Having looked at the materials provided to me by Mariano including debrief reports of the pilots including sketches they penned, I think the myths of the 30th May can be finally laid to rest.
1. The Etendard pilots were Navy. One of the most important skills drilled into any officer is ship recognition and you are trained to a very high standard. This is especially so for a Naval attack pilot.
2. The A4 pilots were Air Force. Used to flying over land which is what they were trained to do and I'm sure did it well. Ship recognition skills are not a priority in this case and I suspect they had little if any training in this regard.
3. Bearing in mind the last point. As we have seen from the footage of the time, the crew rooms were festooned with pictures of ships. Hermes and Invincible doubtless prominent amongst them. The tasking would doubtless have been along the lines of "Follow that missile, and sink one of them!" They would have no doubt studied the pictures carefully and went about their mission. The surviving pair came across Avenger shrouded in smoke from her gun and chaff rockets, attacked and departed.
4. At the wash-up, they drew what they genuinely thought they had seen and which is what they were tasked with which was Invincible in this case. In my opinion it was a genuine case of mistaken identity, nothing more, nothing less. I agree with Mariano, they were not lying.
That is all.