In late 2006, Andrew Marshall, the Director of the Office of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, asked us to answer several questions: Why had the Royal Navy (RN) developed the angled flight deck, steam catapult, and optical landing aid before the U.S. Navy (USN) did? Why had the USN not developed these innovations, which "transformed carrier design and made practical the wholesale use of high-performance jet aircraft," in parallel with the RN? (1) Once developed by the RN, how had these three innovations "jumped the gap" to the USN?

The detailed answers to these questions are in a study (Innovation in Carrier Aviation) that we submitted to Mr. Marshall. (2) In the present article we summarize the relevant, complex history contained in that study and draw some inferences about innovation from our findings.

THE PROBLEM

In the winter of 1944-45, a committee of senior officers of the Royal Navy decided that in the future most carrier aircraft would be jets and that the design of carriers would have to be modified to "fit" the following characteristics of early jet aircraft:

* Jets landed at higher speeds than piston-engine aircraft. In fact, to have optimal control, the pilot

would have to land with "power on" instead of killing his engine when the landing signal officer gave the "cut."

* Jets accelerated slower than piston-engine planes on takeoff. They would need to be catapulted off the carrier's deck.

* Early jet turbine engines consumed more fuel than piston engines, which meant that it was important to find ways to keep the jets in the air as long as possible, especially if jet fighters were to serve as the force's combat air patrol. (3)

The committee that had defined the problems of operating jet aircraft from carriers turned to the Royal Navy's technical experts at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough, England, for detailed methods of solving those problems.

In 1938, the RAE had created its Catapult Section, a branch of its larger Main Drawing Office. The Catapult Section was composed of skilled engineers, technicians, and "draughtsmen" who specialized in designing and testing catapults and arresting gear for Royal Navy carriers. This "ground crew" was assisted by experienced test pilots. In April 1945, the Catapult Section was renamed the Naval Aircraft Department. Its head was a civilian engineer named Lewis Boddington. He was already deeply involved in the task of finding a way to create a new kind of carrier for jet aircraft. (4)

On 7 June 1945, the Naval Aircraft Department submitted a "Proposed Programme of Experimental Work" to the head of the RAE. The goal of this effort was to test the feasibility of using jets without undercarriages on aircraft carriers. There were four stages to the department's plan. Stage 1 was a detailed program of experiments with models. During stage 1, a special concrete pit, two hundred feet by seventy feet, would be built at Farnborough in order to test a pneumatic deck. In stage 2, dummy...