The Washington Naval Treaty - The parties, the motives, the negotiations, the loophole abuse...

The early 1920s seemed to be a very unstable time, a decade earlier the most powerful navies in the world had been the Royal Navy first, at a fairly long distance, followed by the Kaizelika Navy, sometimes known as the Fleet. high seas, then the united states navy and then france. Russia and Japan were roughly on the same level, depending on what you rated as more or less important, and everyone else was considerably further behind now that the

naval

order had been turned almost completely upside down. Germany no longer had a navy to compete with, even in the 19th century. third level russia was in the middle of a revolution that had sidelined its navy for the most part and left it to rot or occasionally catch fire at random france was completely broke and scrapping ships as fast as possible the us navy and the japanese navy had It took advantage of the opportunity offered by minimal

naval

involvement in the war to produce new and powerful ships, and the Royal Navy, with a general but not complete pause in the construction of capital ships during the First World War, rapidly divested itself of large number of now obsolete ships, including many that had not even spent two decades of service, this left a dangerous balance: the United States had decided in the mid-1910s that it wanted to be the leading naval power and its ability to build ships modern capitals during that period had allowed it to roughly catch up with the royal navy in terms of modern battleships, a position the royal navy had not been a part of for over a century, Japan also wanted to assert itself and was quite concerned that its main competitor was suddenly so eager to go on a building spree, the royal navy. because his boat sought to retain its own dominant position, but it was part of a nation that had spent virtually all of its money on the recent global war and its main competitor was now the nation it actually paid most of that money to as result.

A rather large naval arms race was brewing. The United States was building 16 new capital ships, all armed with 16-inch guns. The Japanese were building six after having completed two and had ordered four more. The British had just finished building one. they canceled another three they had just ordered four more and were about to order another four, on top of that everyone was frantically working on what the next generation design was going to be so they could order it in 1922 or 1923 and that's just capital ships, It doesn't matter. cruisers, destroyers and some pretty strange submarines were under construction, but each of these three navies were facing some pretty major problems at home.

Japan, for example, wanted to play at the highest level, but its economy simply could not support these long-term efforts. In this context, the highest level of spending on the Royal Navy during the First World War had been approximately 11 per cent of the general pre-war government budget, with slightly less emphasis on the army and, of course, the air force that did not actually exist; it had been around 13th of the national budget. Budget Spending Japan now spent 32 percent of its budget on the navy, the United States now spent about 11 percent of its budget on the navy and in 1920-21 the United Kingdom spent about eight percent of its budget clearly Japanese spending.

It was unsustainable but they were not the only ones in trouble: the US Congress had been complaining very loudly before the war about authorizing naval budgets less than a fifth of what the US Navy was now asking for. and, once the war was over, many congressmen were shouting that the United States had also gone through an election in which the outward-looking Woodrow Wilson had been replaced by a new administration that was decidedly more isolationist and didn't quite have the same. In the UK the biggest problem was the colossal war debt and the UK was in a surprising and exceptionally rare display of long-term political thinking, paying off the debt with remarkable speed.

Later accusations that the United Kingdom was completely and utterly bankrupt could not afford to build its capital ships are in fact completely spurious the total amount estimated to fund the establishment of four capital ships per year, which would mean 12 capital ships sustained in any stage of construction or equipment in any given year would amount to less than a third of the amount the UK was reducing its debt per year, not counting interest payments and other debt-related payments etc., and the budget existing naval; However, the government would prefer to pay off the debt rather quickly and so was looking to reduce naval estimates, as a result there was also a rather large elephant in the room;

Many people looked at the last great naval arms race and considered it a major contributor to the outbreak of what at the time was called the Great War, it didn't take a genius to realize that two powers apparently fighting for naval supremacy in a construction race would come to blows within the space of a decade or else give up later. the line with huge amounts of money spent and a huge maintenance and upkeep bill was the only thing they had left to show all the effort put in at the end of 1921, in part to try to fix things in a way that would not lead to another massive and destructive war and partly because there were some indications that Britain, in light of part of Admiral Jelico's report, was planning its own conference, the United States proposed a conference on global disarmament to be held in Washington DC, which it would actually result in a series of treaties. is being signed, but the only one we are concerned about right now is the Five Power Naval Treaty, also known as the Washington Naval Treaty.

