No Naval Treaties 1922/30/36? Consequences & build your own navy fleet.
- Thread starter Giant Man Eating Rabbits
- Start date
They had been hard run, their machinery is direct drive and coal fired, not bulged and smaller guns than their peers. An attempt to sell Princess Royal was made in 1920 and Lion went into reserve. The cost of refit would be exorbitant. While farming them off to Dominion navies is popular, honestly the Glorious and Courageous would be better station flagships and gunnery training than Lions would. The 2 Lions may linger in reserve but the Admiralty would be better off making the case for their replacement with modern ships, better armoured, better gunned, benefiting from war experience where one of the class exploded with the loss of nearly all the crew. They were designed to fight BC with 11" guns in the North Sea and none of these opponent exist now.
Awesome, thank you. Have to dive into that rabbit hole sometime in the future.
Every part of that applies to Tiger as well, yet you listed it as a keeper.
Tiger was regarded as in reasonable condition even in 1930. She is a peer of the Iron Dukes and would probably only last as long as they do. Tiger also carried the heavier 1400lb shell vs the 1250lb shell in Lion and Princess Royal.
It is surprising the number of WWI battleships that hung around to WWII in reserve roles. It is also surprising for people who see things through the 1939 lenses that the RN didn't immediately drop down to 15 capital ships in 1922. Ships like tiger were gradually removed from service as part of the WT. The problem with battle cruisers is they are all about engines and engines are one of the most expensive things to run. A battleship can plod around as a depot or training ship far more cheaply than a battle cruiser. You could argue a role of old battle cruisers as cruiser killers if the super cruisers became a thing. But the Cats are stuck right in the middle of being oversized for hunting cruisers and perfect G3 bait.
Tiger hung around because she was there. But she was always going to be decommissioned as the allowable number of ships shrunk. Then she is competing with the Iron Dukes for the role of slightly mobile storage facility. There is no reason to spend money on her. In this timeline you keep her until you have something better. That is dependent upon how many battle cruisers you want to run. Even then she is a death trap*.
*against the Japanese . She might be able to take on a Lexington, which speaks volumes about the Lexington.
Wolf1965
Donor
Depending on how or why the Treaty fails, or the process is never started, it might influence the Japanese attitude towards "the west" as they were extremely miffed at being relegated to the second rank powers. Whether they have the finds to finish the 8/8 program is a very different issue.
It might also lead to a larger battleship program, which probably would lead to less and less capable carriers. It was the conversion of Lexington and Saratoga which gave the US the basis to formulate their fast carrier group doctrine.
Which, in turn, might leave the expensive battleships rather vulnerable to land-based bombers when the crunch comes.
It might also lead to a larger battleship program, which probably would lead to less and less capable carriers. It was the conversion of Lexington and Saratoga which gave the US the basis to formulate their fast carrier group doctrine.
Which, in turn, might leave the expensive battleships rather vulnerable to land-based bombers when the crunch comes.
Would Tiger not easily fight a Kongo as equals as they are semi sisters and without WNT IJN would not have the money to modernize them as they would spend it on new ships? And that ignoring thats she would also work for staying in Europe to hold the fort against 12"/305mm BBs of Italy & France.
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I know this seems like the answer to everything, but why fight a Kongo as an equal when you can drop a G3 on them? That is the equation we are looking at. A Kongo is a capital threat, you need a capital response, and there is no kill like overkill. Of course the Japanese have their new generation of fast battleships/cruisers. The numbers get fuzzy, but the RN should still have numbers and you drag Hood and R&R into the equation.
It is like the 12" Italian and French BBs. All those QEs and Rs are overmatch. They don't really have a fast capital ship, but if they did there are still the 15" battle cruisers.
I guess it comes down to how many opponents do you want the RN to be capable of matching at once. We have a snapshot of what the late 20s would probably look like. We don't know what would happen if say the Italians started building a fast battleship in 1925, but it is basically a signal to treasury to build more ships. We do know what everyone wanted to build in the early 20s and we can speculate what will survive the financial crunch at the end of the decade. But in the threat environment the 10BBs and 7 BCs allow the RN to hold the Med, and project force to SEA... Well technically no, because they need the oil storage to be built at Singapore. The RN can take a breath in the back half of the 20s and decide what they want to do with the N3s.
It is like the 12" Italian and French BBs. All those QEs and Rs are overmatch. They don't really have a fast capital ship, but if they did there are still the 15" battle cruisers.
I guess it comes down to how many opponents do you want the RN to be capable of matching at once. We have a snapshot of what the late 20s would probably look like. We don't know what would happen if say the Italians started building a fast battleship in 1925, but it is basically a signal to treasury to build more ships. We do know what everyone wanted to build in the early 20s and we can speculate what will survive the financial crunch at the end of the decade. But in the threat environment the 10BBs and 7 BCs allow the RN to hold the Med, and project force to SEA... Well technically no, because they need the oil storage to be built at Singapore. The RN can take a breath in the back half of the 20s and decide what they want to do with the N3s.
