And back to the state of the FAA in 1939. It was inexcusable.
We had a ringside seat to the arrival of the carrier as a strategic weapon of war on Jan 28 1932 over Shanghai
The Japanese carriers Kaga, 24 fighters, 36 bombers, and Hosho, 10 fighters, 9 bombers, 3 reconnaissance planes, provided the air power for the Japanese attack on Shanghai, dominating the skies over it and attacking the enemies air forces on the ground.
This utterly disproved the British notion carriers could not operate within reach of land airpower, a wrong headed notion that fatally stalled carrier design for a generation with the focus on the heavily armoured Illustrious class and no thought to developing a high performance naval monoplane fighter to shoot down any would be attackers.
The Fleet Air Arm entered WWII with no credible British aircraft designs in service, it finished WWII in the same position. That the best idea industry could come up with in 1939 to replace the already laughably outdated when it entered service in 1936 Swordfish was another biplane says a lot.