Each of the powers had very different objectives; America was driven primarily by the desire to be able to return. to the more isolationist outlook it now faced, courtesy of the change in leadership after the last set of elections we mentioned above, and they would also like to break up the Anglo-Japanese alliance that prevented the United States from exerting more overt influence over the Japanese in the Pacific and offered Britain overall wartime superiority, even if the US Navy could match or slightly surpass the Royal Navy's own strength because it would bring its ally in the Japanese wanted to try to leverage their way into the great power club. . and sit at the top table the british wanted to preserve their first place without having to pay for another costly arms race the other two participants were france and italy the french wanted to be able to renew their navy at some point but not at the right time now, as they were not as sure of a few francs as they were of actually digging up and down the back of the couch in search of some remaining sand equipment, France was completely broke, a

treaty

that stopped everything at least for a while would give them time to gather their forces. breathe and rebalance their budget as the Italians looked for a chance to catch up with the French, there was an opportunity for other naval powers to make their own cases, but most others were unwilling or unable to attend when they came to nations like Russia either had navies too small to bother agreeing to limit much of anything, as any limit that could be agreed upon would be much higher than they could afford, anyway there were a couple of exceptions to these general navies, such as the forces Australians and Canadians who under the letter of the terms of the conference could have been represented individually by themselves but instead chose to have the UK represent their interests collectively, this was partially pragmatism at this point neither country was fully independent and it was likely that any separate Royal Canadian or Royal Australian Navy would be seen by the US as effectively part of the Royal Navy and would then be used to try to argue that the size of the Royal Navy is inferior to that of the US Navy, so any obvious royal navy and royal australian navy alliance would not overwhelm the united states and was also partly a show of political unity and ultimately also partly because neither power particularly wanted a navy with entire battle squadrons at their beck and call at this point to the initial offer of the Americans.

He called for the cancellation of all capital ships currently under construction or planned with a 10-year moratorium on building new ones. Existing ships would be matched with capital ship ratios based on tonnage on a 553 1.75 1.75 basis, with the United States and the United Kingdom respectively having the same number. The size of the capital ship fleets of Japan, three-fifths of that and France in Italy, each point seven-five-fifths of that number, the cruiser and destroyer tonnage were also to be limited using the same proportions, which immediately caused Many argued that the Japanese had calculated that they needed 70 percent of the US Navy's fleet strength to defeat it in a defensive engagement, apart from anything else they expected to have to face against the US fleets. of the Pacific and the Atlantic separately, the proposal that the Americans had presented had given them a 60 which they saw was very little, the royal navy had plans to have three main fleets at home, in the Mediterranean and in the Far East, and the proposed limits would not allow any of them to remain a credible force despite their lack of money, the French I didn't like being pushed to the third tier and having to be equal to the Italians, since, after all, Everyone knows that cheese goes on top of pasta and cheese on top of pizza, and not the other way around.

The initial French counterproposal would have given them a fleet a little larger than Japan's, although without commenting on where they were going to get the money from. to pay for all that the only ones who were vaguely happy with the idea were obviously the Americans because they were the ones who proposed it and the Italians who mainly enjoyed the expression on the faces of the French delegation, since they had to consider the idea that the Italians were their equals at least at sea and that was before getting into the actual restrictions on tonnage and armament along with what this would mean. means that for the various navies, the Japanese and Americans had completed or almost completed 16-inch gunboats for the Japanese navy, the mutsu built by public subscription was of particular concern to the British, this meant that the American and Japanese navies could they would potentially have better armed and more modern capital ships, as they had no 16 inch arm chips close to being finished, the g3s had only just begun, while the Japanese would have a force made up entirely of 16 inch battleships, 14 inch battleships inches with 12 guns and 14 16-inch armed battlecruisers, while the US Navy would have 16-inch armed ships and most of the rest of the battle line would be armed with 12 14-inch guns each one and the remaining ships would also have 14-inch guns in addition to a handful of older ones. 12 inch arm chips, while the Royal Navy would have a decent 15 inch gun line of battle, a large portion would be older ships with 13 and a half inch guns, although on the other hand there was the hood of 42,000 tons there in excess. of any of the proposed limits on the displacement of individual capital ships, the initial proposal on cruise ship limitations setting tonnage based on the same proportions was almost immediately rejected by both the United Kingdom and France, both countries had large colonial empires for which they felt a large number Cruisers were needed well above the proposed proportion limitations, given their experiences with submarines, the British wanted submarines scrapped and banned entirely, but precisely because of the effectiveness of the submarines, everyone else did not agree and so began several months of

negotiations

with arguments.

