Danny, Sir! ... might I beg a great indulgence, and revert, just briefly, to the Vengeance days?
Following your description of the Vengeance's vital and mighty dive brakes, I was much engaged by your indication that these were sufficiently delicate in their operation to be put to another good - but unintended - use, when wishing to slip in swiftly on rejoining a formation.
Now, having a little in common with Smudge, I am familiar with the use of airbrakes to achieve a very precise (and highly satisfying) landing when no Motive Power is available ... if only you can see where you are going!
I was therefore tantalised for some time by 'what-if?' thoughts following your account of that unhappy day when, heading for home with zero oil pressure, you rejected a straight-in approach in favour of the customary circuit. (I recall that at one base obstructions on approach, in the form of ships in harbour, could be vexing ... brakes ever so handy in that situation? ... but I think you were perhaps not there at that point).
Eventually I convinced myself that, given the limited forward vision in the Vengeance, use of the brakes to assist with the arrival could not really have been an option, and that I was being somewhat stupid in even thinking of it.
Since then, Smudge has awakened my memory and given me a lightbulb moment - glider pilots are now, de rigeur, equipped with an expensive direct-vision panel (about 10 or 11 o'clock low) just in case they might lose canopy transparency (frosting!) when needing to land. (I never - thank goodness! - suffered the pain of needing to open that DV panel for its true purpose - did you, Smudge?). I therefore surmise that, just possibly, the dive brakes on aircraft like the Vengeance might still have saved those condemned to unplanned arrivals some measure of grief, if only people could have practised such use beforehand.
I suspect that the possibility of using brakes to assist with control of the approach never even entered the heads of Their Airships of that time, and only when chaps became faced with the intriguing problem of landing one of those new-fangled (but slowly-spooling) jets on the flat roof of a big grey floating thing (with the hope of using the aircraft again) did the penny really drop. That said, I shall be delighted if anyone can correct me .... ?