Washington Naval Treaty 2.0

[miletus12]

This is a timeline, possibly related to the Showboat vs. The Iron Chancellor.

Start point (Actual history)

The Washington Naval Conference, 1921–1922

Introduction

Between 1921 and 1922, the world’s largest naval powers gathered in Washington, D.C. for a conference to discuss naval disarmament and ways to relieve growing tensions in East Asia.

In the wake of World War I, leaders in the international community sought to prevent the possibility of another war. Rising Japanese militarism and an international arms race heightened these concerns. As a result, policymakers worked to reduce the rising threat. Senator William E. Borah (R–Idaho) led a congressional effort to demand that the United States engage its two principal competitors in the naval arms race, Japan and the United Kingdom, in negotiations for disarmament.



Senator William E. Borah (He was not too bright between the ears.)
 
In 1921, U.S. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes invited nine nations to Washington, D.C. to discuss naval reductions and the situation in the Far East. The United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy were invited to take part in talks on reducing naval capacity, while Belgium, China, Portugal, and the Netherlands were invited to join in discussions on the situation in the Far East. Three major treaties emerged out of the Washington Naval Conference: the Five-Power Treaty, the Four-Power Treaty, and the Nine-Power Treaty.

The Five-Power Treaty

The Five-Power Treaty, signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy was the cornerstone of the naval disarmament program. It called for each of the countries involved to maintain a set ratio of warship tonnage which allowed the United States and the United Kingdom 500,000 tons, Japan 300,000 tons, and France and Italy each 175,000 tons. Japan preferred that tonnage be allotted at a 10:10:7 ratio, while the U.S. Navy preferred a 10:10:5 ratio. The conference ultimately adopted the 5:5:3 ratio limits. Since the United States and the United Kingdom maintained navies in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans to support their colonial territories, the Five-Power Treaty allotted both countries the highest tonnage allowances. The treaty also called on all five signatories to stop building capital ships and reduce the size of their navies by scrapping older ships.

Though the treaty was widely regarded as a success; the inclusion of Article XIX, which recognized the status quo of U.S., British, and Japanese bases in the Pacific but outlawed their expansion, created a controversy amongst U.S. policymakers. Many members of the U.S. Navy in particular worried that limiting the expansion of fortifications in the Pacific would endanger U.S. holdings in Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines.

Additionally, although the Five-Power Treaty controlled tonnage of each navy’s warships, some classes of ships were left unrestricted. As a result, a new race to build cruiser ships emerged after 1922, leading the five nations to return to the negotiating table in 1927 and 1930 in an effort to close the remaining loopholes in the Treaty.

The Four-Power Treaty

In the Four-Power Treaty, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Japan agreed to consult with each other in the event of a future crisis in East Asia before taking action. This treaty replaced the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902, which had been a source of some concern for the United States. In the years following World War I, U.S. policymakers saw Japan as the greatest rising military threat. Heavily militarized and looking to expand its influence and territory, Japan had the potential to threaten U.S. colonial possessions in Asia and the profitable China trade. Because of the 1902 agreement between the United Kingdom and Japan, however, if the United States and Japan entered into a conflict, the United Kingdom might be obligated to join Japan against the United States. By ending that treaty and creating a Four-Power agreement, the countries involved ensured that none would be obligated to engage in a conflict, but a mechanism would exist for discussions if one emerged.

The Nine-Power Treaty

The final multilateral agreement made at the Washington Naval Conference, the Nine-Power Treaty, marked the internationalization of the U.S. Open Door Policy in China. The treaty promised that each of the signatories—the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, and China—would respect the territorial integrity of China. The treaty recognized Japanese dominance in Manchuria but otherwise affirmed the importance of equal opportunity for all nations doing business in the country. For its part, China agreed not to discriminate against any country seeking to do business there. Like the Four-Power Treaty, this treaty on China called for further consultations amongst the signatories in the event of a violation. As a result, it lacked a method of enforcement to ensure that all powers abided by its terms.

In addition to the multilateral agreements, the participants completed several bilateral treaties at the conference. Japan and China signed a bilateral agreement, the Shangtung (Shandong) Treaty, which returned control of that province and its railroad to China. Japan had taken control of the area from the Germans during World War I and maintained control of it over the years that followed. The combination of the Shangtung Treaty and the Nine-Power Treaty was meant to reassure China that its territory would not be further compromised by Japanese expansion. Additionally, Japan agreed to withdraw its troops from Siberia and the United States and Japan formally agreed to equal access to cable and radio facilities on the Japanese-controlled island of Yap.

Together, the treaties signed at the Washington Naval Conference served to uphold the status quo in the Pacific: they recognized existing interests and did not make fundamental changes to them. At the same time, the United States secured agreements that reinforced its existing policy in the Pacific, including the Open Door Policy in China and the protection of the Philippines, while limiting the scope of Japanese imperial expansion as much as possible.

Timeline alterations I propose.

1. The Spanish American War results in American seizure of the Caroline, Gilbert, Marshall and Marianas Islands groups from Spain as well as the Caribbean territories, the Canary Islands and La Ceuta in North Africa.

2. The Philippine Islands gain their independence, but in a situation similar to Cuba, the United States foists on the Aguinaldo government a treaty allowing for a lease of naval bases in Subic and Manila Bays and the construction of a largish American colonial presence at those bases. The theory here is that the Americans are a little smarter about how this colonial imperialism thing is supposed to work (Not really, as evidenced by Cuba, but one can dream. M.).

3. Because of a much better Spanish Armada in the Spanish American war and extensive Spanish commerce raiding; the American navy is a bit less battleship happy and becomes excited about trade protection at sea, both the attack and defense of. After all, the whole point of destroying Cervera’s squadron off Tenedos, when he put in for supply and Schley surprised him, was because it was snapping up American cross-Atlantic trade. So… fast long-ranged armored cruisers play a prominent role in American thinking, while the Germans and British, misreading Mahan, go into their battleship building frenzy. Congress goes along with the balanced fleet plan, because of the Spanish American War history lesson and via Teddy Roosevelt, who Bull Mooses that large navy into existence to serve the new American commercial interests in the Pacific.

4. WWI as scheduled, but without Wilson, happens with the results that the Americans do a little bit better than historically. They show up fewer, a bit earlier, (1916), but far more prepared and trained. One major help is that instead of the incompetent John Pershing, Frederick Funston leads the AEF with TR’s blessing . He quashes the incompetent Billy Mitchell and favors the Scofield Gang. And thus the navy gets its hands on all things; aeroplanes, it having had previous technical successes with Samuel Langley, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and Glenn Curtiss to steer them to their aerial future.



5. The lessons of WWI, especially of seaplanes versus U-boats are USN remembered. Also USN remembered; is just how fouled up Jutland was, with the Royal Navy falling for Speer’s ambush and Beatty losing all of the battle cruisers, which left Jellico functionally blind. Instrumental in Scheer’s escape / victory was the use of Zeppelins as the German fleet’s eyes. Those big lumbering, blundering gasbags, as vulnerable as they were, still had radios and shadowed the Grand Fleet virtually unmolested. The British answer to the problem, the aircraft carrying ship, was not ready in time, and so Scheer had the reconnaissance advantage in spite of the North Sea weather. The USN vowed it would not be so caught in any future naval war with any possible adversary.

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The Washington Disarmament Conference of 1922 takes place in that above background and with some minor technological differences at least for the Americans.

a. The Americans, early during WWI, converted two colliers, the USS Jupiter (USS Langley) and the USS Neptune (USS Wright) into ocean going airplane carrying ships to shoot down Zeppelins. While very slow, these “aircraft carriers” had more or less proven aircraft reconnaissance from them was also viable by 1918, during the Battle of the Atlantic, while they protected American troop convoys, and thus the Lexington class was designed as “aircraft carriers” from the keel up. This was in keeping with the American navy’s thinking about aerial scouting for fleets being quite important after the Jutland (1916) and Rosyth Raid (1917) fiascos of WWI.

b. The U-boat menace had impressed the Americans to no end. 1 in 5 US ship transits in 1916 and 1917 had resulted in a lost US-flagged ship. Although the Germans had to hand over their U-boats to the Allies as a result of the Versailles Truce (Late 1917), as Admiral Sims laughingly called it, there was no guarantee that U-boats or someone else’s submarines would not menace American commerce in the future. This would require attention in a practical application as well as an international legally binding treaty sense.

c. Battleships, at least the American ones, had played negligible roles in the war at sea. However the role of cruisers had shown that the Americans had too few of them and of the wrong kind.

d. So with all of the above in mind, not only were the Americans very keen to halt a battleship building arms race that might lead to another general war, but they were also eager to play in the chinks to hobble or at least limit the attack /offense options of their main naval rivals.

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So there was some trading to be had. What was the result in this alternate timeline?

1. The battleship tonnage limit of 535,000 long tons for Great Britain and 375,000 for Japan was capped. France and Italy were limited to 310,000 tons. Technical armament limitations for main armament limited gun bore size to 40.6 cm or 16 inches. Unit displacement limits were set at 35,000 long tons. Similar limitations for cruisers’ bore size armament at 20.3 cm or 8 inches followed. The unit displacement limit for cruisers was capped at 10,000 long tons.

2. Britain could keep her 6 flattops already built, with replacement aof them fter 20 years. The Americans got 2 new builds, Japan got 2 new builds and the Italians and French got 2 each of their own, if they could build them. Unit tonnage limit was pegged at the American limit for 27,000 tons (See 4.).

3. The capping tonnage for American battleships was ostensibly 535,000 tons, but a clause was inserted that allowed the Americans to redirect 115,000 tons into aircraft carrier construction if they reduced their battleship tonnage.

4. With the two aircraft carriers allowed by treaty, the Americans could build, if they chose, the other four Lexingtons as flattops. They just had to scrap 115,000 tons of more battleships to get there. Goodbye; Arkansas, New York, Texas, and possibly Nevada and Oklahoma, and definitely Utah. Nevada would be the artillery training ship allowed in the exceptions clause as long as she was demilitarized.

5. Whether or not the Americans could get the torpedo clause to limit diameter to 53.3 cm or 21 inches and caliber to no longer than 15 bore lengths (315 inches or 800 cm.), well: we assume that they do and Japan legally had to scrap its WWI 24 inch torpedoes and the British never got to equip their NELRODs with their 24.5 inch diameter fish. Both of them will cheat and of course that will prompt a response. 

6. Fortifications clauses in the Pacific generally very much hold as in the real history, and so does the contemptible nine-power China trade and exploitation treaty. The differences are Chu'uk and Singapore and Taipei are exempted from the restrictions. The Philippine Republic, being an independent nation, as is Thailand, are not covered by the non-fortifications clauses. Interesting?     

7. The British Japanese alliance was decoupled over Canada’s protest. (Thanks Canada, we DO remember that Dominions conference where you argued against ending the Japanese alliance. M.).

8. Submarines should have been outlawed, but America and France insisted on a tonnage limit of 50% of capital ship tonnage. That is a lot of U-boats (88 each for France and Italy, possibly 180 for Japan.). The Americans with their own ideas would settle for about 100.

9. Cruiser tonnage caps was set at total capital ship tonnage limits.

10. There was a set cap tonnage for destroyers of 75% of Capital ship tonnage, except that individual units could not exceed 1,600 tons for leaders and 1,200 tons for standard destroyers. Main armament could not exceed 5.25 inches bore size or 13.35 cm for guns or 21 inches diameter and 15 calibers for torpedoes.

11. An exception for destroyers was that you could build as many destroyers as you want as long as they were of 600 tons displacement or less. Italy insisted on that clause.   

One last note. With the Caroline Islands in America's hands and the Philippine Islands independent (sort of) the main American west Pacific naval base is Ch'uk.



Guess where December 7th will happen? 

So where do we go from 1922? This is an open participation timeline.

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Since we have a different American navy, what did it look like post WWI and post WNT 2.0? in 1922

Battleships

Pennsylvania-class battleship: (2 units)
Displacement: 34,400 tons
Length: 650 feet overall
Beam: 100 feet
Draft: 29 feet
Propulsion: 80,000 ISHP.
Armament: 9 × 14 in (356 mm) (3 x 3),
                16 × 5 in (127 mm) (8 x 2),
                  8 × 3 in (76 mm) (4 x 2),
                  2 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor: 13.5in Belt / 3in Deck
Speed: 25 knots
Ships in class: 2: USS Pennsylvania and USS Arizona
Commissioned: both in 1916

New Mexico class (3 units)
Displacement: 34,700 tons
Length: 655 feet overall
Beam: 102 feet
Draft: 28.5 feet
Propulsion: 80,000 ISHP
Armament: 9 × 14 in (356 mm) (3 x 3),
               16 × 5 in (127 mm) (8 x 2),
                 4 x 4 in (102 mm_ (2 x 2)
                 2 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor: 13.5in Belt / 3.5in Deck
Speed: 24 knots
Ships in class: 3: USS New Mexico, USS Mississippi, and USS Idaho
Commissioned: all in 1917

Tennessee class (2 units)
Displacement: 34,500 tons
Length: 655 feet overall
Beam: 102 feet
Draft: 28.5 feet
Propulsion: 80,000 ISHP
Armament: 9 × 14 in (356 mm) (3 x 3),
               16 × 5 in (127 mm) (8 x 2),
                 8 × 3 in (76 mm) (4 x 2),
                 2 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor: 13.5in Belt / 3.5in Deck
Speed: 24 knots
Ships in class: 2: USS Tennessee, and USS California
Commissioned: Both in 1920.

Colorado class (4 units)
Displacement: 35,600 tons
Length: 660 feet overall
Beam: 105 feet
Draft: 29 feet
Propulsion: 80,000 ISHP.
Armament: 9 × 16 in (406 mm) (3 x 3),
               16 × 5 in (127 mm) (8 x 2),
                 8 × 3 in (76 mm) (4 x 2 ),
                 2 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor:13.5in Belt / 3.5in Deck
Speed: 24 knots
Ships in class: 4: USS Colorado, USS Maryland, USS Washington, and USS West Virginia
Commissioned: Maryland in 1921, Colorado and West Virginia in 1922, Washington in this time line is commissioned with Colorado and West Virginia.

Two battleships are "decommissioned" or used for training;

Nevada class *(2 units)
Displacement: 32,500 tons
Length: 625 feet overall
Beam: 95 feet
Draft: 28.5 feet
Propulsion: 75,000 ISHP
Armament: 9 × 14 in (356 mm) (3 x 3),
14 × 5 in (127 mm) (14 x 1),
4 x 3 in (76 mm) (4 x 1)
4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor:13.5in Belt / 2.5in Deck
Speed: 24 knots
Ships in class: 2: USS Nevada and USS Oklahoma
Commissioned: both in 1916
Notes: USS Oklahoma is the reserve battleship. As such she is derated to one working main turret (A) to make her treaty compliant under the tonnage cap. It would be about 3 months to install her stored X and Y turret assemblages and make her war worthy. Nevada has all of her A, Y and X main turrets derated, She is an artillery training ship with a working secondary battery. In war emergency, spare gun bartrels there are, but it would take two years to rebuild her barbettes and trucks to accept them.

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Armored cruisers 

Pittsburgh-class armored cruiser: (6 units)
Displacement: 11,400 tons
Length: 650 feet overall
Beam: 70 feet
Draft: 25 feet
Propulsion: 80,000 ISHP.
Armament: 9 × 8 in (203 mm) (3 x 3),
                 8 × 5 in (127 mm) (8 x 1),
                 8 × 3 in (76 mm) (4 x 2),
                 4 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor: 5.5in Belt / 1.5in Deck
Speed: 28 knots
Ships in class: 6: USS Pittsburgh, USS San Diego, USS Huntington, USS Pueblo, USS Frederick, USS Huron 
Commissioned: 1914-1918

Memphis Class armored cruiser (4 units)
Displacement: 12,400 tons
Length: 640 feet overall
Beam: 70 feet
Draft: 25 feet
Propulsion: 80,000 ISHP.
Armament: 9 × 8 in (203 mm) (3 x 3),
                 8 × 5 in (127 mm) (4 x 2),
                 8 × 3 in (76 mm) (4 x 2),
                 6 × 21 in (533 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor: 6.0in Belt / 1.5in Deck
Speed: 28 knots
Ships in class: 4: USS Memphis, USS Seattle, USS Missoula, USS Charlotte 
Commissioned: 1914-1918

Notes: The Americans flat out lied about the tonnages to keep these c ruisers in service. They had nothing else to compare to the British Hawkins class, or the British battle cruisers.   

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Aircraft carriers: 

Langley Class (2 units)
Displacement: 14,400 tons
Length: 600 feet overall
Beam: 70 feet
Draft: 25 feet
Propulsion: 15,000 ISHP.
Armament: 8 × 3 in (76 mm) (4 x 2),
Elevators: 1 fitted amidships.
Catapults: None.
Arrestors: Changes over time, but usually 4 wires and one mobile crash screen   
Aircraft: 24-36  
Armor: 1.0in Belt / 1.5in flight deck
Speed: 20 knots

Ships in class: 2: USS Langley, USS Wright 
Commissioned: 1917 and 1918

Notes, the Lexingtons are under construction and will not be in service until 1927 at the earliest. That is further up the timeline.

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Destroyers: In 1922, these were assembly yard made 1,000 tonners with 4 inch *(102 mm) gund  (4 x 1) and 1 3 inch *(76 mm) AAA gun and either 3 or 4 21 inch torpedo tubes. They carried depth charge rails and with 25,000 indicated shaft horsepower and could make 35 knots. There were over 300 hundred of them, all barely able to cross the Atlantic one way, and all just about useless as they were badly designed to begin with. As soon as the 10 year rule kicked in the USN was going to ditch them all if it could.

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The submarines were also worthless being mostly 500 ton displacement coast defense boats.

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Oilers, floating docks, ammunition ships and transports. THe USN has 4 oilers of the Jupiter class, 2 floating drydocks able to take anything it has in commission and intended to use ships taken up from trade for ammunition support and troop transports. As a result of reparations, it does have access to four large and commodius German built cargo-passenger ships. 


  

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Fallout from the Treaty: Years 1922-1930.