Negotiations and counterproposals with the Americans doing their best to spy on the communications of everyone else back home to give them some leverage and advantage at the table, enjoying particular success in keeping an eye on the communications of the Japanese delegations. By early 1922, many of the original proposals had been scrapped or radically rewritten, but the

treaty

was finally signed in February 1922 and then had to spend about a year and a half ofratification to explain more fully what the result was, how it got there, and who cheated on which clauses. We will review the main sections of the treaty and look at each of them in turn.

Article 1 was basically that we all agree to this treaty, so articles two through six, however, covered battleships as follows, excuse the legal jargon, but that's the way it is. Article second written, the contracting powers may retain respectively the capital ships specified in chapter 2, part 1. upon the entry into force of the present treaty, but subject to the following provisions of this article, all other capital ships built or constructed in the U.S. The British Empire and Japan will be eliminated as prescribed in Chapter 2 Part 2. In addition to the capital ships specified in Chapter 2 Part 1, the United States may complete or retain two West Virginia-class ships currently under construction, that is what we would do consider being the colorado class upon completion of these two ships, north dakota and delaware will be removed as prescribed in chapter two part two the british empire may, in accordance with the replacement table in chapter two part 3, build 2 new capital ships not exceeding 35,000 tonnes or 35,560 metric tonnes standard displacement each upon completion of said two ships, Thunderer King George V Ajax and Centurion shall be disposed of as prescribed in chapter two, part two, article three , subject to the provisions of article two, the contracting powers. shall abandon their respective capital ship construction programs and neither Contracting Power shall construct or acquire any new capital ships, except such replacement tonnage as may be constructed or acquired as specified in Chapter 2, Part 3.

Ships that are replaced by in accordance with chapter 2, part 3 shall be disposed of as prescribed in the second part of said chapter article four the total tonnage of the replacement capital ship for each of the contracting powers shall not exceed in standard displacement for the united states 525,000 tons for the british empire 525,000 tons for france 175,000 tons for italy 175,000 tons and for japan 315,000 tons article five no capital ship exceeding thirty-five thousand non-standard displacement shall be acquired or constructed by for or within the jurisdiction of any of the contracting powers and article 6 no capital ship of any of the contracting powers will carry a gun with a caliber greater than 16 inches 406 millimeters the tables mentioned in chapter 2 gave the French and Italians early replacement options to In the late 1920s, to compensate for their inability to build new capital ships armed with 15- or 16-inch guns, the mutsu was retained and the Americans managed to keep Colorado and West Virginia, plus Maryland, which had almost been completed before. of the start of the war.

In the treaty

negotiations

, this proportion of 16-inch armed ships clearly reflected the treaty displacement proportions that the British had been able to get on the playing field with two of their own new 16-inch ships and these would become the reason Nelson's for two instead of three as the United States Navy was twice as large, the Colorados had just over 32,000 new tons, while the new British ships would be 35,000 tons and obviously with a slightly larger design. modern plus the tacit understanding not to require scrapping of the hilariously over-the-limit cowl that quietly remained Britain's third major capital ship, plus there was a clause allowing France and Italy to upgrade their existing ships to 16 inches if they could manage it, but this was never accepted, so it had been a relatively easy process to negotiate.

The Japanese were not happy with the ratio, but thanks to American intelligence efforts they knew that the Japanese government would accept it, since there was only one class of boats, as it affected the Nelsons, we have to look and see if there were any design peculiarities that could constitute a trap in this technically there were, although unlike others that we will see later, this was actually included in the rules . The new standard displacement was being used to measure the ship's compliance. Initially, this had been defined as the old one. full load, that is, loading the ship with everything it would have had for a possible combat, but the British with French support argued that this was a disadvantage for the imperial powers and an advantage for Italy, since the British and their friends would have would have to go further and would therefore typically carry more fuel and boiler feed water, leaving less displacement for weapons, armor and machinery compared to powers with relatively few colonial commitments, so the treaty definition of standard displacement was agreed as follows: standard displacement: the standard displacement of a ship is the displacement of the complete ship, fully manned, powered and equipped for sea, including all armament and ammunition, equipment, stores and fresh water for the crew, miscellaneous stores and implements of all kinds intended to be carried in war, but without reserve fuel or water supply on board the word ton in this treaty except in the expression metric tons shall be understood to mean one ton of 2240 pounds or 1016 kilos and the already completed ships will retain their current displacement tonnage classifications in accordance with their national measurement system, however a power that expresses displacement in metric tons will be considered for the application of this treaty since possessing only the displacement equivalent in tons of 2240 pounds a finished vessel will hereafter be classified in its displacement tonnage when in the standard condition defined here this also ends up favoring the The US Navy had to design its ships to sail across the Pacific , but with respect to the Nelsons, the Royal Navy set out to design them with the torpedo defense system that included substantial quantities of water as a liquid layer to improve the resilience which is normally considerable.

