In 1911, the Royal Navy watched on with curiosity as they saw Eugene Ely fly from the deck of an American cruiser, but it was the outbreak of the First World War that truly gave the British the impetus to develop a true integration between ships and aviation. At first this integration was awkward, cumbersome, and deadly with many incidents and accidents claiming several lives. Trial and error led in turn to the development of the world’s first true aircraft carrier, HMS Argus, equipped with a full- length flight deck. Alongside this ship the three converted battlecruisers HMS’s Furious, Courageous and Glorious provided the Royal Navy with valuable experience of operating early aircraft types at sea. The ex-Chilean battleship Almirante Cochrane was similarly converted to become HMS Eagle, but in 1918, the Admiralty ordered the construction of the first keel up aircraft carrier HMS Hermes. Small in comparison to the other ships, she nevertheless was a valuable addition to the fleet.
The expansion of the aircraft carrier fleet in the 1920s and 1930s was exciting, however, less development was focused on the aircraft that could be used from these flight decks with the newly formed Royal Air Force, who controlled all aircraft development in the interwar years,