The British:

The Exchequer or Treasury as it now styled itself, was more or less tight with the monies allocated to the fleet. These post WWI realities of trying to pay down the national debt, rebuilding a shattered economy and massive demobilization of millions to be unemployed young men, hit the British admiralty like a pyramid dropped upon them. Their massive fleets of the glorious empire, with hundreds of ships scattered across the world ocean was an expensive luxury the bankrupt His majesty's government could not afford. THAT was why the British reluctantly agreed to the American treaty in the first place. The RN was about to be chopped in half, and it would have to accept naval parity with the upstart colonials. This did not sit well with the bigots in the admiralty. 

Politically and militarily the Royal Navy was dominated by the Beatty Crowd who did not like the treaty at all because it brought about that parity. As background, this cabal of cads and alibiers had rewritten / mangled WWI naval and army history to obscure David Beatty's absolute incompetence during the various battle cruiser actions he fought with Franz von Hipper, as well as the amateurishness of the British army command ashore. The two items were sort of intertwined, since the British upper classes had botched the war in two horese tamden. They, the clubbers, were deathly afraid that the Commons would find out the truth and turn them out, (As they did after WWII).        

That truth was remarkably dark. The British army had planned and fought the war with the well placed belief that the issue would be settled on land in France. This idiocy was straight out of Clauswitz. The expletive deleted of it, was that the Royal Navy should have known from the Napoleonic Wars; if not from Alfred Thayer Mahan, that the issue should have been settled at sea. The admiralty, however, plonked their chips on Julian Corbett and politically, until he expletive deleted the war at sea up, on the incompetent Winston Churchill.  The RN did not prepare for the trade war, nor did it fight the trade war. It sought myopically to bring the German fleet to battle somehow, while also "blockading" the North Sea. Feints and grand sweeps and the Jutland battle and the botched battle cruiser battles, all looked good in the British post war naval annals, but the U-boat war came within a few hundred thousand tons of sunk shipping of doing the British in. THAT was what the Americans *(ADM William Sims) told Braindead Beatty and the Admiralty in 1917.   

They did not learn anything, the Royal Navy, at least not until Backhouse came in later and cleaned out the Beatty riff-raff. 

The RN, thus, went into the treaty to at least preserve some battle fleet "Paper Superiority". And in so doing, they missed the plot of what mattered. They were quite willing to argue battleships and cruisers with all the technical details. They did want to "outlaw" submarines, but they ignored such things as naval geography and fleet logistics in the treaty and thus cut their own naval throats when it came to their vital naval interests.   

Some of their junior officers (Andrew Cunningham), did argue that maybe the agreed cap ratios on destroyer tonnage was not too smart as it was too low, and meybe the submarine caps were too high for the treaty powers, but those junior officerss were ignored.
       
The RN needed modernized battleships and battle cruisers and it needed trade protection cruisers. That was what mattered to the Beatty Crowd. 

The British especially wanted to finish the two G-3 plan battlecruisers that they had underweigh on the stocks and abuilding. These 40,000 ton 30 knot monsters along with the Hood, Repulse and Renown would restore the fast wing of the battle fleet and erase the memory of the battle cruiser slaughter at Jutland. That was the paramount Brtitish demand. With the R class and Q class battleships (10 ships with 80 barrels) and the battle cruisers (5 ships with 38 barrels) the Royal Navy would have their throw weight and speed advantages over the Americans and the Japanese. For trade protection, 53 and a half cruisers was not as many as 64, but the cap was on overall tonnage and did not specify how many cruisers had to fit into that tonnage. The competitors could not build anything equal to British ships anyway *(arrogance), so it was all right to live with 535,000 tons as the overalll cap and build a heavy cruiser class at 10,000 tons and make up the numbers with lots of light cruisers of 5,000 to 7,000 tons. 200,000 tons of heavies and  335,000 tons of lights yeilded 20 heavy cruisers and 47 light cruisers for 67, thank you. 

Aircraft carriers? Britain had 6, and everyone else who mattered had 2. Besides the Japanese could not fly according to Lord Sempill.

It was not what Britain wanted ideally, but it was a better result than what anyone else got. Hah! 

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The Japanese:    

WWI had not been kind to the Japanese. They had been loyal British allies and had expected to share in the spoils of conquest. For Japan this meant the German holdings in China was a given and their continued expansion along and into the Chinese coastal provinces would be accepted, if not actually welcomed (especially by the Americans. M.). The Japanese were also irritated that the British (and the Americans) hemmed in their trade and treated them as "racial inferiors".   

When the "racial equality" clause posed by the Italians first at the Versailles Treaty negotiations was squashed and then again at the contentious Washington Naval Disarmament Conference, again by the Anglo-Americans the Japanese made it a point of national honor to insist on a 70% tonnage ratio. This was not so much a mathematical defense ratio as the Japanese publically argued as it was a way to impose a practical recognition that the Japanese were an equal naval power, who had a right to force some concession of recognition from the racist westerners. This viewpoint tended to color much of the Japanese naval calculations more than practical technical details like unit bcharactersitics or mixes and matches and unit parities. 

It resulted in the 375,000 ton cap for the Japanese that allowed them 1 additional "inferior" battleship.

It resulted in the two new Mutsu class battleships to match the four Colorados in gun bore diameter size.

It resulted in the two new aircraft carriers to add to the two small experimental ones they had, which were conveniently classified as auxilliaries, instead as actual aircraft carriers as the Langley class were for the Americans.

The Japanese got recognition, but they had no military rationale for what they wanted and obtained. They would manufacture an after the fact rationale and plan in time for the London 1930 Conference, but the naval treaty for them really made (in real history and in this timeline) no logiclal military sense.      
 
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France and Italy:

Both nations were lock-mirrored into each other and for much the same reasons. They both had bankrupted themselves in WWI. They both abandoned any naval pretensions they had to fight ruinous and politcally national psyche shattering land wars. They both reagarded each other as the principle threats to their African colonial impoerialist empires and ambitions, and they were within ten hours steaming time/ distance of each other's bases at La Spezia and Toulon. NEITHER could build massive fleets of battleships and neither could afford a naval arms race in case the Germans became frisky again. 

The French were the main drivers. They quibbled over minuitia and argued legalities endlessly and whenever the French obtained a tonnage definition or a bore / caliber limitation or exception, the Italians would proclaim; "Chiediamo esattamente la stessa cosa." (We demand the exact same thing.) If the French Marine National wanted two aircraft carriers, then the Regia Marina wanted them, too. Neither nation might know how to build them; nor what to do with them when constructed, but if the British, Americans and Japanese had them, then France and Italy wanted a couple each of their own, because the French would not want Italy to have them and they did not and so vice versa. 

There is naval logic for you.

What made a lot more sense, was the arguments over cruisers and destroyers and submarines. 

See MAP.



Toulon is just east of the bulge on the Riviera. You see where La Spezia is?  The French argued for 2,500 ton destroyers as leaders. They got 1600 ton destroyers. The French did get 5.25 inch bore diameter guns. The British wanted 4.7 inch bore diameter guns limitations. The French also joined the Americans on the torpedo question. The Italians sided with the Japanese in the one startling difference of lockstep Franco-Italian opinion. Go figure. Anyway, the Italians and the Japanese also pressed for the 600 ton destroyer tonnage cap exemption. THAT was an error that the others let slip through.      
           

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Treaty fallout from the American point of view: 1922 to 1930.

The Treaty in this alternate timeline started an argument between the battleship men and the new flattop faction. In 1922 there was still serious debate as to whether bombers could hit ships, much less sink them. In this alternate history, the USN had conducted weapon effector tests on the German reparations ship, Ostfreisland, as well as some obsolete and decommisioned American ships. These ships had been stationary and thus little different from a target X ashore as far as bomb aiming went.


21 July 1921. They mostly missed.  

It did not help the naval aviators' case that to materially affect the ships with the 5% hits they scored, that the bombs had to be so large that it took Keystone "strategic" bombers to carry the massive 2,000 pound bombs aloft to the paltry 3,000 feet from which those bombs were dropped. 

Yet the salient fact remained; that a German battleship, known to be well designed to resist sinking gunfire, had been sunk.  

The aircraft carrier clauses in the treaty, thus acquired perhaps undue public attention, as the "gun clubbers" argued fiercely that the American fleet keep its 535,000 tons all in battleships, and be satisfied with the 2 aircraft carriers allotted if the tonnage reallocation was not invoked.  

Moffett and the other air admirals went to Congress. Specifically they talked to Carl Vinson, an up and coming Unreconstructed Confederate congressman from Georgia, who needed an issue to make his name and win re-election in a rather tough race for his district against a fellow democrat, who was even more racist and bigotted than he was. 

Suffice it to say, that when Congress looked at the naval construction budget, while they cut funds for just about everything to the absolute minimum, "now that we don't study war no more", Vinson was instrumental in making sure the six Lexingtons^1 were finished as flattops.
   
^1 Lexington, Constellation, Ranger, Saratoga, Constitution and United States in the real history, but Lexington, Saratoga, Concord,  Yorktown, Bunker Hill and  Monmouth in this time line.      
    

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Treaty fallout from the American point of view: 1922 to 1930.

The problem with the destroyers.

Where was there to begin? Try the effectors.

4"/50 (10.2 cm) Marks 7, 8, 9 and 10

Bliss-Leavitt 21" (53.3 cm) Mark 8

Immediately, it could be seen that there was a problem>

The torpedo on book had a run out of 10,000 meters at 50 km/h or 27 knots at 10,900 yards. In function that meant an effective range of 5,000 meters and was useless in chase against any 55 km/h ship.

How about the gun?

It was 8 rounds a minute cyclic and the effective range was about 15,000 yards or 13,700 meters.

Those were the "four stackers" teeth.

Now look at what the Japanese did.

Official Designation: 45 caliber 3rd Year Type 12 cm

This gun threw a heavier shell to about the same effective range as the US destroyer gun.

But that was not the problem.

53.3 cm (21") Type 6 (1917)

Essentially not too dissimilar from the Bliss Leavitt Mark 8 in function, if equpped with a bigger warhead and still not a problem.

61 cm (24") Type 8 No. 1 (1920)

and

61 cm (24") Type 8 No. 2 (1920)

There is your problem. That series of torpedoes could reach as far as the Japanese destroyer guns could.

In the ATL WNT context, those torpedoes "would have been" outlawed, but as in the real history, it could be assumed that the Japanese would blandly claim that these were "21 inch" torpedoes and no-one outside of naval intelligence specialists would be aware of the difference.

====================================================================================

What will the Americans do with the 400,000 tons displacement cap on their destroyer force?

Well the 4 stackers generally come in at 1,200 tons per unit so the Americans can keep 300 to 333 of them. In practice, half or them were laid up in ordinary. That still meant 150 or so bobbing around and the American Congress did not seee the need to replace them. As a corallory, the IJN had about 100 destroyers of their own, with an aggregate tonnage of a, b and c types of 100,000 tons. By the 75% rule their cap was somewhere around 280,000 tons, which left them a cushion of 180,000 tons of new construction. Nothing in the alternate time line treaty dictated how the units could be built except that fleet units were 1,200 tonners and leaders were 1,600 tonners. This made the alternate history destroyers, at least on paper, smaller than in the real history. Would the Japanese conform to the definitions? Surprisingly, at least through the 1920s, they did in the real history with only minor "cheating". They would build 41 such destroyers in the real history up to 1930. The Americans built NONE.

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Treaty fallout from the American point of view: 1922 to 1930.

The problem with cruisers.





What combat experience the Americans had with steel warships, showed them that as far as cruisers went, these were the most successful types. Further evolution of all big gun ship cruiser designs; was not so much based on the theories of Vittorio Cuniberti; as it was ascertained the practical experience of George Dewey and Winfield Scot Schley and the gunfire results surveys made of their work upon the Spanish wrecks fromn the 1898 1899 naval war. The rapid fire casemate mounted individual guns missed and the larger bore slower firing "chaser guns" now called main armament, hit with higher percentages. The 3% of the 5 inch bore and smaller guns, versus the 7% of the 8 inch guns might not have seemed like much of a difference, but the surveys took into account the number of shells expended versus effects as well as the probability of hits. Those Spanish armored cruisers were not damaged much by 5 inch bore guns. It was the 8 inch bore guns' shells that wrecked them. The added testimony of Spanish survivors interviewed by the Americans confirmed the statistical surveys findings.^1

^1 All true: since we read in "Proceedings" beginning in 1900, articles that discuss the lessons learned from the actual Spanish American War. The lessons in the real history were applied to the battleships of the South Carolina class (Not Michigan as the Europeans are confused about American class naming conventions. First wet is first of class, not first laid down. M.)     

When it came time to build the replacement armored cruisers for the now obsolete Brooklyns, in this timeline, there was a push to repeat the Massena type battleship design in a repeat performance.



This was rejected in favor of a more Brandenburg type layout for the Pittsburgh class, but with triple turrets instead of doubles as in the previous US classes.         


These ships were soon to prove to be mistakes as the Y or amidship gunhouse and barbette had severely restricted firing arcs, while the scattered secondary battery of anti-torpedo boat guns proved to be impractical to lay as unified salvo or broadside fire weapons. Yet the Pittsburghs and the Nashvilles, all ten of them, were to become the "heavy cruisers" the Americans had, and all that the Americans had, because the American Congress in its wisdom decided not to fund any new ones for the ten year battleship building holiday.

The British and the Japanese did not have the benefits of an American Congress.   Ther British built 15 heavy cruisers and the Japanese built 8 before 1930.

How about the light cruiser category, where the Americanss built a reduced version of the Pittsburghs in the form of the 6 inch bore gun armed Omahas in 12 iterations? That was all Congress would fund since the USN supposedly 24 serviceable light cruisers.   If it was not a Spanish American War or pre- WWI unit or an Omaha as authorized up until 1922, it would not exist. From 1922 to 1930 the Americans built nothing.

Unusually the British built 4 units, since they had over 55 relatively modern WWI era veterans; some of which they would have to sell off or screp.

The Japanese with over 30 of type of their own, built just 10 units.   .   

[miletus12]

Treaty fallout from the American point of view: 1922 to 1930.

The problem with capital ships.

Yes, in the real history and in this alternate history, there was a major problem with the capital ships. Be one British, or French, or Italian or Japanese: the problem was war weariness of the existent hulls. Most of the permitted ships allowed by the treaty had been worked hard at sea and as the exigencies of war had overruled common sense and prudence, the ships had wasted their useful life hours on ridiculous patrol sweeps or fruitless steaming that wasted inbuilt boiler hours and years of hull life. MAINTENANCE AND REPAIR, which is a daily constant for ships then as now was deferred or postponed as unnecessary due to immediate wartime need. The ships of all these navies prematurely wore out and overaged at an accelerated rate, in extreme cases, such as the French Marine National, putting abourt ten years wear on a warship in just four years of war. In the ships of the day, that was half of a warship's useful life.

The Americans were a little better off. Most of their capital ships had been maintained and repaired even during wartime, as they ought to have been. Their ships were usually newer and frankly better quality built; if not as technically advanced as the British and wartime German builds. Of course after examining the German reparartion ships and observing the British ships in action, the Americans know what to fix in their own hulls.

Damage control features became a higher priority retrofit, as was boiler replacement and rebuilding of gun-pits and slides and upgrading to an Argo clock type fire control system (The famous Ford fire control system of 1925.).

There was little that could be done about the faulty layout of the ship's themselves, except to suppress the casemate guns and replace with more seaworthy and workable weather deck turreted guns.


The problem with the American modernization program carried out between 1922 and 1930 for their battleships and alleged "heavy cruisers" was that the rebuilding was forbidden by treaty, as the french claimed, because increasing the elevation of the main armament and the rearrangement of the secondary guns was in effect an American cover program to build "new ships" as had been the American navy practice to fool its own Congress  by building Theseus ships since the 1870s. 

The French were not wrong. 

a. By moving the secondary armament out of casemates into secondary barbettes, the Americans artificially and artfully increased the anti-destroyer protection of their capital ships and cruisers by a factor of 2 and reinforced belt protection by removing the casemate vulnerabilities (holes) in that belt. The secondary armament in the new gunhouses could actually elevate high enough to be used as "dual purpose" guns against aircraft and surface targets. 
b. Under the guise of modernization, improved boilers and steam turbine sets allowed for more efficient fuel use. This did nothing about work throughput, but it did allow for longer periods of sustained 3/4 turns (cruise) and 4/4 turns (flank) which closed the gap with the British in overall fleet speed to near parity. 
c. The increase in main gun elevation doubled the effective engagement range from just under 11,000 yards at 15 degrees elevation to something more like 23,000 yards at 30 degrees elevation.^1

^1 The real history of the Standards does not include a., until after Pearl Harbor. But for practical terms, the French griped about the rest of the American modernization program, which actually happened to the Standards.     
    
 

[miletus12]

Treaty fallout from the American point of view: 1922 to 1930.

How does one answer the question of the aircraft carrier clauses in this alternate treaty?



You amswer it with what knowledge the people of the time knew or would have known with their experience, either real or as described in this timeline.

Name ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.Lexington class
Builders................................Fore River Shipyard' New York Shipbuilding Corporation
Operators.............................United States Navy
Preceded by......................... Langley class
Succeeded by........................Ranger class
Cost.....................................about $45,000,000
Built....................................1920–1927
In service.............................1927–1946
In commission.......................1927–1946
Planned................................6
Completed............................6
Lost.....................................3
Retired.................................3
General characteristics (as built)
Type Aircraft.........................aircraft carrier
Displacement........................32,000 tons claimed 36,000 long tons (37,000 t) (standard) actual
Length.................................888 ft (270.7 m) (oa)
Beam...................................106 ft (32.3 m)
Draft....................................30 ft 5 in (9.3 m) (deep load)
Installed power......................16 water-tube boilers; 180,000 shp (130,000 kW)
Propulsion.............................4 shafts; 4 sets turbo-electric transmission
Speed...................................34.5 knots (63.9 km/h; 39.7 mph) (actual)
Range...................................10,000 nmi (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,2,791 (including aviation personnel), 1942
Armament.............................4 × twin 8 in (203 mm) guns
............................................12 × single 5 in (127 mm) / 25 AAA guns
Armor....................................Belt: 5–7 in (127–178 mm)
............................................Deck: 0.75–2 in (19–51 mm)
............................................Gun turrets: 0.75 in (19 mm)
............................................Bulkheads: 5–7 in (127–178 mm)
Aircraft carried.......................70-90
Aviation facilities....................1 × Aircraft catapult Installed in the rebuilds
...........................................2 × Elevators

This is what they knew in 1922.