Late to the party but I think we’ve missed a key factor in the WNT - US congress’s traditional reticence towards the USN; after all it didn’t want Wilson’s fleet, it didn’t want a naval arms race & it didn’t want the US being an interventionalist power. As a result I suspect without a treaty compelling to build upto limit & outside of completing the Lexingtons as CBs & laying down a pair of incrementally improved standards every year to keep numerical parity with the IJN in the Pacific the USN is left to whither.
GB had already accepted war with the US was impossible; the acceptance of parity at the WNC & non renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in favour of the WNT is tantamount to where she saw her rivals to be. So outside of the 8 ships laid down as per the 1921 estimates, the RN will have to make do with the 4 capital ships a year that had been the norm since the 1890’s. Both to replace the obsolescent coal fired ships and to keep regional parity with the US in the Atlantic & Japan in the far east. I could also see a scenario in which Australia & Canada build a CB squadron each for anti IJN purposes which the WNT forbade
Japanese financial realities & lack of WNT snub could likely result in no further building after the 8:8 fleet. The RM gets the Francesco Caracciolo’s & France builds an up gunned class of Lyons in retaliation but both take most of the decade due to budgetary concerns.
I actually see the Great Depression to produce an unofficial battleship holiday without the WNT.
Finally; something that is almost never considered in a non treaty 1920’s is the sale of capital ships to non treaty members - either that being lesser powers buying unwanted (and obsolescent) RN ships that were scrapped in OTL or the building of new ships in an extended South American naval arms race. Could we see a mini arms race between the Netherlands (who desperately wanted CB’s) & Thailand?
GB had already accepted war with the US was impossible; the acceptance of parity at the WNC & non renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in favour of the WNT is tantamount to where she saw her rivals to be. So outside of the 8 ships laid down as per the 1921 estimates, the RN will have to make do with the 4 capital ships a year that had been the norm since the 1890’s. Both to replace the obsolescent coal fired ships and to keep regional parity with the US in the Atlantic & Japan in the far east. I could also see a scenario in which Australia & Canada build a CB squadron each for anti IJN purposes which the WNT forbade
Japanese financial realities & lack of WNT snub could likely result in no further building after the 8:8 fleet. The RM gets the Francesco Caracciolo’s & France builds an up gunned class of Lyons in retaliation but both take most of the decade due to budgetary concerns.
I actually see the Great Depression to produce an unofficial battleship holiday without the WNT.
Finally; something that is almost never considered in a non treaty 1920’s is the sale of capital ships to non treaty members - either that being lesser powers buying unwanted (and obsolescent) RN ships that were scrapped in OTL or the building of new ships in an extended South American naval arms race. Could we see a mini arms race between the Netherlands (who desperately wanted CB’s) & Thailand?
It shifted to heavy cruisers and carriers. The RN plan was replacing old ships 2:1 so the 4 G3 we’re replacing 8 or so 12” armed Dreadnoughts and 4 N3 would replace 8 13.5” Super Dreadnoughts.
How much of the shift to heavy cruisers was treaty led though? Not to mention how carriers weren’t considered by the RN as consistent battleship killers well into the Cold War with the introduction of the Buccaneer.
Even so, there’s not a world where the RN doesn’t maintain some form of regional parity with any likely competitors. If the IJN could reasonably expected to sail out with ~11 capital ships the Eastern fleet would be expected to match that during peacetime (with reinforcements from the Mediterranean fleet to create numerical superiority as & when conflict occurred). Mind you without the treaties, the RAN &/or RCN could operate capital ships which de-facto end up being back door RN vessels
The RN needs some big hulled cruisers for patrol work. They abandoned the type in the leadup to WWI to concentrate on the North Sea so they have an obsolescence problem. By the time they sort that out off the light, fleet cruisers are getting old.
The problem with the big cruisers is they need a big gun. Big shells mean more accuracy at longer ranges. They aren't doing much knife fighting. There is a brief window in the 30s where the rate of fire of the 6" is increased allowing 12 and 15 gun ships to compete, but that is closing in the early 40s. So while hindsight makes a 6" cruiser fleet attractive, really they are going to want something around 8". At the same time the Counties were expensive to run, so there will be pressures from both directions. Yorks are not impossible here.
The whole point of the naval treaties was to avoid extremely expensive arms races. What if this was taken to its logical conclusion and the signatory nations agreed on a maximum percentage of GDP or some other metric that was allowed to be spent yearly on things military, along with some rough economic monitoring? Perhaps also a cap on overall governmental spending as well as a percentage, since 'military spending' can be a bit fuzzy.
If Japan gets stuck in a naval arms race, that's going to be a whole lot less resources and clout for the Japanese army.
Without that clout, would we a war break out in China in 1937, especially if the army is a lot weaker?
Without that clout, would we a war break out in China in 1937, especially if the army is a lot weaker?
The US doesn't need a navy, the UK has an overseas empire, and the Japanese have known the US is gunning for them ever since Roosevelt got his Peace Prize. All have very different requirements as to what to spend on their navies. At least fixed tonnages and ratios make for a clear balance of power.
Would be even harder to monitor than tonnage & would just result in people lying about how much GDP they’re actually spending. Sort of like the PRC is alleged to be doing today