1 THE ORIGINS OF THE CARRIER
y 1918 the Royal Navy was so far ahead of other navies in developing methods of operating aircraft from ships that an American liaison officer sent to study its methods, Captain G.W. Steele USN, reported that so many ideas had been learned from the British that any discussion of the subject must use them as a starting point. Only a decade earlier, the first aircraft had been flimsy machines with their times of flight measured in