Curtiss Wasp

Operators
United States
United States Navy
Specifications (T-1)
Data from Curtiss Aircraft 1907–1947

General characteristics
Crew: 2
Length: 23 ft 4 in (7.11 m)
Wingspan: 32 ft 10 in (9.75 m)
Height: 10 ft 2 in (3.09 m)
Wing area: 288 sq ft (26.75 m2)
Empty weight: 1,980 lb (898 kg)
Loaded weight: 3,050 lb ()
Powerplant: 1 × Curtiss K-12 water-cooled 12-cylinder vee engine, 400 hp (298 kW)
Performance
Maximum speed: 163 mph (142 knots, 262 km/h)
Endurance: 5.9 hr
Service ceiling: 23,000 ft (7,010 m)
Climb to 12,500 ft (3,800 m): 10 min
Armament
Guns:
Primary: 2 × forward-firing synchronized .30 in (7.62 mm) Marlin guns
Secondary: 2 × rear-cockpit .30 in Lewis guns on a Scarff ring, 1 × Lewis gun firing through aperture in aircraft's belly
Note the lack of bombs and torpedo capacity? So why build it? It was supposed to down zeppelins and splash enemy scout planes that could observe fall of shot from an enemy battleline. 
Does that not make the giant Lexingtons a set of white elephants? 

The Carrier Debate: From 1922 to Now

By: US Naval Institute Staff

June 27, 2013 4:30 AM • Updated: March 19, 2018 9:57 AM

Even years before its launch, the U.S. Navy’s new class of ships — the aircraft carrier — was dismissed by some critics as an exorbitantly expensive folly that was already obsolete due to advances in modern warfare.

Although this argument has often been levied at USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78) currently under construction, it was also said about the nation’s first purpose-built carrier USS Ranger (CV-4) in the early 1930s. In the century since the Navy first started experimenting with shipboard takeoffs and landings, analysts have debated the merits versus the weaknesses of aircraft carriers.

Detractors maintain that carriers are too costly and too vulnerable, while proponents have held that the big flattops have consistently proven their worth and will remain the key to sea power well into the future. This battle over carriers has been raging in the pages of the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine for decades:

Developing the Aircraft Carrier

September, 1922

“All the principal admiralties of the world are paying marked attention to the provision of aircraft carriers, a type which is now regarded as only second in importance to the capital ship, some naval experts both here and in the United States believing it to be even more indispensable.” – Naval and Military Record, 19 July 1922

At this break, in the real history, the Americans had planned on building a small purpose designed aircraft carrier, something along the lines of the Zeppelin-killer, HIJMS Hosho. (See photo).



Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier Hōshō conducts tests in Tokyo Bay in December 1922.

Unknown author - Kure Maritime Museum, Japanese Naval Warship Photo Album: Aircraft carrier and Seaplane carrier, Supervisory editor: Kazushige Todaka, p. 12.

In the real history, as a result of negotiations, the Americans and the Japanese were allowed to keep their "experiments" as training ships, while they could each take two capital ships building on the weighs and convert them into aircraft carriers, to "match" existent or planned British construction permitted by the actual Washington Treaty. Akagi and Amagi were the Japanese candidates.  They were monsters, even by the Lexington class standards. 

The British would be  stuck with Argus as their "experiment" and would have Eagle and Hermes and the three "Curiosities" (Courageous Class) as their core naval aviation afloat strength.

In the alternate timeline treaty, the Americans can either keep their first four battleships or opt to build their six "battle cruisers" as aircraft carriers.  With the limitations and knowledge they had, they will in this timeline build all six Lexingtons, and through most of the 1930s, regret that decision as each flattop costs 4X the cost of a battleship to crew, logistically support, and maintain. It appears for most of that decade, that the trade in gun-line firepower for about 400 ineffective airplanes might have been a bad bargain, even if the 4 scrapped and or demoted battleships were pieces of junk.        

Seagoing Aircraft

November, 1924

“At the time of the Washington Conference the only aircraft carriers afloat were a few experimental craft converted from other types. Had that gathering been a disarmament conference, as it is so persistently regarded, the simple and logical thing to do would have been to scrap the few carriers already built and forbid more. It was recognized that air warfare is more susceptible of barbarous abuse than submarine warfare.”

Strategic Value of the Aircraft Carrier

January, 1925

“The arrival of the aircraft carrier offers material for speculation as to its spheres of usefulness. There is scarcely any room for doubt that is has definitely arrived, as a formidable weapon of offense and defense; there has been no spectacular debut, such as established the submarine as a commerce destroyer, because, of course, there has been no set of circumstances to render its rapid development an imperative necessity for national preservation.”

Airplane Carriers

May, 1925



The cover of the May 1942 issue of Popular Mechanics.

“The naval carriers of airplanes are limited in operations to navigable waters. The carrier airships would not be limited by sea or land. The naval carriers are subject to land, sea, or air attack. The airships would be subject only to air attack.” “But there is a need of economy and efficiency in providing for the national defense. If airships are better than naval vessels for carrying airplanes, they should be used.”

Aircraft Carriers – An American Viewpoint

August, 1928

“In effectiveness there must be little to choose between the airplane carrier Lexington, which has just broken speed records on a run from California to Honolulu, and her sister ship, the Saratoga. Each of these carriers has accommodations for seventy-six planes. British critics have said that this is putting too many eggs in on basket. Theoretically that may be so, since it is as easy to bomb a carrier as any other large ship of war. But two things would favor the Lexington: the great number of planes she could use to defend herself, and her high speed.”

Covered Wagons of the Sea

November, 1931

“The airplane carrier has become an indispensable type of vessel to any fleet. With its brood of planes and its high speeds it has the greatest potential strength of any fighting ship in the world.”

The Need for Additional Aircraft Carriers

July, 1932




USS Saratoga (CV-3) landing planes in 1935. US Navy Photo


“The aircraft carrier, a sort of floating nest for winged guns, is a craft of comparatively recent development, and we are only just beginning to realize how valuable these ships can be. At the time of the Washington naval conference so little was known regarding their usefulness that it was believed that 135,000 tons of these ships would be all that any nation would need or would ever build. The potency of the modern airplane has since shown how wrong that estimate was.”

Let’s Try a New Weapon

May, 1941

“The aircraft carrier, which is the Navy’s primary means of exerting air power at sea, imposes further restrictions upon the performance characteristics of the planes which must operate from them. The lack of space for landing and take-off is compensated for by other means, but the relatively unhampered shore-based landplane enjoys a considerable superiority over is carrier-based counterpart in almost every respect. The desirability of operating higher performance aircraft at sea is obvious. But how are we to get them there? This is clearly the role for the rigid airship. It alone can satisfy the desirable but not quite attainable conditions unfulfilled in the problem of exerting air power at sea by other approaches.”

Aircraft Carriers, Dive Bombers, and Torpedo Planes

October, 1942

“[The] thesis that with the increasing range of land-based army bombers aircraft carriers will become obsolete as they are forced to operate within that range will simply not hold water. They are already operating practically with impunity where land-based bombers can and have reached them. As fighter aircraft become more and more effective the carrier will have stronger and stronger aerial protection and the job for the attacking bombers will become harder and harder. Our large carrier building program is sound indeed and will give us complete control of the oceans of the world.”

The Aircraft Carrier – The Backbone of Aero-Sea Warfare

December, 1942

“[T]he war was started with all the world’s navies thinking in terms of Jutland and the battleship as the principal weapon – the aircraft carrier was an untried weapon. It is an untried weapon no longer and the Navy that is going to win this war is the Navy that thinks in terms of Midway and the aircraft carrier. Air power had not displaced sea power – air power is sea power.”

“In Any Operation” – Aircraft Carriers

March, 1955

“The recent development of the H-bomb has cause many well-intentioned persons with limited naval or air experience to advise us, in effect, to abandon control of the sea. Actually the advent of the H-bomb should make the fast carrier task force even more effective. While carrier aircraft can use the H-bomb in attacking fixed shore targets with greater destructiveness than ever, the task force has only to use wider dispersions to minimize the damaging effect of the H-bomb and mobility and speed to avoid radio-active fall-out. The relative gain appears to be on the side of the mobile base of unpredeterminable position, the aircraft carrier.”

A Case for the Attack Carrier in the Missile Age

July, 1958

“The fact that the USSR has no aircraft carrier does not militate against the value; for the Soviets would be hard pressed to operate carriers from their land- and sometimes ice-locked bases. It may be, realizing the potency of this weapon, that Russia fears to lend credibility to it be embarking on such a venture at this time in history.” “The aircraft carrier has been attacked as a bad investment because of it alleged vulnerability in the missile age, a vulnerability which precludes spending large sums of money. First of all, nothing is absolutely invulnerable. Everything is, under certain conditions. Of course carriers can be sunk, if they can be found, fought, and hit directly. Men can be killed; yet we do not argue that, ipso facto, we should not out money into training a soldier. Aircraft can be shot down, but we do not advocate abandonment of all aircraft.”

Future of the Carrier?

August, 1959

“It would seem to me that for the attack carrier to be effective in time of nuclear unlimited war, our country would have to keep prohibitive number of carrier task forces on, or near, station. How many missile submarines could be kept on patrol for the same amount of money?”

The Attack Carrier – Mobile Might

May, 1961

“Mobile, flexible and versatile – these are the words that Navy proponents apply to the modern attack aircraft carrier. Obsolete, vulnerable and exorbitantly expensive are adjectives that are applied on occasions by others. Perhaps no single weapon system or element of military strength has been the subject of as much controversy and dispute as have aircraft carriers in the nearly 40 years they have been part of our seapower.”

Lone Carriers…Fact or Fancy?

April, 1962

“Some iconoclastic ideas of carrier operation may allow full realization of the potential of the nuclear-powered Enterprise and her combat air group never before available to any navy. It is feasible to operate the carrier independently as a single ship? And how effective would this utilization be? The mere statement of such a suggestion may, of course, cause some professional navy readers to stop reading at this point. New concepts must necessarily involve some shattering of old ones.”

Diminishing Returns in the CVA

August, 1964

“In our carriers, there is a never-ending battle for space. Our advertising, ever-changing technology continues to create shortcomings in the availability of support and maintenance equipment and the attendant space requirements. The jet/missile/electronic revolution as applied to carrier-based aircraft, points up the many facets of this problem. The sophistication and complexity attained is gradually creating a loss of efficiency in maintaining these combat aircraft. Furthermore, future requirements indicate an even greater need for space.”

Carrier Air and Vietnam…an assessment

October, 1967

“Not too many years or even months ago, it was a popular pastime for amateur military strategists to speak and write words that questioned the U.S. investment in in aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy. These capital ships, termed “supercarriers” in the press, were considered to be great white elephants, vulnerable to whatever force an enemy chose to throw at them; costly dinosaurs that plodded the seas at 30 knots in an era when air speeds above a thousand knots were commonplace.” “Today, as the continuous pounding from the three attack carriers at ‘Yankee Station’ grinds on, this criticism is seldom heard. Instead, there are repeated requests for more carriers on the line, and expressions of approbation from quarters once opposed to the carrier weapon system.”

Carriers Sail On

June, 1989

“Navies also offer reach into otherwise inaccessible areas, putting fighters, strike aircraft, and accompanying escorts into positions to mount offensive operations. Because public opposition to some types of weapons is growing, carriers may even become the only available home for some necessary elements of the deterrent arsenal. Fleets with their own air cover and offensive capability will also continue to carry the capability to confront an opponent with the threat of a protracted war. Without carriers, U. S. leaders would, for the foreseeable future, have only the options of nuclear escalation or surrender and isolation in response to any successful Soviet conventional probe on the Eurasian rimland. Carriers would not only be essential to maintain forward-based forces in a long war, but if the early stages of that war were lost those carriers and SAC remain the only way of holding the ring and taking the war to the aggressor.”

The Last Days of Carrier-Based Aviation?

January, 1999

“The bell-tolls announcing the slow death of carrier-based aviation were sounded on 20 August 1998 by the 75 Tomahawk cruise missiles that were launched against terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. In terms of naval history, the 20th century has been the era of the aircraft carrier. The carrier spearheaded the victory in the Pacific during World War II, played decisive roles during Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, and has long been the hallmark of America’s prowess on the high seas. As we enter the new millennium it will become more and more obvious, however, that technology that earlier favored the aircraft carrier will dictate its demise.”

Get the Carriers!

September, 2007

“There’s a misconceived belief among them that the need for air power is on the wane. One basic line of argument is that surface ships with missiles can replace carriers in littoral attack. Branching out, critics contend that since the revolution in strike warfare increased precision strike capacity by an order of magnitude, then micro-air wings on small carriers can do the job. It’s all framed in lurking suspicions about the vulnerability of carriers and a vague desire not to put all the eggs in one basket.”

Opportunity at Hand: New Roles for Carriers

June, 2008

“The carrier debate should not be related to that of its historic battleship predecessor, nor should it devolve into an inter-service domain supremacy or roles-and-mission budget battle. It should be viewed simply as an opportunity to collaborate on leveraging extant joint force capabilities to enhance strategic agility, thus providing the joint force commanders with more options to successfully meet growing operational challenges”

It Takes a Carrier: Naval Aviation and the Hybrid Fight

September, 2009

“The final argument in favor of continued aircraft carrier construction might be the fact that everybody else seems to be building them. Last November, an official in China’s Ministry of National Defense mentioned for the first time in a public venue the possibility of his nation acquiring aircraft carriers. Around the same time, Admiral Hu Yanlin, former political commissar of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, stated ‘China has the capability to build aircraft carriers, and should do so.’ His country has already purchased three carriers built by the former Soviet Union and one built by Australia. It has also been reported that, since 1987, China has been training PLA pilots to one day command aircraft carriers. The United Kingdom, Russia, and India have all shown a keen interest in building carriers.

Fortress at Sea? The Carrier Invulnerability Myth

January, 2010

“The recently renewed debate over aircraft carrier requirements has focused mainly on the factors of cost and utility. These issues notwithstanding, analysts often overlook or understate the carriers’ inherent vulnerabilities. Regardless of the number of carriers national leadership decides to maintain, because they remain the U.S. Navy’s preeminent capital ship and a symbol of American global power and prestige, they are a potential key target for both unconventional and conventional adversaries. Carrier proponents, however, universally seem to accept on faith alone the premise that a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN) is essentially invulnerable.”

Twilight of the $UPERfluous Carrier

May, 2011

“Continuing to invest in platforms such as the supercarrier—which are expensive to build, cost-prohibitive to operate, and increasingly vulnerable in anti-access/area denied environments—is to repeat the mistakes of the battleship admirals who failed to recognize air power’s potential in the 1930s.”

‘Responsive and Relevant’

February, 2014

“If value is defined as worth, importance, or usefulness, then it can be argued that over the course of the past 100 years no single asset in the U.S. military arsenal has provided more value than the aircraft carrier—nuclear-powered (CVN) for the last 50 years—and its embarked air wing (CVW). The integrated CVN/CVW remains the most effective instrument for shaping the national military strategy, with proven applicability across the range of military operations from humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) to high-end maritime strike warfare.”

Too Big to Sink

May, 2017

“The aircraft carrier has had a long and illustrious history, but it cannot continue forever. Instead of waiting for budgetary challenges or an enemy combat success to force it to radically change its structure, the U.S. Navy should begin the transition on its own terms today. By building larger numbers of smaller combatants, relying more on missiles and less on expensive aircraft, and acknowledging trends in scouting technology, the Navy can take advantage of carriers’ many attributes without being completely dependent on them. The alternative is for the Navy to continue to rely on a ship so vital that it has become too big to sink.”

That was a short synopsis of the debate after 1930 down to the present.

[miletus12]

Treaty fallout from the American point of view: 1922 to 1930.

Let us discuss the problem with submarines in the United States contest. I will quote from an article which seems not to be concerned with naval matters whatsoever.

President Theodore Roosevelt's shipbuilding program, started in the early 1900's, provoked intense opposition among large well-organized groups of educators, clergymen, and other citizens. Isolationist and pacifist groups opposed overseas expansion, demanded a reduction in American naval armaments and an end to what they perceived to be United States militarism. In 1908, the name of U.S. Steel baron Andrew Carnegie headed a list of nearly 400 citizens of New York City who submitted a petition to the committee denouncing Roosevelt's proposed $60,000,000 naval construction program. Form petitions signed by hundreds of theological students, Pennsylvania Quakers, political liberals, constitutional advocates, and dedicated peace groups continued to decry naval expansion in succeeding years.

The submarine seaport defenses in 1904 were under the jurisdiction and control of the Army. Army strategies for submarines were to replace and supplement fixed mines, pick up and repair defective cable joints and junction boxes, and prevent countermining by enemy submarines. The Navy Department board was adverse to the purchase of any more "submarine torpedo boats" and wanted to experiment with them to ascertain their full value. The Army board wanted to use submarines for mining and coastal defense and recommended that submarines be put under Army supervision as a distinct coast defense.

Initially the US Navy separated submersibles into two groups according to mission. "Boats" of the N and O classes, as well as some of the E type, patrolled US coasts and harbors in the service of a defensive strategy. Other submarines drew assignments that sent them to hostile European waters after 1917. Subsequent Navy Department planning for submarine operations reflected prevailing surface warfare thinking, which perceived the submersible as a type of destroyer or torpedo boat that should operate with the battle fleet.

===============================================================================

That was a problem. The American boats of the pre-1920 era were of the harbor defense and coastal "underwater fighter" type: predominanntly small, fast underwater for the era, not designed for patrols, but more as sortie boats, and equipped with unreliable propulsion systems and very few torpedoes as their primary armament with the deck gun being an afterthought. The boats were almost universally coast defense adjuncts by intent and characteristics.