The weight of this would count towards the ship's total displacement, but by ensuring that the water was theoretically capable of being diverted for use in the boilers, it could be classed as reserve feedwater and could therefore be ignored entirely in Japan standard displacement calculations. They would later also cheat a bit by disarming one of the Congo class, but instead of disposing of the weapons as they were supposed to do in the various sections of chapter 2 referenced in various articles, as well as disposing of fire control systems, etc., they instead placed them in storage ready to be reinstalled at virtually any time, but that was it for the battleships.

Next were the aircraft carriers and boy, this one has been controversial. Article 7, the total tonnage of the aircraft carriers of each of the contracting powers shall not exceed in standard. displacement for the United States 135,000 tons for the British Empire 135,000 tons for France 60,000 tons Italy 60,000 tons and for Japan 81,000 tons article 8 the replacement of the aircraft carrier will be affected only as prescribed in chapter 2 part 3 always that, however, that any aircraft carrier of tonnage existing or built on November 12, 1921, shall be considered experimental and may be replaced within the limit of total tonnage prescribed in article 7, regardless of its age.

Article 9 No aircraft carrier exceeding 27,000 tons standard displacement shall be acquired by or built by for or within the jurisdiction of any of the contracting powers; However, any of the contracting powers may do so, provided that their total aircraft carrier tung limit is not there by overbuilding no more than two aircraft carriers, each of a tonnage not exceeding 33,000 tons standard displacement and, To improve the economy, any of the Contracting Powers may use for this purpose two of its ships, whether built or in the course of construction, which would otherwise be scrapped in accordance with the provisions of Article 2.

The armament of any aircraft. Transport vehicles exceeding 27,000 tons of standard displacement shall comply with the requirements of Article 10, except the total number of weapons to be transported if any of them are of a caliber greater than six inches, except weapons anti-aircraft weapons and weapons that do not exceed five. inches shall not exceed eight article 10 no aircraft carrier of any of the contracting powers may carry a gun of caliber greater than 8 inches without prejudice to the provisions of article 9 if the armament includes guns of caliber greater than 6 inches the total number of the guns carried except anti-aircraft and guns not exceeding five inches shall not exceed ten if, alternatively, the armament does not contain guns exceeding six inches in caliber the number of guns is in no case limited the number of guns Anti-aircraft and cannon fire not exceeding 5 inches is not limited, this was a big change from previous proposals.

The Royal Navy had come to the conference thinking they needed five aircraft carriers of around 25,000 tonnes each, so naturally they suggested the displacement be 125,000 tonnes. The US Navy, on the other hand, really only cared about converting Lexington and Saratoga, so they went with 80,000 tons as the upper limit in hopes of reaching 40,000 tons on aircraft carriers and also wanted the same ratio of tonnage division that for battleships, literally everyone present opposed this. The idea that individual 40,000-ton aircraft carriers were something of a mockery of the 35,000-ton limit for battleships. The Americans, of course, somewhat favored this region due to the battlecruiser conversions they were planning that lacked holes of that size.

The United Kingdom and France. they were pushing for 25,000 tons as a limit which, of course, would have made Lexington conversions completely impossible. Italy noted that with an upper limit of 80,000 tons for the United States and the United Kingdom, France and Italy would only have enough displacement for a single decent-sized aircraft carrier, although for operational reasons they wanted to have at least two, the British also noted. that if submarines were not banned, then a reduced number of aircraft carriers was a significantly bad idea, since aircraft aboard aircraft carriers would probably be needed to counter submarines, which turned out to be a relatively far-sighted comment.

Japan was fine with this particular idea, as their allocation would have left them with only one aircraft carrier and a bit left over for a ship so small that it wouldn't actually be an aircraft carrier. Under the proposed definition, which treated aircraft carriers as ships over 10,000 tons, they advocated a displacement allocation equivalent to three aircraft carriers of 27,000 tons each, a figure that was increasingly being discussed as the standard displacement offering. of the aircraft carriers to allow the United States and the United Kingdom up to their own limits according to this if they wanted a proportional division, the British saw that the numbers in the proposals more or less aligned with what they wanted them to support this and proposed a tonnage limit that using the carrier of 27,000 tons as a base reflected France and Italy having two aircraft carriers, the Japanese had three and the United States and the United Kingdom five A compromise of 60,000 tons was offered that allowed the two smaller navies choose between three slightly smaller aircraft carriers, around 20,000 tons, or two standard aircraft carriers with a little extra displacement.

