ABSTRACT
American carrier warfare was a disruptive innovation in which naval aviation’s product champions successfully transitioned the Navy from the dreadnought, which bristled with giant guns that could shoot shells 20-plus miles, to the large flush-deck carrier, which could launch air strikes from ten times that distance. This shift, Steve Rosen argues, emerged from World War I with the Navy’s extensive experiences in sea-based aviation. He notes, ‘One might assume that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor forced the United States Navy to use carriers by destroying the battleship alternative, but this begs the question of how the carriers, along with a doctrine for their use, came into the fleet before Pearl Harbor.’1