The German U-cruiser campaign was a revelation. Even though the USN had experience with convoy both for the real history and in this alternate time line in WWI, the evidence was in that the submarine could and probably should be used as an offensive sea denial system.

The problem, as you can see, that the object to be sea denied, the Japanese Empire, was some 15,000 kilometers away from the United States. That meant the under 1,000 tons submerged displacement American "submarine fighters" would not do at all.

So enter the V-boats. These first attempts at American U-cruisers were about to set the limits for what the Americans would accept from the naval disarmament treaties. Those behemoths massed 2,500 tons submerged displacement. So in this alternate Washington Naval Treaty, the cap on submarines might be equal to destroyer tonnage, but those Pacific crossing American boats would be larger than the allowed destroyers; in real or alternate history terms. The thing about gigantism culminated in the twin debacles of USS Argonaut and USS Nautilus, both of 4,000 tons submerged displacement about the time of the treaty when laid down. Slow, unwieldly and mechanically unreliable would be a good description of these last two mistakes.

It was in nine attempts that the USN would try to fix those problems, named, between 1922 and 1930. It can be reliably written that they failed miserably. As far as submarines were concerned, the Americans functionally had none, so the treaty was for this class a non-issue, either in the real history or in this fake one.  

[miletus12]

ARTICLE

Strategic Failures Are Often Failures of Imagination
The Washington Naval Treaties had different effects on interwar innovation in Britain, Japan, and the United States—and their abilities to wage war.
By Kori Schake
July 2021 Proceedings Vol. 147/7/1,421

The Washington Naval Accords of 1922, an interlinked series of eight treaties, addressed the drivers of geopolitical competition in East Asia by constraining the militaries of the major powers, rupturing the Anglo-Japanese alliance, opening China to trade, and ending Japanese control of Shandong, China. The administration of President Warren G. Harding believed the Washington Treaties would prevent war, reduce the cost of the Navy, and have more public appeal than continued naval building programs. France’s government summarized the treaties’ purpose: “The pretended disarmament of the accords of Washington is not a disarmament of peace, but a disarmament of war.” The powers negotiated, France believed, “with the idea of being able, if the occasion arises, to make war in the best conditions and cheaper.”1

The treaties limited warship types, tonnage, and armaments as well as expansion of shore facilities. In particular, the numbers of battleships, cruisers, and aircraft carriers for each country were subject to numerical limits; CRUISERS, submarines and destroyers were instead limited by magnitude to 10,000-ton displacements (CRUISERS). But the restrictions came alongside treaties that gave each major power something: Britain, the largest fleet affordably; the United States, an end to the Anglo-Japanese defense agreement and naval parity with Britain; and Japan, international stature and prevention of new defenses on U.S. and British holdings in Asia.

By setting fixed ratios for the size and numbers of capital ships, the Washington Naval Accords advantaged innovation in new forms of maritime power. The navies of the United States and Japan accelerated in creative ways; Britain’s Royal Navy did not. The respective successes and failures provide insight into why and how militaries innovate—and how to think about the challenges of innovation in the present.

Britain. To the extent the accords were deleterious to Britain, it is mostly because the Royal Navy innovated less urgently and interestingly than the United States or Japan.

After World War I, the United Kingdom still had the world’s paramount naval force, but the United States and Japan were rising fast; postwar Britain was unable to match their naval spending and conscious of its evaporating hegemony. Allied with Japan since 1902, the British were more concerned with U.S. ambitions. Britain’s military in 1921 confronted “prolonged political hostility” domestically because of World War I casualties, humiliating failures at Gallipoli and Jutland, and popular disarmament campaigns.2

The restraints in the Washington Naval Treaties had a disproportionate effect on the Royal Navy. Fleet reductions in the treaties were greatest for Britain, which had to scrap 20 extant capital ships. Hulls already laid for Nelson-class ships had to be redesigned for smaller displacements to remain within Britain’s apportionment. (These would come to be referred to as “cherry tree classes” because they were “chopped down” by Washington). In constraining dreadnought battleships, the Washington Naval Treaties checked Britain’s strongest suit.

The British government accepted the 1:1 ratio of maritime power with the United States and conceded its alliance with Japan because it saw no way to fund the alternative. U.S. naval planners thought the Washington Naval Accords left the Royal Navy superior in fighting strength, but London disagreed. Even decades later, an eminent British historian described the treaties as “one of the major catastrophes of English history.”3

Britain expended most of its operational and doctrinal effort repairing failures of fleet operations at Jutland, increasing independent maneuvering and prioritizing contact with the enemy. Historian David MacGregor concludes: “Surface combat was the Navy’s own idea of its reason for existence, and consequently received the highest priority throughout the interwar period.”4


HMS Nelson was the first of two ships in a class that was redesigned to comply with the Washington Naval Treaties. Among their nicknames was “the cherry tree class,” because they were “chopped down” by Washington. Credit: Imperial War Museum

The failure at Gallipoli, too, was studied obsessively by the British military establishment. But perhaps because of its humiliation, its studies uniformly concluded that the invention of the machine gun, modern artillery, and aircraft made amphibious assaults impossible. As a result, the army and navy developed neither landing craft nor procedures for naval gunfire or air support of a landing force.5

Britain’s services remained intensely parochial, suffering from a “debilitating complacency” about amphibious (and antisubmarine) warfare.6 As late as 1938, the Royal Navy insisted, “The Admiralty cannot visualize any particular combined operation taking place and are not therefore prepared to devote any considerable sum of money” to studying it.7 Christopher Bell captures the culture exactly: “Naval decision-makers never wavered in their conviction that sea power had always been, and should ever remain, the preeminent weapon in Britain’s arsenal, and they instinctively accepted the idea of a ‘British way’ in warfare.”8 Nor did the British establishment appreciate the “anti-intellectual aspects of such a cohesive culture.”9 As a result, when faced with the most demanding reconsideration of the three naval powers, Britain innovated the least.

In his relentless history of the corrosion of British naval power from the Napoleonic Wars to World War I, The Rules of the Game, Andrew Gordon concludes that agile adapters win wars, writing: “If doctrine is not explicitly taught, vested interests will probably ensure that wrong doctrine is ambiently learnt.”10 Britain’s record of tepid innovation in the 1921–35 treaty period of naval armament constraints suggests Gordon’s criticism remained trenchant long after his period of study.

The United States. The least economically constrained treaty party in the 1920s was the United States, its manufacturing output larger than that of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Japan combined.11 Despite how events are commonly presented today, U.S. funding for defense was not wholly deficient in the interwar period—not by comparison with Britain and Japan at the time, nor by the historical U.S. standard. As John Braeman argues, “Perhaps at no time in its history—before or since—has the United States been more secure.”12 But even before the Great Depression, commitment had waned to seeing through the naval expansion begun in 1916.13

And threats were mounting, with Japan openly acknowledged as the pacing threat. Over U.S. objections, the World War I settlement gave to Japan Germany’s colonial possessions in the Pacific and established the prohibition against fortifications. Given Pacific distances, this was a strong advantage for Japan over Britain and the United States.14 U.S. war plans of the interwar years never solved the problem that Philippine harbors were both indispensable to wartime operations against Japan and indefensible.15 But as Williamson Murray concludes, the eventual U.S. success “rested on serious intellectual effort that came to grips with intractable problems.”16

Many changes in military capabilities that would become revolutionary were pioneered in World War I—combined-arms tactics, submarine warfare, strategic bombing, carrier warfare—but interwar experimentation drove operational concepts that were essential to their effective use.17 In some cases, exercises even drove the technology, as with a 1921 S-boat experiment that revealed incapacities that were not remediable until 1939. The period of the Washington Naval Accords saw ships transition from coal to oil to increase speed and range; introduction of electrical power systems, radio, radar, and radio-controlled torpedoes; and improved elevation of turreted guns increasing firepower. Tonnage limits also spurred submarine designs to maximize cruising distance and torpedo power and encouraged improvements in ship design by requiring substitution of plastic and aluminum for heavier metals.18

The Washington Naval Accords required efficiency of the U.S. Navy. The 394 destroyers built at the end of World War I precluded construction of more for 12 years, so the Navy channeled modernization efforts into light cruisers.19 The treaty restrictions, coupled with the demands of security in East Asia, created a general atmosphere of innovation in the service.20 Even so, military historians—and the military leaders of the time—derided the unwillingness of the Presidents and Congress to fund the military more fulsomely, especially before the Depression.

When the Naval Accords went into effect, the Navy was still in thrall to Mahan’s grand fleet actions; that changed dramatically across the accords’ duration.21 War plans evolved through the 1920s and 1930s from incompatible Army and Navy propositions to encompass combined-arms operations, Marine Corps doctrinal development of amphibious operations, island-hopping (since bases could not be reliably held), and acknowledgment of the need for unrestricted submarine warfare at least in “strategical areas.”22

Professional development and wargaming explored naval aviation as an independent strike force, and the operational navy experimented with implementing aircraft carrier concepts that increased the pace of aircraft operations, use of arresting cables, development of crash barriers, and optimization of flight deck operations.23 The experimentation was so effective that, in 1934, Rear Admiral Ernest King, chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, claimed that U.S. naval aviation had “reached a degree of efficiency not equaled by any other power.”24

Admiral King proved incorrect in that assessment. The Imperial Japanese Navy innovated even more spectacularly in many ways.


U.S. Marines practice amphibious assault tactics and techniques at an unidentified location in the 1930s. The United States and Imperial Japan each spent much of the 1930s developing the methods that would define their approach to defending and assaulting the islands on which so much of the Pacific war would be fought. Credit: U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

Japan. The Washington Accords affected Japan’s threat perceptions, national strategy, technology, military buildup, and operational concepts tested by exercises—as well as drove radicalization of the officer corps, which saw purges of accommodationist officers and even assassinations. For no other country were the effects as significant.

Japan became a great power via “catch-up” industrialization through technology-transfer agreements made with Western firms and imitation of foreign products; half of those foreign firms were American.25 Britain and France supplied Japan with technology, advisors, and ships and celebrated their effectiveness during the Sino-Japanese War.26

Imperial Japanese Navy leaders were dedicated Mahanians; their 1918 Imperial National Defense Policy planned to take the Philippines in the initial phase of any war, then engage the United States in a decisive battle in the western Pacific.27 But they had assessed that a 70 percent ratio “assured Japan ‘a strength insufficient to attack and adequate for defense,’ and imperative as a deterrent to the United States.”28

From its inception, attitudes about the Washington Accords were deeply divided in Japan. Japan’s objective in the negotiations was to minimize differences with Britain and especially the United States.29 Whereas Navy Minister (and active-duty Admiral) Kato Tomosaburo supported arms limits because of U.S. economic superiority, Vice Admiral Kato Kanji argued that superiority required Japan’s peacetime force to deter or conclude the war before U.S. advantages could be brought to bear. The “battle of the two Katos” resulted in acceptance of the Washington Naval Accords at the cost of military embitterment. On the day Japan accepted the treaty, Vice Admiral Kanji “was seen shouting, with tears in his eyes, ‘As far as I am concerned, war with America starts now.’”30


Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor demonstrated both Japan’s interwar innovations in carrier aviation and naval warfighting and that country’s desire to win the war with the United States quickly, before U.S. industrial might could be brought to bear. This photo was taken by a Japanese pilot during the attack. Credit: Naval History and Heritage Command

While restraints on a militarized Japan may well have been what Ernest Andrade Jr. called “a diplomatic achievement of major importance,” they were also the catalyst to an amazing series of innovations unhindered by restraints that might have remained in place without the Washington Accords.31

By 1923, because of the treaties, the Japanese government revised its national defense policy to accept that war with the United States was inevitable, and plans extended the radius of action to include offensive mid-Pacific intercept operations. During its time as a party to the Washington Naval Accords, Japan developed large high-speed submarines to implement the strategy and mastered night attacks by surface vessels; matured joint doctrine for amphibious operations and pioneered the first amphibious assault ships; and designed and built Nakajima Type 97 attack bombers, Aichi Type 99 dive bombers, the Zero fighter plane, rockets, dive-bombs, and advanced aerial torpedoes.32 New tactics such as the employment of the carrier task force in a box formation also allowed the massing of naval aviation for greater operational effects.33

Japan respected the Washington system until 1931 and formally withdrew in 1935, setting off “the race to Pearl Harbor.”34 Williamson Murray writes, “The record of the U.S. military is far and away the most impressive of any nation in the 1920s and 1930s.”35 This undervalues the remarkable innovations Japan achieved with even more tightly constrained budgets.

A Victory of Imagination

Successful innovation requires a demanding and specific problem; organizational openness to new thinking; an ability to test and compare alternative solutions; money to develop new technology and build equipment; and leaders dedicated to forcing advantageous change into routine practice.

Such reengineering does not mean solutions will necessarily be optimal—or even correct—but without them, innovation is stifled.36 And innovation is not always the solution; as businessman Bill Turpin cautions, sometimes there will not be a silver bullet, and a whole lot of lead bullets will have to suffice.37 But faced with common constraints and a common inability to spend their way out of their problems, the militaries of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan spent 13 years grappling with how to innovate their way to success in a war over East Asia.

Charles O’Reilly argues that successful organizations struggle to innovate because innovation requires challenging the culture that made for success. Successful organizations, he says, “actively try to preserve their core competencies.”38 All three great power navies were successful organizations in 1921, but the Washington Naval Accords disrupted the core competencies of all three navies. Each understood its enemies were innovating whether or not it was.

Two of the three navies found paths to success, and then those two navies fought each other. At the end of the war, both of the two Katos from Japan’s delegation to the Washington Naval Accords were proved right: U.S. economic superiority meant Japan gained advantage by accepting arms control limits on its forces, and U.S. economic superiority became decisive because the war was not quickly won by Japan.

Britain’s failure was, ultimately, one of imagination; it could not imagine itself as other than what it had always been, even as Washington and especially Tokyo imagined new ways to fight. The U.S. military innovated before the war just enough to hold its own until those economic advantages could be brought to bear. Today, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps should ask themselves whether the current force more closely approximates the one that burst into being during the Washington Naval Accords years—or the Royal Navy that remained so beholden to its past successes and ashamed of its failures that it stifled the creativity and experimentation needed to face the looming challenges. It may be propitious that (as Andrew Gordon notes) then–Vice Admiral John Richardson encouraged the Naval Institute Press to publish the 2013 edition of The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command.

1. Alexandre Bracke, quoted in Joel Blatt, “The Parity That Meant Superiority: French Naval Policy towards Italy at the Washington Conference, 1921–22, and Interwar French Foreign Policy,” French Historical Studies 12, no. 2 (Autumn 1981): 244.
2. Brian Bond, British Military Policy Between the Two World Wars (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1980),35.
3. Correlli Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), 272; John Braeman, “Power and Diplomacy: The 1920s Reappraised,” The Review of Politics 44, no. 3 (July 1982): 355.
4. David MacGregor, “The Use, Misuse, and Non-Use of History: The Royal Navy and the Operational Lessons of the First World War,” The Journal of Military History 56, no. 4 (October 1992): 613.
5. MacGregor, “Use, Misuse, and Non-Use of History,” 607; Williamson Murray, Transformation and Innovation: The Lessons of the 1920s and 1930s (Institute for Defense Analysis, December 2002), 4, 10 (footnote 24)—though Murray is not entirely fair to the British.
6. The excellent term is David MacGregor’s.
7. MacGregor, “Use, Misuse, and Non-Use of History,” 614.
8. Christopher M. Bell, “Neither Corbett nor Mahan: British Naval Strategy and War Planning,” The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy Between the Wars, Christopher M. Bell, ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 127.
9. Brett Steele, Military Reengineering between the World Wars (The RAND Corporation, 2005), 12
10. Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 580.
11. Braeman, “Power and Diplomacy,” 345.
12. Braeman, 369.
13. Louis Morton, “Interservice Co-operation and Political-Military Collaboration,” Total War and Cold War: Problems in Civilian Control of the Military, Harry L. Coles, ed. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1962), 142.
14. Dudley W. Knox, The Eclipse of American Sea Power (New York: American Army & Navy Journal Inc., 1922), 135–36.
15. Louis Morton, “War Plan Orange: Evolution of a Strategy,” World Politics 11, no. 2 (January 1959): 228, 237, 244.
16. Murray, Transformation and Innovation, 21.
17. Murray, 4.
18. Ernest Andrade Jr., “Submarine Policy in the United States Navy, 1914–1941,” Military Affairs 35 (April 1971): 50–56.
19. William R. Braisted, The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1909–1922 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1971), 687–88.
20. Thomas C. Hone, “The Effectiveness of the ‘Washington Treaty’ Navy,” Naval War College Review 32, no. 6 (November–December 1979): 58.
21. J. E. Talbott, “Weapons Development, War Planning and Policy: The US Navy and the Submarine, 1917–1941,” Naval War College Review 37, no. 3 (May–June 1984): 60; Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 142.

22. Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 249–53; Lester H. Brune, The Origins of American National Security Policy: Sea Power, Air Power and Foreign Policy 1900–1941 (Manhattan, KS, 1981), 45–55, 68–76; Louis Morton, “War Plan Orange,” 227, 237, 249.

23. Rosen, Winning the Next War, 40–43.
24. Quoted in Thaddeus Tuleja, Statesmen and Admirals, 106–7.
25. Kozo Yamamura, “Japan’s Deus Ex Machina: Western Technology in the 1920s,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 12, no. 1 (Winter 1986): 71.
26. Cathryn Morette, “Technological Diffusion in Early-Meiji Naval Development, 1880–1895,” Emory Endeavors 2013, 205.27. Sadao Asada, “The Revolt against the Washington Treaty: The Imperial Japanese Navy and Naval Limitation, 1921–1927,” Naval War College Review 46, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 83.
27. Asada, “Revolt against the Washington Treaty,” 84.
29. Tadashi Kuramatsu, “Britain, Japan and Inter-War Naval Limitation, 1921–1936, From Allies to Antagonists,” in The Military Dimension, vol. 3, Ian Gow and Yoichi Hirama, eds., 128.
30. Asada, “Revolt against the Washington Treaty,” 86–88.
31. Ernest Andrade Jr., “The United States Navy and the Washington Conference,” Historian 31 (May 1969): 361–62.
32. Allan R. Millet, “Assault from the Sea: The Development of Amphibious Warfare Between the Wars,” in Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 81.
33. Lisle A. Rose, Power at Sea, vol. 1 (Columbia. MO: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 141–42.
34. Stephen E. Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Conference and the Onset of World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).
35. Murray, Transformation and Innovation, 1.
36. Steele, Military Reengineering.
37. Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things (New York: Harper Business, 2014), 88.
38. Charles O’Reilly, Winning Through Innovation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 3–13.