This was agreed to with three major concessions, one of them presented by the British. drew a line under all existing aircraft carriers, thereby classifying them as experimental and capable of being replaced at any time. This meant that their weird and wonderful collection of argus eagle hermes etc could be scrapped in favor of newer and larger ships as long as funds were available and they were happy with the various lessons learned from their operation the other two modifications were mainly sponsored by the US the first was an exception for two ships that could reach 33,000 tons basically to allow the conversion of battlecruisers and the other was the provision for a limited number of eight-inch guns to allow self-defense of the newer cruisers that are online or that we will be armed with similar weapons there was also the definition of aircraft carrier which is as follows: aircraft carrier an aircraft carrier is defined as a warship with adisplacement exceeding 10,000 tons standard displacement designed for the specific and exclusive purpose of carrying aircraft, must be constructed so that aircraft can be launched from and landed thereon, and not designed or constructed to carry a larger boom movement powerful than that allowed under Article 9 or Article 10, as the case may be, in terms of cheating on this particular aspect of the treaty, Japan apparently managed to obtain akagi and kaga, which was a tosa class conversion substituted after a The earthquake deformed the hull of a wizard to just below the upper limit of 27,000 tons, so that was fine, but later they tried to exploit the definition of aircraft carrier itself by building what would have been the first of a class of light aircraft carriers that arose.

At just a hair under 10,000 tons, this ship would end up being a Ruggio which, as technically designed, was not an aircraft carrier and therefore could have been built indefinitely, as it turned out that Red ended up weighing over 10 000 tons anyway and the

loophole

would be closed with In any case, according to the London naval treaty of 1930, the Americans turned out to be the biggest cheaters in this category, since even with the allocation of 33,000 tons, their engineers simply They could not find a way to reduce the Lexington's displacement below 36,000 tons, so she took advantage of another subsidiary clause that said that no retained capital ships or aircraft carriers would be rebuilt except for the purpose of providing means of defense against air raids and submarines and, subject to the following rules, the contracting powers may for this purpose equip existing tonnage with bulges or deck protection against anti-aircraft attack or blisters, provided that the increase in displacement affected does not exceed 3 000 tons of displacement for each ship. would be built after the treaty was signed, but the US Navy decided on a creative interpretation of the clause and simply assigned every ounce of anti-aircraft and anti-torpedo defense that was being built on the aircraft carriers to this particular clause and then listed the default standard displacement in 33,000 tons exactly with a footnote saying the following, this does not include weight allowances under chapter 11, part 3, section 1, article d of the Washington treaty to provide means against air and submarine attacks, this It was, of course, a complete cheating of the treaty, um, because as a new build the Lexington ships were not supposed to be granted this additional displacement of 3,000 tons, but when it all happened, no one was particularly bothered as far as to the British, they had planned and expected five 25,000-ton aircraft carriers, so they had displacement. building five 27,000 ton ones was perfectly fine for them, especially since they could tinker with their existing conversions and replace them with newer, bigger ships whenever they wanted technically, they could have built a couple of g3 based carriers. designs using the same layout that allowed lexington saratoga akagi and kaga, but they had no particular desire to do so, other than the immediate cost which they had correctly determined, as it turned out that a specially designed 27,000 ton aircraft carrier with the lessons of operating ships existing in mind would be a better ship than a theoretical conversion of a 33,000 ton battleship, for example, if we look at the relative operational efficiencies of the Lexington and Saratoga versus the Yorktown Enterprise and Hornet, or which had considerably smaller displacement but which They could actually carry more cruise aircraft and other small vessels with just two paragraphs of Article 11.

No warship exceeding 10,000 tons displacement, except a capital ship or an aircraft carrier, shall be acquired or built by either State. or within their jurisdiction. Ships of contracting powers not specifically constructed as combat ships or taken in peacetime under government control for combat purposes, used in fleet duties or as troop transports or otherwise with purpose of assisting in the continuation of hostilities, except combat ships shall not be within the limitations of this Article Article 12. No warship of any of the Contracting Powers set forth below, except a capital ship, shall carry a weapon with a caliber greater than 8 inches or 203 millimeters in its entirety.

