Introduction: Crisis

InSeptember 1941, the Chief of Naval Air Services (CNAS), Admiral Lumley Lyster,wrote amemorandum outlining the importance ofsingle-seat fighters to the Royal Navy.

The situation was dire. Lyster declared that four of the RN’slarge fleet aircraft carriers had been “ENTIRELYDEPRIVED OF FIGHTER PROTECTION.” The Fleet Air Arm was running out of fighters. The few it did have were inadequate. The service was fighting in the Atlantic, the North Sea and the Mediterranean. It would soon face Japan, as well as Germany and Italy,with its armoury half-empty.

The situation had not arisen suddenly.Prewar misconceptions, supplies from the US slowing to atrickle, the priorities of the Air Ministry,politics, and delays to new British designs created a‘perfect storm’ in thesupply of equipment. By late 1941, the Fleet Air Arm was reliant on afew hundred obsolescent Sea Hurricanes, and the Grumman Martlet which was more suitable but was increasingly prioritised for the US Navy.New British designs would not be availableuntil at least 1943.

Furthermore, operations in Norway and the Mediterranean had showed that pre-war assumptions on which the service had been equipped were utterly false. In 1940 and 1941 the small number of low-performance two-seat fighters available were completely insufficient to protect the fleet from air attack.

Soon after Lyster issued his plea, the Prime Minister,Winston Churchill, visited the new armoured carrier HMS Indomitable.Hewas dismayed to see that only a few Sea Hurricane Is would be its fighter strength and demanded that henceforth, “Only the finest aeroplanes that can do the work go into all aircraft-carriers,” especially “the highest class fighters.”

But the following month, the US Navy refused any more Martlets for the RN after existing orders were fulfilled. The Fleet Air Arm’s fighter position was now critical. With further urging from Churchill, the RAF grudgingly transferred 200 more fighters. These would not be more Hurricanes: the pride of Fighter Command, the Supermarine Spitfire, was finally going to sea.