What has that article to do with this timeline?

Well; in broad outline, the three main players in the hypothetical treaty are still stuck where they were in 1922. I changed the naval geography by suggesting a Philippine Islands in a Cuban type "protectorate" status and a Theodore Rooseveltian type America more aggressive and successful in the Spanishj American War and WWI, with a more nuanced Micronesian presence in the Pacific. That was a bit of cheek on my part, because I always thought that McKinley and Roosevelt handled the Philippine Revolution the wrong way. It was worse than what happwened to Cuba, but it could have been better. The pieces for a Philippine self governing and associative partner were there. All we had to do, was "cut a deal".

Some might think that is funny. If it was possible, and it surely was, then it is not funny.

But as to innovation and to treaty effects. In this alternate timeline, I incorporated a few London Naval Treaty clauses to spice up the 1922 alternate Washington treaty. I also added a guided weapon clause *(the torpedo limitation) to reflect a more modern mindset about limiting effectors as much as launch platform characteristics and assumed that both the British^1 and the Japanese^2 would CHEAT on both as they did.

^1 The British built their Town class heavy cruisers with mounting straps for applique belt armor to increase their cruiser side protection. Did not work at all, but the cheat was there, for WE noticed it and created superheavyweight shells to defeat it.

^2 The Japanese bored out their guns and enlarged them on their battleships. They supercharged their propellant charges and in their modernizations easily exceeded the 3,000 tons "pad" allowed to rearrange existent protection allowed in the London Naval treaty for battleships. The Kongos grew fat by 5000 tons and doubled their watts.

The interesting thing to me is how would the Americans "cheat"? I supplied a real history example in the deepening of the gunpits on the real Standazrds and the replacement of the real defective engine sets with the better ones intended for the South Dakota (1923) class iintended and subsequently installed into the "Big 5". I also postulated that the Americans would complete all of their Lexingtons and accept a reduced battleline tonnage as a result of hypothetical WWI experience in the uselessness of battleships.

My assessment of Jutland, by the way, in that context was absolutely historical and real. The RN would be Jutland fixated as would be the USN gunclubbers. This would blinker in this altered treaty environment as well, hence the failure to develope submarine technology or a defense against it.    

[miletus12]

The British sure wanted to torpedo somebody between 1922 and 1930:

Short Type 81........................................................1913 amphib proof of concept.
Sopwith Special torpedo seaplane Type C..............................1914 second proof of concept, failed.
Sopwith Type 860.....................................................1914 land based failed.
Short Type 184.......................................................1915 amphib very successful.
Wight Twin...........................................................1915 land based failed.
AD Seaplane Type 1000................................................1916 amphib failed.
Blackburn G.P........................................................1916 amphib failed.
Short Type 166.......................................................1916 amphib failed.
Short Type 310/320...................................................1916 amphib successful.
Sopwith Cuckoo.......................................................1917 carrier based successful but pilot killer.
Blackburn Kangaroo...................................................1918 land based failed.
Vickers Vimy.........................................................1918 land based failed.
Blackburn Dart.......................................................1921 carrier based succeeded.
Blackburn Swift......................................................1921 carrier based failed.
Handley Page Hanley..................................................1922 carrier based failed.
Avro 557 Ava.........................................................1924 land based failed.
Blackburn Cubaroo....................................................1924 land based failed.
Handley Page Hendon..................................................1924 land based failed.
Blackburn Velos......................................................1925 carrier based failed.
Avro 571 Buffalo.....................................................1926 carrier based failed.
Beardmore W.D. IV....................................................1926? carrier based failed.
Blackburn Ripon......................................................1926 carrier based and very successful.
Handley Page H.P.31 Harrow...........................................1926 carrier based failed.
Hawker Horsley.......................................................1926 carrier based succeeded.
Gloster Goring.......................................................1927 amphib failed.
Hawker Harrier.......................................................1927 carrier based failed.
Supermarine Nanok....................................................1927 land based failed.
Blackburn Beagle.....................................................1928 carrier based failed.
Handley Page Hare....................................................1928 land based failed.
Vickers Vildebeest...................................................1928 land based succeeded.
Westland Witch.......................................................1928 land based failed.

By contrast:
Curtiss R-3, R-6 & R-9...............................................1915 land based very successful.
Aeromarine 700.......................................................1917 proof of concept.
Martin MBT/MT........................................................1918 land based successful.
Curtiss CT...........................................................1921 carrier based failed.
Douglas DT...........................................................1921 carrier based successful.
Stout ST.............................................................1922 land based failed.
Curtiss CS...........................................................1923 carrier based successful.
Martin T2M (SC)......................................................1923 carrier based successful.
Boeing TB............................................................1927 carrier based failed.
Douglas T2D..........................................................1927 carrier based successful.
Martin T3M...........................................................1927 carrier based successful.
Martin T4M...........................................................1928 carrier based successful.
Martin BM............................................................1930 carrier borne successful.

The Americans were not as anxious as the British or the French in the 1920s. They were more fighter oriented and interested in downing Zeppelins. The Japanese bought British stuff, usually right after the British were about to take an aircraft out of service.

That indicates that the RN during the 1920s was very much interested in the airplane as an anti-ship weapon. So what happened?  In the real history, the trends of experimentation and use indicated that the British with more time on the line in WWI conducted a lot of combat drops / war shots against U-boats raiding out of Belgian and German ports as the U-boats sortied. This was mainly with largish seaplanes. The natural inclination to try to conduct such operations from aircraft carriers continued postwar with a mixed results record. There was enough success that the British developed air dropped versions of the Mark VII and Mark VIII 18 inch Whitehead torpedo from 1914 forward. 

The Americans, for their part, despite the highly successful Martins and Curtiss torpedo bombers, did not have the war experience nopr did they devote the money. Their first purpose designed air dropped torpedo was the 18 inch Bliss Leavitt Mark 7, designed in 1920  and still in service throughout WWII. Bothe the Whiteheads and the Bliss Leavitts, despite radically different designs had similar swim characteristics and effects: 30-33 knots or ! 60 KPHand 3,500 4,000 yards or 3,300 to 3,700 meters run.  The warhead was about 300 pounds 145 kg of TNT in either case. 

The British quickly developed a cable nose retarded water entry system to prevent water impact from throwing the torpedo out of stable water entry or breaking it up. The Americans stupidly did not do this, even though they had the same fall out of control and breakup incidents as the British experienced.   

In the alternate history Moffett does not die in the USS Akron disaster (1933) and this all gets fixed, for Admiral Moffett was a friend of FDR as in "drinking buddies" go to Warm Springs Georgia to get away from the hassles drinking buddies.      
  

[miletus12]

Some more real history; this goes to some crucial 1920s mistakes in how a navy went about its personnel management.

HISTORICAL EVENTS | Aug. 20, 2021
The Investigations
On 6 December 1941 a 14-part message was sent from Tokyo to the Japanese ambassador to the United States. The entire message was to be presented to President Roosevelt at approximately the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor, breaking off relations between Japan and the United States. The fourteenth part of the message arrived somewhat later than the thirteenth. In that same vein, we offer the fourteenth installment of our series on Pearl Harbor.

On 7 December 1941 Japanese naval aircraft swept in on an unsuspecting U.S. Pacific Fleet and Army in the Hawaiian Islands and destroyed many American ships and aircraft. In a little over 2 hours, 18 warships--including 8 battleships--and over 160 aircraft were knocked out of action. Japan's eastern flank secured, its forces would rampage through the rest of the Pacific virtually unopposed.

Within days of the disaster, calls resounded from the public, press, and the government itself for an investigation into how and why such a thing could happen. To many, it was not just the magnitude of the defeat; the extraordinary unpreparedness of U.S. forces in Hawaii seemed almost criminal. Someone had to pay.

However, fixing responsibility for the debacle at Pearl Harbor was complicated by the revelations about the MAGIC decryptions. MAGIC was the covername assigned to the intelligence garnered from the decryptions and translations of Japanese diplomatic messages. From mid-1940 until the attack on Pearl Harbor, American cryptologists had read the most sensitive Japanese diplomatic messages and had kept President Roosevelt informed of every Japanese diplomatic and political policy turn. But MAGIC didn't tell Roosevelt and other government leaders what the Japanese military was planning. Those ciphers and codes had largely resisted the efforts of American cryptologists to break them. Any investigation of the Pearl Harbor disaster would be as much a revelation of what we DIDN'T know as of what we DID know.

The issue of culpability would not be settled in one investigation; in fact, for many people it was never really settled at all. Ultimately, EIGHT hearings would be held over the course of World War II, culminating in a joint congressional investigation beginning on 15 November 1945. What follows is a brief summary of each.

The Roberts Commission, 18 December 1941-23 December 1942:
This commission, set by presidential executive order, and chaired by Owen Roberts, a justice of the Supreme Court, was charged to determine the facts of the Japanese attack and establish if any dereliction of duty had occurred. MAGIC was discussed, but who received it and the details of the reports were not covered. Not surprisingly, the hearings were hostile to the area commanders, General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel. The major political and military figures in Washington were exonerated.

The Hart Inquiry, 15 February 1944-15 June 1944:
The Navy Department ordered Admiral Thomas Hart, former commander of the Asiatic Fleet, to conduct a one-man inquiry on Pearl Harbor so that important testimony would not be lost by hazard of war.

The Army Pearl Harbor Board, 20 July 1944-20 October 1944:
In response to an act of Congress on 13 July 1944, the army's adjutant general convened hearings which took testimony from 151 witnesses. MAGIC evidence was taken only during the last week of the hearings. Surprisingly, and perhaps because radio intercept information was downplayed, the board censured Generals George Marshall and Leonard Gerow (War Plans Division) for not fully advising General Short of the situation.

The Naval Court of Inquiry, 24 July 1944-19 October 1944:
A court of inquiry was convened in response to the same congressional act of 13 July 1944. The hearings made full use of MAGIC, though the testimony on it was classified and kept from the public. The findings of the inquiry completely exonerated Admiral Kimmel. Instead, Admiral Harold Stark, chief of naval operations at the time of Pearl Harbor, was blamed for failing to adequately advise Kimmel of the critical situation prior to the attack.

The Clausen Investigation, 23 November 1944-12 September 1945:
By personal direction of the secretary of war, a one-man inquiry conducted by Major Henry Clausen was detailed to obtain testimony to supplement the Army Board's completed investigation.

The Hewitt Inquiry, 14 May 1945-11 July 1945:
Similar to the Clausen investigation, the navy secretary ordered Admiral Kent Hewitt to continue the naval inquiry.

The Clarke Investigation, 14-16 September 1944 and 13 July 1945-4 August 1945:
The secretary of war ordered Colonel Carter Clarke, head of the Military Intelligence Division, which, in turn, oversaw the army's COMINT efforts, to investigate the handling of communications by the military intelligence division prior to Pearl Harbor.

On 15 November 1945, the Joint Congressional Committee Investigation into the Pearl Harbor disaster held its first session. Established by a Joint Congressional Resolution, this investigation promised to be the most thorough possible. The Truman administration released all of the relevant classified documents, including the MAGIC translations. All of the participants still alive, with the exception of the seriously ill Secretary of War Stimson, were examined. In 1946 the committee's findings were released in forty volumes. A single volume report contained twelve findings that apportioned the blame among all the principals: Hawaiian area commanders and the War and Navy Departments. A minority report also censured Roosevelt but concluded, like the majority findings, that Secretary Stimson, Secretary Knox, Generals Marshall and Gerow, and Admiral Stark, as well as General Short and Admiral Kimmel, were culpable for the disaster.

The hope that the investigations would finally determine who was responsible was never fulfilled. Although many figures in Washington were blamed, Kimmel and Short would bear the onus for the disaster. But the fifty years following the investigations would see a stream of "revisionist" histories and rationalizations for the major figures, such as Admiral Kimmel. Conspiracies to suppress intelligence by Churchill, Roosevelt, and others would be "exposed." Other historians would "discover" new intelligence that existed which would have saved Pearl Harbor. However, the phoenix-like nature of the Pearl Harbor controversy proved only what one of Admiral Kimmel's lawyers wrote to him in 1953: "Pearl Harbor never dies, and no living person has seen the end of it."

I would draw particular attention to future ADM Harold Stark.

During the late 1920s and into the mid 1930s, he served in Washington D.C. as the Naval Aide to the Secretary of the Navy. His military career from there led him to become Chief of the Bureau of Ordinance from 1934 to 1937, where he spent his time organizing and structuring the Navy. He also had shown his natural ability of being a successful diplomat, and this particular skill became a highlight of his naval career. In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted him to Chief Naval Operations at the onset of World War II.

Further:

As Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Stark oversaw the expansion of the United States Navy as the threat of the Axis Powers grew throughout Europe. Through his proposed “Two-Ocean Navy Bill” that was granted by Congress on July 19th,1940, the policy allowed for a 70% increase in navy forces with the ability to relocate 30% of the funding as needed by himself and the President. He would later take over as the commander of the U.S. forces in Europe, and step down from his position as Chief of Naval Operations in March 1942 following a controversial miscommunication that some historians believe led to the Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Some historians believe Stark is to blame over the failure to provide sufficient information of the imminent attack on Pearl Harbor, and changing the wording of Admiral Richmond K. Turner’s warning over a possible attack to less threatening sounding language. Other historians argue that the blame fell directly on the Director of War Plans, Admiral Richmond K. Turner. Turner’s blame is thought to have originated from the failure to send this imminent threat to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, The Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed in Hawaii, and provide sufficient time to prepare for a surprise attack.

The points you should take away from this information, about Stark of the 1920s, are threefold.

a. Stark was a careerist politician ladder climber who evaded the teaditonal USN ship-shore-ship-shore-career cycle to test out an officer's ability to lead as well as to manage.
b. Stark never schooled through the Navy education system to learn "grand strategy" and the "operational art".
c. Stark was ignorant of the technical tracks, that sea service would have driven home to him in day to day ship operations.

And yet this utter fool was made Chief of the Bureau of Ordnanmce. When was that?

Rear Admiral Claude C. Bloch, 1923–1927.......................not responsible for the mess, and proved competent. He started the new torpedo programs.
Rear Admiral William D. Leahy, 1927–1931......................imbecile; failed to advance any of the urgent projects that Bu-Ord had in hand.
Rear Admiral Edgar B. Larimer, 1931–1934......................knew what he was doing. Advanced the 1.1 inch AAA gun and the torpedoes program. Brought the 5 / 38 gun into service after exhaustive tests.  Solved or at least pointed out the shell dispersion and duds problem with the main USN naval artillery. 
Rear Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark, 1934–1937..............expletive deleted. Why? He failed to TEST the ordnance or follow up Larimer's work. Hid the torpedo program failures from the USN operating forces, the Congress and the President.    

That goes beyond 1930. Why was it important in reference to the Washington Treaty?

The Mark 14 Torpedo.

THE MARK 14 TORPEDO — WHEN JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING GOES WRONG, EVEN THE TESTING

by: Al Williams

I am a fan of the saying that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. After all, humans have been building things for a number of centuries and we should learn from the engineers of the past. While you can learn a lot studying successes, sometimes — maybe even most of the time — we learn more from studying failure. The US Navy’s Mark 14 torpedo certainly has a lot to teach us.

The start of the story was the WWI-era Mark 10 torpedo which was fine for its day, but with faster destroyers and some additional data about how to best sink enemy ships it seemed necessary to build a new torpedo that would be faster, carry more explosive charge, and use a new method of detonation. Work started in 1931 with a $143,000 budget which may sound laughable today, but that was a lot of coin in the 1930s. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $2.5 million.

CHANGES NEEDED



Data from the earlier war indicated that you got the most effect by detonating explosives underneath a ship. This was especially true since warships were adding torpedo blisters to absorb strikes along the hull. With a contact fuse, you would tend to explode on the hull somewhere along the perimeter of the ship’s envelope and a ship — especially one with blisters — was more likely to survive the strike.

Contact triggers were out and instead the torpedo would read the change in the magnetic field caused by the enemy ship’s hull and detonate under the ship, splitting the target in half. Unfortunately, the Earth’s magnetic field varies based on location and this made the new detonators unreliable. Some estimates are that the torpedo had at least a 50% fail rate in combat. In 1942, out of 800 torpedoes fired, 80% failed to do their job.

In the 1930s, this torpedo was as complicated as you could get. Clearly, you’d want to test this new design pretty exhaustively, right? The cost of the torpedo and some political wrangling thwarted testing that would have uncovered many problems. Cutbacks meant there was only one company making the torpedo, at a slow rate, and with little oversight. In 1937 the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, Rhode Island employed 3,000 workers working three shifts and still only produced 1.5 torpedoes per day.

The the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance not only produced a bad design but then failed to test. The real root cause for the high failure rate was this lack of testing.

COMPLEX HARDWARE: THE MARK 6 MAGNETIC INFLUENCE DETONATOR



The Mark 14 steam torpedo had the option of using a traditional contact detonator, or the magnetically triggered Mark 6 exploder, which was a marvel in its day.



Paradoxically, the Mark 6 was so secret that its manual was never printed and the original was locked away in a safe where it didn’t do anyone any good. It derived from German magnetic mines and that might have been part of the motivation for the secrecy. Oddly enough, you can read some of the manuals online now. The Mark 14 maintenance manual is pretty interesting.