The brief section reflected more of a failure of negotiation than any common agreement. Discussions in this area had two main facets. The limits of 10,000 tons per ship and 8-inch guns were accepted fairly easily by all. No one had actually built a cruise ship. at that scale yet, so there seemed to be a lot of room for growth, which is quite funny given many of the problems that would later arise regarding this particular restriction, however, that's where the easy negotiation ended: the United States wanted total tarnish limits as taxes on allowances for larger ships and with similar proportions applied, France flatly refused a similar proportion as its allowance for capital ships citing its imperial and Britain's commitments to the empire and trade that Protect wanted absolutely nothing to do with total tonnage limits with the Japanese and Italians watching.

In bewildered silence, the two imperial powers were completely intransigent and, to the point that the US delegation quietly abandoned proposals that were not even worth negotiating and that would leave cruisers and destroyers wide open as a field outside of those two basic requirements, there was an additional one. The thing was that the French really wanted to build a lot of destroyers as they were now unable to compete with the Royal Navy in terms of capital ships, of course even with relatively simple requirements this was going to be one of the most violated aspects of the treaty.

Two of the signatories, Italy and Japan, donated the construction of ten thousand ton eight-inch armed cruisers, decided that this was stupid and simply lied about the tonnage of the cruisers they built in the future, France and the United States made attempts quite meritorious of meeting the limits, even when this resulted in ships such as the Duquesne and Pensacola classes whose protection against anything other than a strong breeze could best be described as optimistic: the British in an early example of fitting four, but would not continue to build the county class which adhered very well to the displacement limits, but seemed strangely protected with fairly heavy armor around the magazines and not anywhere else except once the treaty system collapsed in the late 1930s.

The speed and precision with which these ships filled the intervening space with additional armor with surprisingly little. The overall effect on its navigation capabilities reflected perhaps this unspoken design feature had been there all along. There were similar levels of intransigent behavior from the French when it came to submarines, as we said before, with the limit on capital ships, they saw their only hope. In order to remain within the reach of the Royal Navy, being a large fleet of submarines and destroyers, which meant that restrictions on such vessels were not even considered, the British had been more open to limits on destroyers, but while submarines would not be allowed at all, much less unregulated, they flatly refused to endorse anything more concrete, so neither destroyers nor submarines would be mentioned at all in the treaty, something that would lead to degrees considerable experimentation in the field of submarines in the 1920s and early 1930s in the following years. some sections of the treaty were something of a grab bag of miscellaneous topics article 13 except as provided in article 9 no ship designated in this treaty for scrapping can be converted into a warship looking at you japan article 14 will not be made preparations made on merchant ships in peacetime for the installation of war armaments for the purpose of converting such ships into warships, except the necessary reinforcement of the decks for the mounting of guns of caliber not exceeding 6 inches article 15 none A warship constructed within the jurisdiction of any of the Contracting Powers for a non-contracting Power shall exceed the limitations on the displacement of armaments prescribed by the present treaty for ships of a similar type which may be constructed by or for any of the Contracting Powers. contracting powers providing however, the displacement of aircraft carriers built for a non-contracting power shall in no case exceed 27,000 non-standard displacements article 16. if the construction of any warship for a non-contracting power is carried out within of the jurisdiction of any of the Contracting Powers, such Power shall without delay inform the other Contracting Powers of the date of signature of the contract and of the date on which the keel of the ship was laid and shall also communicate to them the prescribed particulars relating to the ship. in chapter 2 part 3 section 1b 4 and 5. article 17. in case a contracting power is at war, such power shall not use as a warship any warship that may be under construction within its jurisdiction for any other power or which may have been built within its jurisdiction for another power and not delivered Article 18 each of the contracting powers undertakes not to dispose by donation or any mode of transfer of any warship in such a way that said ship may become On a warship in the navy of any foreign power Articles 13 and 14 were quite simple and were largely intended to prevent merchant ships from being built that were really just cruisers in disguise Articles 15 and 16 were a general attempt to ensure that the five great powers could not simply break the treaty by building a treaty-breaking ship for a third party that might ally with them in the event of the next war, for example, Britain builds an n3 or g3 for the navy real Australian when Australia becomes fully independent. or the US building large capital ships for South American countries with clauses allowing them to buy back the ship in the event of a war 17 and 18 however were more than Britain this means there is a set of clauses as Of course, the Royal Navy had significantly increased its numbers at the start of the First World War by purchasing or confiscating a number of battleships, cruisers and destroyers destined for other countries, this is what clause 17 sought to avoid, while clause 18 was another way to prevent anyone, except especially Great Britain, from building and gifting warships to other allied navies such as the Royal Australian Navy or the Royal Canadian Navy and to avoid a situation like that in Gurban which of course had been transferred to the Ottoman Empire, apart from anything else, the treaty was intended to establish a balance of power that was sustainable and This was hardly going to work if Britain, the power with the largest numbers and most modern ships at its disposal, decided to send squadrons of battleships like the Orion or battlecruisers like the Lion and Princess Royal to friendly nations like Chile or the aforementioned dominions for three shillings. and a cup of tea each article 20 simply referred to the new standardized way of determining tonnage but 19 the remaining section was the longer and more complex clause article 19. the united states the british empire and japan agreed that the status quo at that time of sighting of the present treaty with respect to fortifications on naval bases shall remain in their respective territories and possessions specified herein under one of the insular possessions of which the United States now possesses or can hear after a chorus in the ocean Pacific, except those adjacent to the coast of the United States, Alaska and the Panama Canal Zone, excluding the Aleutian Islands O and B, the Hawaiian Islands, two Hong Kongs and the island possessions which the British Empire now possesses or may later acquire in the pacific ocean east of the meridian of 1100 east longitude except those adjacent to the coast of canada b the commonwealth of australia and its territories and c new zealand three the following island territories and possessions of japan in the pacific ocean tweet the cur islands the bonin amami oshima islands the Lochu Islands Formosa and the fishermen and any instant territory or possession in the Pacific Ocean that Japan can hear after a chorus.

