The long-standing controversy of sea power v. air power was settled once and for all by the Hood-Bismarck affair and by the battle for Crete. The answer was not that air power had proved indisputably superior to sea power. The answer was rather that the whole controversy was meaningless. Any sea power worthy of the name must work with air power; air power over the sea is in fact sea power. The lessons of the Hood-Bismarck chase and of Crete, therefore, were lessons in the balance of these two powers as they team up to fight an opposing balance of the two. Specific lessons:
> The first duties of air power used as a sea weapon are scouting, reconnaissance, keeping touch with the enemy. The Bismarck might never have been sunk had she not been stalked by U.S.-made Consolidated (PBY-5) Catalinas. These flying boats, which have a 104-ft. wing span and weigh 27,080 lb. but are called "sardine tins" by British pilots because of their compactness compared with the monstrous British-built Short Sunderlands, can cruise over 4,000 miles, and last week one of them set a British record by staying in the air for 24 hours.
> Planes need bases. The Catalinas could fly from the Bismarck to Gibraltar, to Iceland, to Britain, and under ideal weather conditions might be refueled at sea; but shorter-range aircraft over the open sea would be helpless but for aircraft carriers. Britain has eight carriers, Germany has perhaps two, Italy has none. However, airfields ashore are "fixed carriers," and they are better than mobile carriers because they are not bound by sea carriers' limitations, and on the continent of Europe the Axis controls most of the fixed carriers.
Therefore, as the Bismarck and Crete demonstrated, British sea-air power becomes progressively effective as it moves away from shore. Two aircraft carriers, the brand-new Victorious and the still unsunk Ark Royal, were able to cripple the most powerful battleship in the world just before it came within danger range of land air bases in France. Conversely, the British did not dare expose vulnerable aircraft carriers, which they call "floating blocks of flats," in the confined waters of the Aegean; and ships without planes consequently took an unmerciful beating.
> Torpedoes played a greater part than shellfire in crippling and sinking the Bismarck. At Taranto, at Matapan and in this conflict, the British have shown great skill in using the torpedo-carrying aircraft, which was invented by a U.S. naval officer in 1912, which has surprisingly not been adopted by the Germans in the Battle of the Atlantic.
To launch torpedoes the Fleet Air Arm used antique wire-stayed biplanes, which carrier pilots refer to as "string bags." These planes had to approach to within 500 yards of their targets at about 20 feet above the water. They were presumably covered by a plane-hung smoke screen.