Despite the promise of the new technology, in war crews noticed the new torpedoes were either exploding too early or going too deep. The Bureau of Ordnance dismissed reports that the torpedoes were not effective, blaming the crews for not operating the devices correctly.



THAT NOBODY CAN DENY

The little official testing conducted before production was done with a light dummy torpedo. When post-production testing finally took place they showed the torpedo was running deep. Naturally the dummy didn’t sink as far as a fully-operational torpedo in the previous tests.

Faced with direct evidence that the torpedoes were failing, the Bureau finally conceded there was a design problem with the depth mechanism. It would turn out that in addition to the depth problem, the magnetic detonator was too sensitive. There was a backup contact detonator, but it used a firing pin that often failed when it hit enemy ships. That was odd since the system had worked on earlier torpedoes.

The Mark 14 was faster, so striking a ship involved more force than before and it was enough to bend pins in the firing pin block.^1 The designers apparently noticed this early in the design and added stronger springs, but as the torpedo’s maximum speed increased the new springs were not enough and there was no further testing.

One quick fix for the firing pin problem was to machine down lightweight aluminum alloy to make a stronger and lighter firing pin. Oddly enough, some of the material they used was from Japanese planes shot down over Pearl Harbor.

^1 What actually happened was the guide cage bent and the pin jammed in the travel before it hit the shotgun shell that was supposed to set off the ignition charge. The heavy pin traveled too slowly before the cage bent due to impact. The USN operating forces in the field once, they understood the problem, greased the guide cage with graphite, and milled a new pin out of aluminum, and installed a much stronger spring as a driver. The difference was only about a millisecond in time difference, but the faster travelling pin worked as intended before the guides distorted the from the impact and jammed it in mid career. M.   

PASSING THE BUCK (Stark was the second to do it. Leahy was first.)

This is a sad story that has been repeated many times since then. Budget and schedule pressures short cut technically sound judgment. Then no one wants to admit that there is a problem because that would look bad. As engineers, we should sound the alarm when things are not done right and management should be willing to take a hard look at the cost of doing it right versus the cost of having to redo it later.

The hero of this story, by the way, is Charles “Swede” Momsen. He was an engineer who had proposed the submarine rescue chamber and developed the Momsen lung, which was not entirely successful. When the commander of the Southwest Pacific submarine fleet decided to solve the problems with the Mark 14, he turned to Swede. He carried out the tests that should have been done during development.

The other heroes are the crews that managed to work around these problems as best they could. Despite the Bureau ordering the exploders to have painted screw heads to deter tampering, crews found matching paint and removed them anyway. We’ve seen a lot of ingenuity like that during war. Not the least, of course, is hacking foxhole radios.

We know not everything we work on is a life or death project. But when people do depend on your work to either behave or not behave in a certain way, saving money on testing often goes badly in the worst way. That’s the lesson of the Mark 14, the Mars Climate Orbiter, autonomous vehicle crashes, or a failed software update bricking devices.

Drachinifel still gets most of it wrong. M.

As you might expect, this story has been told many times. I liked [Drachinifel’s] video about the history of the Mark 14. Some people don’t think the real impact of the torpedo issues were as great as reported, but I imagine if you were on a sub crew effectively firing blanks, you might not agree. [Military History Not Visualized] has an interesting video about the real impact of the failure on the course of the war.

Now how did the Japanese achieve under-keel detonations successfully?



The Japanese had this curious custom. They assigned a line officer and a school trained technician to their weapon projects and made it clear that the price of failure would be significant as in "loss of face". Rear Admiral Kaneji Kishimoto and Captain Toshihide Asakuma.were the fortunate people assigned to make the Type 93 and Type 95 work in 1928.  Since they both survived the experience, it could be assumed that they made sure the Japanese torpedo worked.^2 

^2 Remarkably, they sort of failed. In the many destroyer brawls the USN and IJN fought, the Japanese only sank 22 US ships and only 1 of those was a capital ship in surface  combat. (USS Hornet after she was abandoned as a wreck. USS Wasp and USS Yorktown were I-boat kills due to post battle stupidity.)  Going the other way, once the Mark 14 and Mark 15 was fixed, the tally was about 49 IJN ships with 3 battleships, 3 aircraft carriers and 4 cruisers being put down by US destroyer and submarine torpedoes.   

=============================================================

The peculiarities of either the real history or the alternate history of the WNT, plus the peculiarities of naval doctrines, within that treaty regime that each navy developed was bound to influence how each navy "looked" as it developed inside the treaty limitations. 

For the specific case of the British, they started with an early lead in naval aviation that they tried to maintain with a vigorous program of 1920s development, that surprisingly included an emphasis on anti-ship strike. They lost the plot with repeated aircraft program failures and with the political decision to roll the fleet air arm into their Royal Air Force going into the 1930s, but we are not that far yet. We just have the record of "mixed success" in which they still held a substantial lead. 

As for their technical development in the realm of torpedoes and guns?     

Britain held a technological lead in torpedo development for much of the period between the World Wars, but they were overtaken by the Japanese with their use of pure oxygen. However, the British remained ahead of all other nations. This success was mainly due to the adoption of the Brotherhood burner-cycle engine. The burner-cycle engine was in effect a semi-diesel. Typically, air pressurized to about 840 lbs./in2 (59 kg/cm2) was heated to about 1,800ºF (1,000ºC) by burning a small amount of atomized kerosene-type fuel. This hot air/gas mixture was then fed into the engine via poppet valves and more fuel was injected into each cylinder a little before TDC (Top Dead Center). The spontaneous ignition of this mixture powered the engine.



Oxyen-enrichment was employed for the large 24.5" (62.2 cm) Mark I torpedoes used on the Nelson class battleships and for the 21" (53.3 cm) Mark VII torpedoes used on cruisers, but they were not well regarded as the oxygen enrichment process was cumbersome and difficult to use. The performance of these torpedoes was far below the much more successful Japanese oxygen-fueled torpedoes which were, ironically, developed when a Japanese officer overheard a conversation about the use of oxygen. Cruiser torpedoes were converted to natural air in the early part of World War II.



Hydrogen peroxide for propulsion had been studied in 1923, but its innate instability and procurement problems meant that work was quickly abandoned. Following the end of World War II, German and USA work was investigated and a few 21" (53.3 cm) Mark 12 Ferry/Fancy were issued starting in 1954, but following the destruction of the submarine HMS Sidon and an explosive failure on the Arrochar test range, the project was cancelled in 1959.



The Royal Navy had no great interest in using electric motors for torpedoes prior to World War II as they had relatively poor performance and because there was no demand for tracklessness. During the war, experiments were conducted using captured German G7e torpedoes, but the war ended before British-produced versions were in service. Captured examples of German electric torpedoes were given to the USA, who used them in developing their own electric torpedoes. A program for an electric-powered 22.4" (56.9 cm) torpedo developed by the RAF was abandoned before entering production.



Torpedoes developed after World War II are either Hap-Otto fueled pump-jet powered (Spearfish) or else use high-capacity battery-powered electric motors.

So much for that. The British understood their industrial plant limitations better in the real history and presumably in the alternate history, as well. They made several forays into modern gun development. Their cruiser gun armaments seemed to have been no worse than anyone elses'.  Their new battleship guns were simply awful.
 
As to the destroyer guns, the confusion engendered by the industrial base existent and the miscues as to how dangerous the air threat was, and size limitations inside the (alternate history) treaty, meant that manually loaded main armament was about the best the British could do for this class of ship. The British had 4 inch, 4.7 inch and 5 inch guns left over from the days when they were the principle designer and exporter of naval artillery to the world. None of these guns based on their heavy shells was capable of true dual purpose fire without powered assist.  The British tried to get away with it anyway. They failed. They would relaize their mistake in  the real history and try to design a power assisted ram 5.25 gun (1935) which they completely botched up as they had their 14 and 16 inch bore guns. Their second attempt would be a 4.5 inch bore gun which would be somewhat successful, but long after the crisis for which it was intended was over and had made the gun moot. (1950s.)      

There was the last question of AAA, or air defense. Ther British had a WWI solution in the scaled up 2 pounder, an oversized Maxim machine gun. It was what was had in 1922, if somewhat sporadically as a spray the sky and hope the enemy flies into it solution.  It worked after a fashion. This would fail as planes improved.

======================================================

American torpedoes both in the real history and in this alternate history are a sad story which the treaty impacted.

1885 to 1905

The first USN torpedo was the Howell which used a flywheel for power. Although modestly successful, the Whitehead type using compressed air was adopted as it was suitable to improvements to increase range and warhead size.



World War I and World War II

Unlike other nations, the United States abandoned the Whitehead compressed air torpedoes in favor of turbine propulsion as early as November 1907. Wet-heater propulsion systems were introduced to USN torpedoes during the 1920s and became the primary motive power for the next two decades.


The Bliss torpedoes were all WETHEATER from 1907 forward. THAT was the reason for the turbine. 


For example, the Mark 13 airborne torpedo of the 1930s-1940s was an alcohol-fuelled freshwater wet-heater using a two-stage impulse type turbine with contra-rotating rotors, no stator and three nozzles. More energetic fuel systems including ones using pure oxygen and hydrogen peroxide ("Navol") instead of air were tested in the 1930s but these developments were dropped due to technical difficulties.



Lack of money and nervousness of the endusers. Those torpedoes' motors worked. The front end that went "bang" was another story. M.

Newport Station worked intermittently on electric torpedoes between the wars, but it was not until a captured German G7e was supplied by the British in 1941 that interest was aroused enough to place a development contract. These torpedoes were very popular with the US Submarine force as they were essentially wakeless. However, post-war analysis showed that Japanese merchantmen rarely noticed a wake and the rather slow speed of the Mark 18 resulted in the standard wet-heater torpedoes having a 17% better hit rate against merchant ships and 250% better against escort ships.

Same again. The point is that both systems came into service inside of two years once the order to make them was given. You do not cram a decade's worth of engineering into 22 months unless you have that decade's worth of successful engineering as runners. M.


Experiments with Navol were revived during World War II with about 1,000 torpedoes being completed too late to see service.



Post war torpedoes have been mainly electrics and otto-fueled pistons.



Production during World War I

Between 01 January 1917 and 30 November 1918, a total of 5,910 Mark 7 and Mark 8 torpedoes were ordered with 1,982 being actually delivered during this time period. However, the massive numbers of "flush-decker" destroyers completed during and after the war resulted in a total production of about 3,000 Mark 8 torpedoes.

Production during World War II

Mark 13 Aircraft 17,000

Mark 14 Submarine 13,000

Mark 15 Surface 9,700

Mark 16 Hydrogen peroxide 1,000

Mark 18 Electric 9,600

Mark 23 Mark 14 variant 9,600

Total 59,900

The numbers above are rounded off and include all torpedoes produced during the 1930s.



The United States manufactured a total of 57,653 torpedoes between 1 January 1939 and 1 June 1946. Newport built 18,751, Alexandria built 9,920, Westinghouse 8,250, Forest Park 8,391, St. Louis 6,257, Keyport 795, and Pontiac and International Harvester built 5,289.



Warhead Explosives

The earliest weapons used wet gun-cotton. Just prior to World War I, this was replaced with TNT. Torpex (TPX) was introduced in the Fall of 1942. In the late 1940s Torpex was replaced by HBX, then H-6 in the 1960s and by PBX in the 1970s.



Approximately 1.9 lbs. (0.9 kg) of wet gun-cotton is equivalent to 1.0 lbs. (0.45 kg) of TNT.



Torpex is a mixture of 37-41% TNT, 41-45% RDX (cyclonite, cyclomethylene trinitramine) and 18% aluminum. HBX and H-6 are also TNT based with additives to increase their explosive power or increase their stability.



Torpex is attractive because of the increased explosive energy and higher detonation velocity of RDX as compared to TNT and the prolongation of the pressure wave by the aluminum. On a weight basis, Torpex is conservatively estimated to be about 50% more effective than TNT as an underwater explosive against ships. However, Torpex is more sensitive than TNT and RDX is expensive and difficult to make safely.



Warhead Pistols

The failure of the US Magnetic Pistol and backup striker gear is well known. Much of this was due to peacetime economies, but excessive secrecy and far too little communications between the Naval Torpedo Station and the Fleet were also to blame, as well as the reluctance of the Bureau of Ordnance to accept good evidence of defects.


Already covered. The British and Germans had the same failures for the same reasons. M.


The result was that it was not officially announced until August 1942 that the standard submarine torpedo Mark 14 ran 10 feet (3 m) below its depth setting and not until June 1943 that the magnetic pistol was ordered to be disabled. However, long before this time, many submarine commanders were putting to sea per orders with activated pistols only to deactivate them once out of sight of land. The contact exploder faults were finally rectified in September 1943 but magnetic exploders were distrusted as late as thirty years after the war ended.

The Americans invented wake-homers and tested them in a crude form as soon as they realized the physical operating principles. Suffice it to say that the principles were available and understood from 1943 forward. 

Guns.

The Americans did no worse than the British as to native designs which were original with the Fletcher and Seabury pattern guns of the 1890s. They had a dud shell problem when they migrated from 12 inch bore to 14 inch bore around 1912, that they did not solve until George Blandy urgently tested the shell designs in 1941-1942. Their gun salvo dispersion problem lasted into the middle of 1927 when it was noticed during a scout cruiser shoot-ex that the new treaty cruisers were dropping ladders a mile in radius in spot splashes apart. That is radius of the aim circle, NOT diameter. The problem resisted solution clear into the 1930s until RADM Larimer solved it with the Manila Bay shoot-exs. 

The 5 / 38 is the miracle gun. Nothing even comes close in the era for universality. It was a power-assisted ram manually fed piece that could operate at all angles with a riculously fast cyclic. That it wound up on anything American afloat attests to how useful it was. 

The 1.1 inch however was a dog. As with so mismanaged projects under the purview of the incompetent Harold Stark, this gun's development was politically as well as technically mishandled.    

======================================================

Japan      
 
Torpedoes were not what the popular histories reported.

Many accounts of the 1942 battles describe these torpedoes prematurely detonating after running the arming distance or detonating once they crossed the target's wake. For example, it was estimated that about a third of the torpedoes launched at the Battle of the Java Sea (Sea Engagement off Surabaya) either prematured or detonated on wakes. An investigation by Cdr. Takedai Takashi of the Navy Technical Department, who was in charge of torpedoes at that time, found that approximately half of the torpedo fuzes returned for examination from warships involved in this battle would activate at pressures much lower than those specified. However, torpedo fuzes examined at the naval arsenals and at military supply departments worked properly. Further investigation found that the main cause for the self-destruction was that the torpedo crews on the ships themselves were resetting the fuzes to a lower level in a misguided effort to ensure detonation. Post-war, Rear Admiral of Engineering Ōyagi Shizuo, an authority on the Type 93 torpedoes (and whose report on British torpedoes initiated the development of the Japanese Oxygen-fueled torpedo), remarked in his recollections: "It was a matter of eternal regret that we had provided each vessel with a sensitivity adjuster for the fuzes."

Combine that failure with excessive nose wander because the Japanese botched the gyro control setup and  you get the 3% probability of hit results for the IJN versus the 7% or so hit rates for the American Marks 14 and 15.  Woe is us, depends on who writes the histories. 

As for guns, scratch a Japanese gun barrel and you can usually assume BRITISH *(Vickers) for anything larger than the Hotchkiss 25 mm.   

Like the Americans and the British, shell dispersion was a problem. The Japanese seemed to have escaped the dud fuses of the Americans and the faulty gun mounts of the British.   .
  

[miletus12]

What impact does the alternative treaty have on the naval operational art?

This is hard to ascertain as the situation is a combination of means, resources, geographys and weathers. I can summarize by example.

See MAP.



France and Italy:

As previously discussed, neither nation emerged from WWI in very good financial or political shape. Resources were limited. The French had theoretically twice the warship building capacity as Italy, but like so much of their industrial base, it was underfunded and tachnically backward compared to the latest German or American practices. France had the world's second largest colonial empire and access to resources that not even the British Empire could boast; so both her commitments and her nascent strength should have been enormous. Likewise her naval commitments required a prident investment in a globalist navy within the treaty limtis. However, that same treaty with its tonnage caps, plus the myopic concern with German and Italian threats limited the vision of the Marine National to short ranges both in terms of time and distance. The French "could have" built a true blue water fleet with a concommitant operational reach, but with naval eyes firmly pointed at the Ligurian and North Seas, thisn globalist potential with its applicable seapower advantages, went into the dustbin with the assumption that the British would be there to police the world ocean with the Marine National along for the ride. 

Italy, by contrast, was more sensibly positioned to be a regional or one ocean navy, so long as her ambition was confined to North Africa and the Balkans and the Mediterranean Sea. Her principle opponent was mistakenly assumed to be France. As a result, the Regia Marina dedicated itself to neutralizing the French in the western Mediterranean and neglected to address the other problem, which the lunatic Mussolini government created with its adventurisms; that being the British Royal Navy. It would be fair to suggest that the RM tried to belatedly address the problem within the treaty by modernizing its old battleships as much as italian means alklowed. The treaty did allow the Italians to build two aircraft carriers, which would have been of some use in power projection since land based aircraft were not capable of reaching the Suez canal, the MAJOR geographic feature the Italians had to neutralize to ensure the British could not operate in the Eastern mediterranean at all. But try explaining Mahan to a failed sergeant, a failed newspaper editor, a failed businessman and a successful street thug turned demagog and propagandist politician? He would not understand two stage operational art or why plugging up the Suez canal meant the death of the British Empire. 

In either case, both navies largely missed that boat. They were "Mediterranean" in mindset, ship building and in tactics and operational art. They would rely on "raids" as the methods and destroyer and cruiser forces as the means to fight each other. Both ignored RADAR as their eyes and the airplane as the instrument of decision. Both expected guns to be the decider with the torpedo as the ancillary. 

France's navy never got a chance to try the Italians out in the Ligurian Sea, a bathtub section of the Mediterranean known for good weather, and good gunnery, where French good gunnery tactics might have overcome Italian numerical parity and more modernity in ships. Weather in daylight favored the better trained and gun armed French navy, or it should have. They never got the chance.       