The maintenance of the status quo under the previous provisions implies that no new fortifications or naval bases will be established in the territories andspecified possessions. that no measures will be taken to increase existing naval facilities for the repair and maintenance of naval forces and that no increase will be made in the coastal defense of the territories and possessions specified above. This restriction, however, does not exclude such repair and replacement of worn ones. weapons and equipment as is customary in peacetime naval and military establishments, the short version was that this meant that there were no massively fortified naval bases in the Philippines or Hong Kong for the United States and the United Kingdom respectively, although it also restricted the participation of the Japanese navy.

Generally speaking, it suited the Japanese since, after all, their navy was based right in the middle of this area and would force the main bases of the other two navies to be located, at best, in Pearl Harbor and Singapore, respectively, which was a far cry from anything Japan could want. do in the immediate future the rest of the treaty consists of tables showing which ships were to be retained when they could be replaced and some other clauses relating to the duration of the treaty's provisions for the outbreak of war involving a signatory and procedures The most immediate effects of the withdrawal were the massive scrapping and conversion plans for all navies involved.

France and Italy would end up underutilizing their allocations as economic issues led to more scrapping in the late 1920s, but many of the unanswered questions would lead to several

loophole

s that are being sought and exploited to one degree or another, some of which which we have already mentioned, such as small aircraft carriers, but others would include cruiser submarines, increasingly larger destroyers and the like, so many of them would have to be addressed in later treaties. such as the london naval treaty almost a decade later, but these simply modified and added conditions to the original

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agreement in general, they did not actually replace it in its entirety and, as a result, it was under the withdrawal terms of this treaty that everything the system started working. it collapsed in the mid 1930s before ending in 1936 without any renovation, so who won and who lost like that, probably the biggest winners were the Italians, they got basically everything they asked for, they stopped everything they had opposed and they got to sit on the same level as the French navy, which was something they really wanted and b the French didn't like um, which, to be honest, the French not liking was almost as driving as the fact that the Italians did to the French.

In a way they won, but they also shot themselves in the foot because they managed to negotiate a considerably larger battle fleet in terms of capital ships and there were obviously no restrictions on the number of cruisers, destroyers and submarines etc., then it turned out that they could. They might actually have the luxury of saying how they were going to plan to finance some of the wilder and more grandiose claims they had made during the conference, who knows, but that meant that they actually ended up having a lot of leftover and redundant space in their treatise. allocations until the mid-1930s, when, ironically, they technically started shelving ships like the Dunkirk and Rich early, as a fraction too early, but by that time the treaty system was collapsing anyway, so no one particularly cared beyond a few diplomatic protests.

