The Canadian experience is widely misunderstood. It's interesting, not from the point of view of why it didn't work at first, but what they went back to.
For a start, they are still called the Canadian Armed Forces and have a single HQ - there aren't separate navy, army and air force HQs. However, they are orgainised along environmental lines and - get this - the air force flies all the aircraft, the navy sails all the ships and the army drives all the tanks.
Thus you have Canadian frigates, crewed by navy crews, with an army boarding party and a helicopter flown and maintained by their air force. they say it works for them......