To the Italians naval credit, at least some of their admirals by 1930 had figured out that maybe they should pay attention to the "British problem". If Mussolini was not going to give them aircraft carriers, then maybe the RM could use asymmetric means to befuddle the Royal Navy? The Italian frogmen were a gimmick and a poor substitute by 1930 for a true comprehensive plan for dealing with the British.  But then we will come to the British in a moment.                      

======================================================

The Japanese.

The Japanese during the 1920s transitioned in the real history from a local defensive navy, mainly confined to the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea, their traditional operating areas to a more "regional" North Pacific environment. Unless you have studied the IJN, you may not realize that materially as far as their navy was concerned, it was a mostly foreign built, polyglot force of French and British type ships, leavened with captured Chinese and Russian leftovers from the First Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. To a staggering astonishing extent, the Japanese relied on British suppliers to design, build and maintain their fleet until about 1918.

It was during the years immediately following the First World War (1914 forward) that the Japanese began to design their own ships and build their own systems according to their own design philosophy. Whether with artillery or torpedoes, the effectors the Japanese used prior to the real or alternate history washington treaties.   It is significant to me, that this was the state of affairs in effectors until the end of the period when the Washington treaty was supplanted by the London Treaty of 1930. It was still essentially a smallish "British" type navy with a seasoning of captured or built foreign ships. The artillery was British, the torpedoes were GERMAN and the doctrine was decisive battle as taken from a mistranslation and misunsderstanding of MAHAN.     

So what was the reality here? Whether real or alternate history Treaty, the IJN was constrained by an economy about the size of France matched with a British style ambition as well as by the treaty caps. They, the Japanese admirals, were both efficient and clever in matching their limited means to their inordinate imperialist ambitions. 

You can see how geography and weather and technology aided and abetted their imperialist plans? First, they were far away from anybody who mattered. 10,000 kilometers is a tough supply obstacle to overcome, even if the world ocean makes it easier for the Americans than that lousy railroad made it for the Russians in the Russo Japanese War.  Second, the homeland for Japan was shielded by Typhoon Alley. What navy in its right mind would FIGHT in those waters? The Japanese got that one wrong, too. I guess they had never heard of the CARIBBEAN or the Spanish American War?     

Anyhow, the Japanese until 1930 sort of puttered along using British means, Russo Japanese War methods and misapplied American doctrine to create the "Rengō Kantai" with its subset of the Kidō Butai, their aircraft carrier force *(British trained and British aircraft equipped in 1927). They dreamed of a Pacific Tsushima and expected to sink the Americans in a glorious battle somewhere in the Mariannas orf Caroline Islands. They expected that their "superior torpedoes" and their "victory spirit" would overcome numbers inferiority and the inability to protect their merchant fleet. They also counted on the weather as to its severity and the wind advantage to give them the initiative. Of course they understood sailing times and distances and the advantage of supply along short interior lines as Japan was the hub of a wheel of supply lines. See MAP.



They got that one wrong, too.        
       
====================================================



The British.

By 1922 the British achieved at ruinous cost, the singular distinction of being the sole "global presence" upon the world ocean or so their admiralty thought.  Their fleets had "supposedly" chased their chief European rivals out of the Indian and western Pacific Oceans and defeated the main German enemy challenge to their sea power in the North Sea. They controlled the  three most important choke points of sea traffic at the Straits of Gibraltat, the Suez Canal and the Malacca Straits. They controlled 80% of the undersea cable network that was the intercontinental communications system of the Earth and they had a dozen fortified naval bases where they stockpiled or controlled half the fuel used by everyone's commercial shipping. Their very navy was twice the size of their nearest surviving rival, the United States, by tonnage. There was no existent submarine force to endanger their merchant marine anymore. There certainly was no cruiser force that could prey upon it either for the Americans had not built one.  It should have been "easy" to squeeze that advantage into a permanent situation (real history); so why did they not?         

I guess that the first chink in the British position was that very U-boat war. It was not the British who won it. Consider that the issue was not decided in the Battle of the Atlantic. *See CHART. 



It was decided by the Allied (Mainly French) armies fighting on the western front and with activity by another navy. It was indeed British merchant shipping that carried about half the American troops to France in the brutal year of 1917, but it was not convoyed by the British navy.  Those were American warships that covered those troop convoys. That paltry force of 22 cruisers and 60 some destroyers was thrown immediately into the U-boat fight. They did not sink many U-boats, (Who did?), but that was not the purpose of their presence. They convoyed successfully enough that 95% of the troops sent arrived in France. After that, it was a race between Ludendorf's spring offensives and whether the Americans could take up enough frontage and hold enough Germsns in place for the French to kick their teeth in elsewhere.

Then came the North Sea mine barrages and the actions along the Belgian coasts to mine the channel and suddenly the U-boat sortie rate went down. The British never got a handle on the problem.        

The British admiralty had those lessons in front of them. It should have been obvious what the Royal Navy should have done. 
a. Make anti-submarine warfare the highest technical priority.
b. Hang onto that Japanese alliance, because it was actually the Japanese who chased Britain's enemies out of the western Pacific. 
c. Don't torque off the Americans. 

How did they do with those three objectives? 
a. The Anti-submarine Division had done some work to create effectors (depth charges) and it certainly had spent a lot of money on the problem, but by the victory in the real history, they had failed to develop much in the way of detectors or useful tactics. The work postwar on detectors was continnued and resulted in SONAR which is falsely credited as a British innovation and invention when it was actually a combined Franco-American effort.

The Canadian engineer Reginald Fessenden, while working for the Submarine Signal Company in Boston, Massachusetts, built an experimental system beginning in 1912, a system later tested in Boston Harbor, and finally in 1914 from the U.S. Revenue Cutter Miami on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.[8][10] In that test, Fessenden demonstrated depth sounding, underwater communications (Morse code) and echo ranging (detecting an iceberg at a 2-mile (3.2 km) range).[11][12] The "Fessenden oscillator", operated at about 500 Hz frequency, was unable to determine the bearing of the iceberg due to the 3-metre wavelength and the small dimension of the transducer's radiating face (less than 1⁄3 wavelength in diameter). The ten Montreal-built British H-class submarines launched in 1915 were equipped with Fessenden oscillators.[13]



During World War I the need to detect submarines prompted more research into the use of sound. The British made early use of underwater listening devices called hydrophones, while the French physicist Paul Langevin, working with a Russian immigrant electrical engineer Constantin Chilowsky, worked on the development of active sound devices for detecting submarines in 1915. Although piezoelectric and magnetostrictive transducers later superseded the electrostatic transducers they used, this work influenced future designs. Lightweight sound-sensitive plastic film and fibre optics have been used for hydrophones, while Terfenol-D and lead magnesium niobate (PMN) have been developed for projectors.

The British latched onto this work about 1916 and produced a rather limited active echo sound detector just in time for testing after the war. To their credit they proliferated this basic device into every ship class they had existent by the time it was needed, but in the interim they failed to develop it much further or mass produce it in the quantities they needed. So they get a 2.0 out of a possible 4.0.  

b. The Americans wanted to decouple the Anglo-Japanese combine for good practical reasons. One of them the USN could handle. Not Both of THEM. See 3. The British scored a 0.0 on this one. Should have listened to the Canadians. 
 
c. Not torque off the Americans. Well that did not happen during the treaty talks. though the Foreign Office tried to be accommodating. See 2. The Americans eavesdropped on everybody and the British were not too circumspect in their private conversations. 0.0 here, too.          
   
All in all, the British did not heed their own lessons. There were other treaty influenced mistakes the British made:
  
d. the British did not create a fleet train to supplement or replace isolated bases that were bound to be picked off by their rivals in time of war. 
e. the British did not exploit the curious loophole that allowed them to build ships of up to 2,000 tons displacement that could be armed with guns up to 6 inch bore, as long as those ships carried no torpedo tubes and did not exceed 21 knots in speed.  That was stupid.
f. the British did not retain their ships taken up from trade (STUFT) program that they had so laborously financed and created in WWI. So there went port control and convoy routing capability that took them two very expensive WWII years to reconstitute.   
g. The British threw away their fleet air arm. The treaty gave them twice as many aircraft carriers and a whole decade jump on everybody, but they squandered it. The treaty gave them that MONOPOLY and they wasted it.  It was not that they did not spend the money. They made their conversions and they tried to develop the aircraft. They just wasted it all. 
h. The British spent the 1920s working on the Lessons of Jutland, which were valuable to be sure, as they exercised solutions, and then their traitors passed those lessons on to the Japanese for free, while rebuffing innocuous US inquiries. Meanwhile, did they do any intelligent naval planning for another worst case situation as they had faced with the Germans in WWI? Nope. Their war plans, if you can call those amateur efforts of the Beatty Gang warplans; assumed they would show up in the South China Sea and with the Americans, either as neutrals and onlookers or as junior ensign participants, there the RN would trounce those fellows from Tokyo in a proper Jutland somwhat to the south of Hainan Island.  And for that effort at about the same cost as of the future French Maginot Line, the RN would build Singapore up as its future operating base. More money squandered.           
i. Nobody British did a weather, terrain, or technology study of the expected battlespace. NOBODY. The Japanese did.    
j.  At least in the Mediterranean someone intelligent did think worst case and came up with an idea to handle the Italian problem. It was a clever gimmick. Bomb the Regia Marina in port. It worked for exactly three months. After that, the whole Mediterranean thing turned into a manure sandwich with the RN unable to seal the deal ever on the Italians. Incredible!  That should have never happened. The Italians were hobbled by the treaty, and Mussolini so much that the British had a naval cakewalk handed to them. Refer to g. and h. for why the Italians hung on for three years. 
k. Then the British torqued off the FRENCH. 

=====================================================

The treaty and the Americans.

The major thing about the Washington Naval Treaty is that it was an American treaty. You cannot understand what the treaty was or how it affected the American military. Notice that term “military” as it was the entire war machine? This actual treaty was not so much a disarmament treaty as it was an attempt to make the very conservative American political version of a Woodrow Wilson confidence game diplomatic sand bagging.

In the real history, what was Secretary of State Charles Hughes after? 

a. Halt the battleship building race. Done.
b. Save money. For the Americans; done. 
c. Achieve parity with the British navy. Done.
d. Decouple the Anglo-Japanese alliance. Done. 
e. Restrict the Japanese navy to a defensive only posture. Failed.
f. Ensure access to the Chinese market. Failed.
g. Keep the British out of the Pacific. Done. 
h. Throw the British out of American home waters. Done. 
i. Make Plan Orange executable. Done. 
j. Keep the peace. Well, for as long as it could be expected after Wilson, Clemenceau and George botched Versailles up. Done.

=====================================================

The alternate history treaty kind of modifies that real history result.
 
The alternate treaty as constructed was and is subtle. I added the London Treaty clauses to the WNT earlier that allow the British to horse-trade a bit better on the non-battleship classes than they did in the real treaty. But they were so awful in the negotiations in the real history that they need the help in this timeline which probably will showcase even more starkly how the British negotiators failed their nation.



a. Submarines the British allow; which helps the American cause, since the Americans fully intende to ignore the cruiser prize rules embedded within the treaty and fight a German style commerce destruction campaign against their enemies, presumably because the other fellows shoot first.

b. The aircraft carrier monopoly is gone with that substitution clause. This makes the 1920s fritter away of the British lead much worse. True the Americans only have four flattops by 1927 in ther alternate history, but then they start running multi aircraft carrier exercises a half decade earlier than in the real history.

c. The aircraft picture does not change markedly before 1936 with this alternate treaty, or does it? With more time, and more practice, do the Americans pay more attention to the torpedo as the weapon effector of decision? Do the Americans realize in the alternate history much sooner that their effectors do not work? Those blank years of 1930 to 1935, hurt in the Mark 13 testing and validation programs. It was not until 1939 that the torpedoes were supposedly actually ready.


  

[miletus12]

Continuing with the alternate treaty effects with respect to the Americans.

It has been my conjecture, that the General Board of the United States, which included senior military officers and had a small secretariat that served as a sort of general staff for the American navy, took a wrong turn with the Spanish American War. This has a lot to do with the Schley Sampson Controversy which politically poisoned the USN and led to a schism within the officer corps. This set a horrible precedent which afflicts the United States Navy to the present.

Briefly, the guru of the United States Navy, RADM Mahan took the side of orthodoxy and unity of and respect of the chain of command. He supported Sampson for those reasons of cohesion with the reasoning that if Sampson  planned the setup, then he deserved the credit for the outcome of the same. 

That torqued off the fighting line officers who knew full well in operations that Sampson through his gross negligence and incompetence, had wrecked the engines of the USS Indiana in his joy jaunt to San Juan, Puerto Rico when she, the USS Indiana towed the USS Puritan on that glory hunt ride. In a further act of criminal stupidity, because the idiot refused the request of the CAPT Charles A. Train, to rotate the battleship USS Massachusetts out of service for much delayed and long overdue maintenance and CLEANING, there was a turret fire and explosion that wrecked that battleship and took her off the line for the duration of the blockade of Santiago de Cuba as she underwent emergency repairs. That was two American battleships own goaled through Sampson's criminal negligence and incompetence. Then the idiot engendered a pointless fight with the United States Army with an imagined personal feud with Fatso General William Rufus Schafter. It was to settle scores with Fatso that ADM Sampson, during a period when the Cuban revolutionaries warned him that ADM Cervera was raising steam and appeared to be ready to sortie, decided to meet with Schafter and have it out, instead of using the existent cable-phone rigged for ship to shore talk.  Now to be sure, Schafter had told ADM Sampson to get bent the last time they yakked via phone, so maybe a face to face might have been necessary, but then ADM Sampson could have motored to Daiquari via admiral's barge. Instead, fully aware that Cervera was about to come out, that idiot took the armored cruiser USS New York City and the battleship USS Iowa with him as a bodyguard to go meet Schafter. 

It has never been officially admitted, but from what I read in the unofficial correspondence among themselbes, a lot of the USN oifficers present thought Sampson was a coward who flinched in the face of direct responsibility.                   
 
As for Schley, he was stuck out on the western limb of the blockade arc, and had not been told of Sampson's plan of maneuver should Cervera come out. Heck, he was frozen out of the arrangements for command in Sampson's absence in that no signal designating an acting commander in Sampson's absence had been issued or arranged in standing orders. 

Insofar as Schley had to handle a Cervera breakout which involved avoiding ram attempts by the Infants Maria Teresa and an immediate gunnery duel with the Oquendo, while avoiding collisions among USS Brooklyn, Uss Taxas and USS Oregon, which when he sorted that confusion out, turned into a pell mell stern chase of Cervera's fleet; 

 Schley conducted himself remarkably well. It was a captain's battle in the chase, but it was that admiral's immediate improvisation at the initial merge that prevented what could have been an embarrassing Spanish victory.

Spanish-American War: The disaster of Santiago de Cuba (1898)

Communiqué of the naval battle of Santiago that Admiral Don Pascual Cervera sent to the general in chief and the Minister of the Navy

His Excellency and Ilmo. Sr.:

In compliance with the orders of V.E.I., with the evidence of what was to happen and had announced so many times, I left Santiago de Cuba with the entire Squadron that was under my command, on the morning of the 3rd of July.

The instructions given for the departure were as follows: The "Infanta María Teresa", ship of my flagship, was to leave first, following successively the "Vizcaya", "Colón", "Oquendo" and destroyers. All the ships had all their boilers on and under pressure.

When the "Teresa" left, the combat would begin with the enemy that was more on purpose, and those who followed him would try to go west at full force of machines, taking the head of the "Vizcaya". The torpedo bombers were to keep, if they could, out of the fire, spy an opportune moment to act, if it presented itself, and try to escape with their greatest gait, if the combat was unfavorable to us.



Map of the battle and course of the ships The ships


We left the port with such great precision, that it surprised our enemies, who have made us many and very enthusiastic fulfillments on the subject. As soon as the "Teresa" left she broke the fire at 9 h. 35 m., on a battleship that was nearby, but heading at full force of machine on the "Brooklyn", which was to the SW. and that we were interested in trying to put in conditions that he could not use his subsequent walk. The other ships engaged in combat with the other enemies who came from the various points where they were stationed. The enemy squadron consisted that day of the following ships off Santiago de Cuba: "New York", insignia of Rear Admiral Sampson; "Brooklyn", Commodore Schley's insignia; "lowa", "Oregon", "Indiana", "Texas" and several smaller vessels, or rather, ocean liners and armed yachts. Once the departure was made, the course was taken, and the combat was generalized with the disadvantage, not only of the number but of the state of our artillery and ammunition of 14 centimeters that V.E.I. knows by the telegram that I put to him when he was at his command. For me the success was not doubtful, even though I once believed that our destruction would not be so rapid.

In such a painful situation, having begun the partial explosions of the tanks of the batteries, I gave orders to lower the flag and flood all the cloths: the first could not be executed because of the terrible fire that was in the canopy, having burned shortly after. It was time: the fire won very quickly and there was barely enough to leave the ship, when the fire reached the bridge, and that helped by two American boats that arrived about three quarters of an hour after the grounding.

Among the wounded are Lieutenant Don Antonio López Cerón and Ensign Don Angel Carrasco, and missing are the captain of the Marine Infantry Don Higínio Rodríguez, whom I believe killed a projectile, the ensign Don Francisco Linares, the second doctor Don Julio Díaz del Río, the first class machinist Don Juan Montero and the second class Don José Melgares. whose corpse went to the beach. The salvoting was done by jumping into the water those who knew how to swim, trying three times to take a guide to land, which was only achieved at the last minute and helped by the two American boats of which I have mentioned. We lowered a boat that seemed good and immediately went down, and a steamboat was thrown into the water, which could only make one trip, because it also sank as a result of the breakdowns it had, when trying to return on board forA second time, the three or four men who carried him clung to him and who saved themselves some by swimming and others were picked up by an American boat.

The commander, helped by good swimmers, had gone ashore; the second and third directed the embarkation on board, and needing direction on land, when the American boats were coming, I went swimming, helped by two sea corporals named Don Juan Llorca and Andrés Sequeiro and my assistant son, lieutenant Don Angel Cervera.

