Double Zero,
Quite so. The US Navy understand that the purpose of a CV is to project air power, and therefore the skipper must have a fundemental understanding of its employment in the exactly the same way an RAF Station Commander is supposed to. Hence both the skipper and CAG are aviators. I believe that the XO is normally a boat-driver who can deal with the "wet" issues on the skippers behalf.
The ability for a skipper to be able to land aboard his own boat is a simple form of leadership and engenders respect from the nugget to the CAG.
It also enables aviators to have proper careers, helping to retain the brightest and the best, rather than encouraging them to "jump ship" to the RAF / airlines to carry on flying.
It will be interesting to see how the RN play this, as really the CVS' have always seem to have been seen as large ASW destroyers by the RN, and skippered accordingly.
My concern is whether the RN can retain enough pilots of sufficient quality to produce CV skippers; perhaps in this era of "jointness" the skipper should be an RAF Group Captain?!!
