in the process losing ground to the rival naval air forces of Japan and the United States. This book documents that struggle through the cash-strapped 1920s and ’30s, culminating in the Navy regaining control of its aviation in 1937, but too late to properly prepare for the impending war. However, despite the lack of resources, British naval flying had made progress, especially in the advancement of carrier strike doctrine. These developments are neatly illustrated by the experiences of Lieutenant William Lucy, who was to become Britain’s first accredited air ‘ace’ of the war and to lead the world’s first successful dive-bombing of a major warship. Making extensive use of the family archive, this book also reproduces many previously unseen photographs from Lucy’s album, showing many aspects of life in the Fleet Air Arm up to the end of the Norway campaign. Although it is beyond the scope of this book, in November 1940 the inter-war concentration on carrier strike was to be spectacularly vindicated by the air attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto – it inspired the Japanese to a far larger effort at Pearl Harbor the following year, but the Royal Navy had shown the way.
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