Is there any way that the RN could have acquired a high performance fighter in the 1930’s?
Good question - the first step would have been to dump the doctrine, but that would have also required bringing the Dowding system to sea...and that was what I was driving at. By the time this was on the cards, the armoured carriers were well in build (Illustrious was ordered April '37, laid down within the month!)
Thinking about the aircraft, the simple option - joining in on the procurement that led to the interceptor programme - wouldn't have been that simple (were there even joint service procurements?) as it would have meant either changing the Hurricane or Spitfire design quite a bit (let's not even go there) or adding another type, in which case that would be just another development.
There were a few fighter projects that didn't go anywhere (check this out:
Miles M.20 or this:
Martin-Baker MB 2) so the industry could probably have done it. Although, the simplest option might have been to go with what Boulton Paul proposed - a navalised Defiant with a Bristol Hercules radial - but delete the turret and add forward firing guns...but this is what Blackburn came up with:
en.wikipedia.org
and the FAA chose it even though it was 85mph off the pace. scenes!
As for the ships, although it was too late to go back to a Glory Ark style design you can overstate how much the armoured carriers gave up in terms of aircraft numbers. The rated capacity of 36 was....not taken seriously in wartime and they operated as many as 60, with the Implacables going up to 80. (IIRC reading somewhere that although Implacable and sisters had an extra hangar deck they used part of it for extra messes because you ran out of room for crew before you couldn't physically load more planes.)