In terms of the big three at the table, the United States certainly emerged victorious in most of its desires ahead of the Washington conference. They managed to break the Anglo-Japanese alliances and did not renew them. It was part of the subsidiary terms. They also managed to bring their battle fleet to parity levels with the Royal Navy, both in battleships and aircraft carriers, without firing a single shot, they had managed to put themselves on the same level as a navy that had prided itself on being the largest and best. with difference. By a considerable margin for more than 100 years, they had also managed to defend the Lexington and Saratoga, which would give them the two best aircraft carriers of the period.

They had managed to close most of the obvious potential loopholes that would have allowed Britain. covertly building a battle fleet larger than itself by sending ships or selling them to the various dominions and other friendly powers it might have and had allowed them to maintain a balance of force over the Japanese navy that they knew the Japanese did not have. They thought they could win a war against the US with and, of course, for the isolationist US government of the time, that meant they didn't have to pay much for incredibly more expensive US battleships, battlecruisers , etc., as far as the British were concerned.

The big victories were being able to build the two Nelson classes which, in theory, would give them the most advanced battleships in the world, even if there were only two, and they managed to distract everyone else from Hood's existence enough that no one could tell them. asked them to do it. Tossing it out, they also had a slightly larger supply of aircraft carriers than they thought, which meant that in an ideal world without the various limitations of the Great Depression and rapidly advancing technology, they could have achieved a fleet of six bow-style aircraft carriers. real inside. their treaty movement limits, which they arguably would have been if they had been properly equipped with air wings, a somewhat better fleet than the two lexington to yorktown ranger plus wasp that the United States was left with, but first, obviously, The treaty system started to fail.

There are also no limits on cruise ships, which allowed the Royal Navy, at least in theory, to plan to have enough cruisers stationed around the world, but of course they had failed to ban submarines which they were now not going to ban. being able to separate some of its ships, such as the Tiger, when it emerged to be replaced by the Australian and Canadian navies, allowing it to once again be above the US navy in terms of overall numbers and of course it was now one of the two great navies. in the bloc instead of the largest navy with perhaps a strong contender closely following them, they also no longer had the Anglo-Japanese naval treaty which further curtailed their strategic calculations and, as would quickly begin to become clear, the cruiser limit of ten thousand tons and eight-inch guns, while it had suited them at the time because they preferred to keep the Hawkins class, it proved to be something of a thorn in their heels as everyone else immediately began building cruisers up to this ceiling and the Royal Navy In reality, everyone had stuck to about five or six thousand tons because the Royal Navy could build a lot of five to six thousand ton cruisers and therefore have cruisers everywhere, but there was no point in building many of them. these smaller cruisers when everyone else was building cruisers almost twice the size that would substantially outperform the smaller colonial cruisers, so the royal navy was faced with a stark choice between having enough cruisers but ones that were easy to operate. defeat or have large, powerful cruisers but never have enough and eventually the Japanese, like the British, had lost the Anglo-Japanese alliance, which meant that their overall balance of strategic forces when looking at the Americans had been reduced a little and now they were left with an armada whose theoretical size of battle line was not capable of facing. engage the American battle line any way they wanted;

However, the fact that there were no general limits on the number of cruisers and destroyers they could build meant that they could immediately begin looking to revise their chants and doctrine to which most students should be familiar with World War II, involving massive attrition attacks by cruisers and destroyers equipped with torpedoes that they could build to their liking. In fact, some of the aspects of the Washington Naval Treaty, especially regarding the size of the fleet, would be some of the aspects of the Washington Naval Treaty. One of the main driving factors behind the development of things like the long spear torpedo, where they could consider themselves having one, was that they were now officially the third largest navy and the only occupant of tier two on the global power stage, which which was a significant advance.

As to where they had been before the First World War and how they could reduce the most expensive and ruinous naval budget a bit, while some people in the navy found this a bit disappointing, several more sensible people, such as Admiral Yamamoto, agreed. They realized that the Japanese economy was on a train wreck to nowhere pretty quickly if they had maintained original spending levels, so they were actually relatively relieved that the other big wins for the Japanese were the ability to retaining mutsu, which was a huge public moral problem, and also the fact that the other two great powers had managed to be tricked and negotiated into agreeing not to fortify anything near Japan, which as we said before gave Japan quite freedom to do whatever he wanted in the vicinity of Japan, something he would exploit mercilessly when there were several military adventures over the next two decades, but we have already mentioned many of the loopholes, if not obvious

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s, of the treaty that would arise over the next six to eight years, so it wouldn't be long before At an aborted conference in Geneva, everyone would return to London in the 1930s to discuss more limitations, but that's a story for another time.

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