Washington Naval Treaty ban on submarines?
- Thread starter Uruk
- Start date
IMHO not much. The treaty ended in 1936 when Japan left it. Countries who had not been cheating would start building them again. Even if technology was a little behind OTL, it would probably catch up during WWII. They were just too useful to give up on.
It could have seriously hurt the US Navy's development of boats like the Gato-class. The Gato's and their successors the Balao's and Tench's were the most effective submarines in World War II, and they, especially the Gato-class depended on lessons learned from earlier classes like the S-boats and the Tambor-class. The Gato-class stemmed from Navy requirements for a "Fleet boat" that could keep up with the Battle Fleet and perform reconnaissance and attrition missions on an opposing fleet. That's part of why it was such a successful design, they were built so big they had a huge range and endurance capacity, not to mention being significantly more comfortable submarines than German, British, or Japanese designs. And make no mistake, crew comfort is a huge part of mission, and the US Navy Submarine Force's creature comforts were a huge reason the Gato's could perform the long range, 75-day patrols that were required of them.
I think your underestimating the damage it would do to construction programs and core knowledge about Subs, if nobody built any from 1922-37 (and scraped the existing ones) building up forces would be far harder than even the KM OTL build up that benefited from external trials (NV Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw) of ships prior to the AGNT in 35 and was still building come 39.
Starting from paper in 37 without anything since 1919-22 would be far harder and nothing truly none experimental would be built until 39-41.
I would add that even with WNT stopping in 37 there would be strong pressure to carrry on the no sub provision in any ITTL 2LNT and AGNT this means that many of the nations might well be banned from building subs till very close to war...?
It might also hurt ASW development but most of that wasn't very well funded inter-war anyway?
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It could also have detrimental effects on US planning for unrestricted submarine warfare. Despite the fact that the US entered WWI because of German unrestricted submarine warfare, the Navy did extensive planning on a doctrine of unrestricted submarine warfare. Without submarines, that development would be stillborn, with potentially fatal consequences for the Navy's submarine warfare efforts. The unrestricted warfare campaign strangled the Japanese war economy. No matter what tactics the IJN implemented, they still couldn't have made a decisive impact on the war because Japan was receiving virtually no strategic resources for its industry.