After the disembarkation of the people, I was invited by the American officer who sent the boats to follow him to his ship, which was the armed yacht "Gloucester", where I was accompanied by my wounded flag captain, my assistant son and the second of the ship that was the last to abandon it.

During this period, the appearance of the ship was imposing because explosions followed and was to terrify the best tempered souls.

I absolutely don't think anything can be saved from the ship, and we have lost everything, the vast majority arriving absolutely naked on the beach.

A few minutes after the "Teresa" ran aground the "Oquendo" on a beach about half a league west of it, with a fire similar to his, and the "Vizcaya" and the "Colón", pursued by the enemy squadron, were lost from sight in the West. According to the accountant of the "Oquendo", the only officer who is on the same ship as me, the story of this unfortunate ship and its heroic crew is as follows, that perhaps something will be rectified, but only in details, not in the substance of the facts: The unequal and deadly combat sustained by this ship became even more unequal because shortly after starting an enemy projectile entered the tower. of bow killing all the personnel of it, except one gunner who was very badly wounded.

The 14-centimeter battery, swept away by enemy fire from the beginning, had only two useful guns left, with which it continued to defend itself with incomparable energy. Also the aft tower was without its commanding officer, killed by a projectile of the enemy that entered when opening the door to be able to breathe, because they suffocated inside. The Accountant does not know the history of the rapid-fire battery and only knows that it fired, surely, the same as all this brave crew. There were two fires: the first, which was dominated, occurred in the bow solder, and the second, which started aft, could not be controlled, because the pumps no longer gave water, perhaps for the same reasons as in the "Teresa"

The 14-centimeter ammunition elevators were missing from the beginning, but there was no lack of ammunition in the battery, while it could be beaten, by the spare parts that, to prevention, had been placed on all ships. When the brave commander of the "Oquendo" saw that he could not control the fire and did not It had no cannon in service, it was when it was decided to run aground, previously ordering to fire all the torpedoes, except those of stern, in case an enemy ship approached, until the last end ordered to lower the flag, minutes after the "Teresa" and after consulting those officers who were present. The second and third commanders and three lieutenants had already died. The rescue of the survivors was organized by their commander, who has lost his life to save that of his subordinates. They made a raft, landed two boats, the only boats they had left useful, and lately they were helped by American boats, and according to an insurrectionist, to whom I spoke on the beach, they were also helped by a boat they had.

Sublime was the spectacle presented by these two ships; the continuous explosions that followed each other incessantly, did not intimidate these brave men, who have defended their ships to the point of not having been able to be trampled by the plant of any enemy.

When I was invited by the American officer to follow him, as I told V.E.I earlier, I gave instructions for the re-embarkation to the third commander Don Juan Aznar, whom I have not seen since. When I arrived at the American ship, which was the armed yacht "Gloucester", I found there about twenty wounded belonging mostly to the torpedo bombers, their commanders, three officers of the "Teresa", the Accountant of the "Oquendo" and we met together up to ninety-three people, belonging to the endowments of the Squadron.

The commander and officers of the yacht received us with the greatest attention, striving to attend to our needs, which were of all kinds, because we arrived absolutely naked and hungry; the commander told me that as his ship was so small, he could not receive that mass of people, and he was going to look for a larger ship to embark them. The insurgents, with whom I had spoken, had told me that with them they had about 200 men among whom there were 5 or 6 wounded, and they added to me from their chief that if we wanted to go with them we would follow them and help us with what they had, to which I replied that they should thank their leader and tell him that we had surrendered to the Americans; But if they had a doctor, I would appreciate it if they could heal a portion of the wounded we had on the beach, some of them very serious.

To the commander of the yacht I communicated this conversation with the insurgents and begged him to claim our people, which he promised me, sending a detachment with a flag for that purpose. He also sent some much-needed groceries on the beach.

We then continued to the W. until we found the bulk of the Squadron, of which the auxiliary cruiser "Paris" stood out, and our yacht continued to face Cuba, where it received orders according to which some of us were transferred to the "Iowa" and others to other ships.

During my stay on the yacht I asked the commanders of the torpedo destroyers for news of the fate that had befallen them, having the knowledge of knowing their sad end.

What happened to the "Furor", V.E.I. can find out in detail by the attached copy of the report of his commander; in it the captain Don Fernando Villaamil met a glorious death, and the number of casualties proves how this small ship has been driven whose commander was also slightly wounded.

When I arrived at the "Iowa", where I was received with all kinds of honors and considerations, I had the consolation of seeing in the gate the bizarre commander of the "Vizcaya", who came out to receive me with his girded sword because the commander of the "Iowa" did not want me to part with it in testimony of his brilliant defense. Attached is also a copy of the part that he has produced for me, by which V.E.I. will come in knowledge of this story so similar to that of his brothers "Teresa" and "Oquendo", which proves that the same defects have produced the same misfortunes, having been all a matter of time.

In the "Iowa" I remained until four o'clock in the afternoon, when I was transferred to the "San Luis", where I met the second general chief and commander of the "Colón".

When while still in the "Iowa" Admiral Sampson joined, I asked permission to telegraph V.E.I., doing so in the following terms:

"In compliance with the orders of V. E., I left Cuba yesterday morning with the whole Squadron, and after an unequal combat against forces more than triple mine, my entire Squadron was destroyed, burned and grounded the "Teresa", "Oquendo" and "Vizcaya"; the "Columbus", according to American reports, stranded and surrendered; The torpedo boats sinking. I still do not know the losses of people, but surely they add up to more than 600 dead and many wounded, although not in such a large proportion. The living are prisoners of the Americans. People all scratching at a height that has deserved the most enthusiastic plácemes of the enemies. To the commander of the "Vizcaya" they left his sword. I am very grateful for the generosity and nobility with which they treat us. Among the dead is Villaamil and I think Lazaga; among the wounded, Concas and Eulate. We have lost everything and I will need funds. - Cervera. - June 4, 1898.»

In which, telegram it is necessary to rectify the fate of the "Pluto", which was not scuttled, but, unable to stay afloat, managed to run aground as V.E.I. will see in the part of its bizarre commander.

It remains for me to say to V.E.I., to complete the characteristic features of this gloomy day, that our enemies have conducted themselves and are currently conducting themselves with us with a nobility and delicacy that no longer fits; not only have they dressed us as they could, but they have suppressed the greatest part of the "hurrahs" out of respect for our bitterness; We have been and are the object of enthusiastic congratulations for our performance, and all, to the hilt, have taken pains to make our captivity as bearable as possible.

In summary: the day of the 3rd has been a horrible disaster, as I had predicted; the number of deaths is, however, lower than I feared; the Homeland has been defended with honor and the satisfaction of the duty fulfilled leave our consciences calm, with only the bitterness of lamenting the loss of our dear comrades and the misfortunes of 1st Fatherland.

I also accompany V.E.I. a list of the chiefs, officers and midshipmen killed, wounded, bruised and missing and another of the unofficial wounded on this ship; the great mass of wounded is on board the hospital ship, which is the steam "Solace".

As I understand that V.E.I. will have difficulties in transmitting this communication, I would like to send a transfer to His Excellency the Minister of the Navy.

God keep V.E.I. for many years.

At sea, aboard the "San Luis", July 9, 1898.

Signed: Pascual Cervera.

From the Spanish point of view, but the essential facts of the case were that Schley was well aware after the battle, that but for the lack of scraping of bottoms of barnacles off the bottoms of Spanish ships and the lack of good fuel (coal) the American line would have lost that chase and or been outmaneuvered by the faster and more maneuverable Spanish ships. The only ships that had the speed and the firepower to stay with Cervera's ships were the USS Oregon, whose engineers had sabotaged the engine plant so she would give 110% rated power so as to pretend she was a cruiser, and the USS Brooklyn which had the speed, but which had taken one of her engines offline to conserve coal.

Vizcaya, Oquendo and Colon were a handfui. USS Indiana and USS Gloucester handled the Spanish destroyers with the tardy assistance of the USS Iowa, but the point was that the Americans present learned that speed was an esssential tactical necessity. These were the same Americans who were doghoused when they took Schley's side in the controversy. They became the "cruiser faction".

Sampson's side, except for the officers of the USS Oregon, became the "battleship men".

Since Sampson's faction wrote the false histories and ran the navy after the Schley court martial, it was a "battleship centric navy" mindset and it stayed a slow battleship centric navy mindset right until WWII. 

And that monumental error was why the Americans fell off the innovation and adaptation wagon in the real history, ladies and gentlemen. The doctrine of "don't rock the boat and protect your career, took hold."

[miletus12]

So what if the Schley faction prevails as a result of the Spanish American War, and the USN follows its experience instead of its politics?

I suppose the emphasis would be more on a more French approach to naval warfare than the misunderstood Mahan lesson extenuente:

Continental School: The main representatives of the so-called ―continental school‖ of naval strategy were French Vice Admiral Raoul Castex (1878–1968) and German Vice Admiral Wolfgang Wegener (1875–1956). Castex, whose ideas on naval strategy were broader and more universal, was a more methodical and deeper thinker than Wegener. Wegener’s focus was too narrow because his main and almost sole concern was Germany’s unfavorable geostrategic position at sea and how that situation could be improved in a future major conflict on the continent.

Vice Admiral Raoul Castex: Castex borrowed Mahan’s historical method on the centrality of sea power and the primacy of the battleship fleet. However, in contrast to Mahan, Castex’s work was focused on strategy as a whole, not solely on naval strategy.50 He was a prolific writer. His main work was the five-volume Theories Strategiques (Strategic Theories), published between1927 and 1935.51 The immediate impact on the French Navy was rather insignificant. Only many years afterward, French naval officers realized the true value and importance of Castex’s strategic ideas. His work was widely respected and accepted in many navies of Latin America and in the Mediterranean. Abbreviated versions of his works were published in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Soviet Russia.52

Castex wrote that in addition to land and naval strategy, there is also what he called general strategy (strategie generale) (or in today’s U.S. terms, national security strategy), which transcends and coordinates them. In his view, general strategy unites the actions of armies and fleets whenever the two types of forces must work together. 53 Castex correctly explained that strategy, like a war, is an art not a science. In his view, ―science evokes an element absolute certainty, of relations of cause and effect crystallized into rules so invariable and rigid that they become veritable laws, governing everything and impossible to escape. A scientific law asserts that the same scientific observation will always give rise to the same result, just as mathematical formula generates the same answer whenever the same numbers are used.‖ In his view, ―the simple principles that govern strategy are not chains but flexible guides leaving free play to the creative imagination and to the human spirit in situations that are themselves enormously variable. Precisely here lies the essential character of art—which never entirely breaks free of principles not even of rules but still manifests itself in an unlimited variety of ways.‖ He was right in stating that art has not country and that the ―artistic point of view allows us to behold the great strategic writings regardless of their time or place or origin, with admiration and envy.‖ 54

Castex held highly contradictory views on the proper relationships between strategy and tactics (he did not recognize operational art as a component of military art). To Castex, strategy was ―nothing other than the general conduct of operations, the supreme art of leaders at certain level of the hierarchy and of the general staff that serve them. Strategy prepares the battles striving to bring them about under the best conditions to bring about the best results.‖ Castex clearly confused strategy and operational art. He wrote that strategy ―links the battles together, controlling and coordinating them in accordance with the general inspiration of the campaign while reacting also to events.‖ He also argued that strategy dominates tactics prior to, during, and in the aftermath of a naval battle. He explained that [naval] tactics start ―only at the beginning of gunfire of the first cannon or torpedo, but one can hardly subtract from tactics all of the movements preliminary to the battle on the pretext that they belong to strategy.‖55

Castex asserted that ―strategy is everywhere at every level. It cannot be isolated as governing certain parts but is intermingled in the totality of war itself. There is no longer a strategic operation, since all military activity qualifies.‖ In his view, a commander is acting strategically when he conceives of an operation. However, since his orders must also prescribe the dispositions for the execution of these orders, he is performing tactically at the same time.
Likewise, the subordinate who acts tactically in executing orders must also act strategically in conceiving their execution. In contemplating dispositions for executing his plan, the supreme commander acts tactically. In making a fire plan to suit a particular case, a ship’s gunnery officer thinks strategically. Yet this definition leads in practice to the unworkable thesis that everyone at every level of command is simultaneously a strategist and a tactician.

Castex, like Mahan and Corbett, firmly believed that the main objective of, in his words,―maritime operations‖ was to obtain or at least to dispute the mastery of the sea, that is, thecontrol of the essential surface communications. The objective of naval war was to preserve freedom to use communications and deny the same to the enemy or ―at least, not to be entirely excluded by the enemy from their use.‖57 In his view, control of maritime communications has offensive and defensive aspects. Whoever controls sea communications preserves its links withoverseas. At the same time, control of maritime communications gives protection of one’s coast against major enemy actions.58 He recognized the great economic importance of having control of maritime communications for the continuous functioning of a nation’s commercial and industrial activity. He pointed out that the struggle for mastery of the sea is strongly related to the attack on and defense of communications. Castex wrote that the attack on and defense of maritime communications cannot be considered separately; they are closely intertwined and constantly affect each other. In his view, the [battle] fleet including even the air force, supports and sustains those parts of the navy tasked to conduct the attack on or defense of maritime communications. It is thanks to ―the [battle] fleet that they can operate without excessive hindrance of the enemy.‖ Moreover, the struggle for control of maritime war cannot be treated as ―a separate operation divorced from the rest of the military effort.‖ However, it cannot at the same time replace the struggle against the enemy battle fleet. In a clear rebuttal of the French Navy’s traditional fascination with guerre de course, Castex warned that ―one must not harbor the illusion that the attack on (the enemy maritime) communications will by itself and without any other operation lead to a decisive victory.‖59

Castex wrote that ―whoever wants to defeat the enemy fleet by combat must necessarily take the offensive without concern for its inherent risks. We need to concentrate as many forces as possible on the principal objective so as to have every possible advantage.‖ Only the offensive can definitely break the equilibrium to produce a decision. Only when accompanied with an offensive executed elsewhere can the defensive lead to a decision and the end of the status quo. The decisive character is the virtue of ―genuine offensive and only offensive capable of bringing about decisions are worthy of the name.‖ He disagreed with the views of those who believed that attack on the enemy maritime commerce alone would lead to the decision. He asserted that the guerre de course has never achieved significant results unless preceded or accompanied by a naval offensive. To achieve the decision, guerre de course requires support by the guerre militaire. Such actions cannot be decisive and hence cannot be properly called an offensive at all. He wrote that the same observation applies to attacks on the enemy coast and territories.60However, attacks on the enemy coast are actually the result of the stronger fleet’s success in achieving command of the sea, and they can be decisive provided that the fleet provides effective support to friendly troops on the coast. Castex agreed with Mahan that the enemy ―fleet must be defeated in order to obtain command of the sea.‖He wrote that one should direct all his actions against the enemy fleet because its destruction ―will very probably irreparably compromise the rest of the enemy’s organization.‖ The best method of disposing the enemy fleet is to wage a decisive naval battle. In case the enemy chooses to ―shut himself up in port then he has to be blockaded more or less tightly to prevent his emergence or to force him to battle as soon as possible if he does.‖ After having dealtwith the enemy fleet, the stronger fleet can exercise command of the sea by conducting other operations. Castex warned that the stronger fleet should not exercise command of the sea prematurely because that might undermine the freedom of action essential to the destruction of the enemy fleet. For him, the fleet and decisive naval battle ―constitute the cornerstone, the foundation upon which we will construct our plans.‖ Command of the sea is ―a military struggle between the belligerent’s fleets, that is to say, between the ensemble of their combat resources, including both naval and air forces under a single chief.‖ 61

Castex considered what he called ―strategic maneuver‖ (actually combination of strategic deployment and operational maneuver) as the centerpiece of his strategic theories. In referring to what is commonly understood as strategic deployment, he wrote that the French navy should accept [decisive] battle only after using maneuver to create a favorable shift in the naval balance.62 At the same time, strategic maneuver was for Castex a key element in the conduct of an operation. Thus, he clearly confused strategic maneuver with strategic deployment/redeployment. He wrote that strategic maneuver is a method used by strategists to ―improve the conditions of the struggle [at sea], to multiply the return on her efforts and to obtain the greatest results, whether in the duel between the principal forces themselves or to the benefit of particularly important non maritime requirements.‖ In referring to what is an operational maneuver, Castex wrote that ―movement is the primary element of manouevre—it is the movement to achieve desired dispositions. Then it is the movement of the principal and secondary forces to exploit the situation thus created and to execute the manoeuvre.‖ Castex observed that strategic maneuver ―above all demands space.‖ However, because the ―advent of new machines has compressed both linear dimensions and time, manoeuvre now finds new obstacles.‖ Strategic maneuver can be conducted only in a large sea/ocean area offering sufficient space for a maneuver; elsewhere, maneuver is notably more limited though not absolutely impossible. Castex wrote that the ―logical result of manoeuvre can only be to affirm superiority at the chosen point.‖ When the maneuver is directed from the outset against the enemy fleet, the purpose is nothing other than battle, which is in his words ―the summit of the edifice.‖63

Unlike Mahan, Castex clearly recognized that in some situations even an offensive plan must provide for a possibility of conducting a defensive in a certain part of a maritime theater. Except in a situation where one’s naval strength is overwhelming, it is simply impossible to be ―superior at a chosen point without being weaker, and therefore on the defensive elsewhere.‖ The defensive is often combined with the offensive in time as well as in space.64 Castex correctly observed that in a war between the two continental states bordering the sea, ―mastery of the sea is, at least in theory, no longer even a necessary condition, since the issue of the hostilities will finally depend on the result of the combat between the land armies.‖ Yet ―command of the sea will most often have a serious effect on the operations of these armies and it will be useful to the power that holds it.‖65

Like Corbett, Castex believed that there is no such thing as total command of the sea. The maritime theater of operations, unlike the area of land operations is ―constantly traveled by strangers to the conflict.‖ Command of the sea ―is not absolute but relative, incomplete and imperfect. In spite of crushing superiority, the dominance of communications has never completely prevented his enemy from appearing on the water.‖ Even relative mastery of the sea cannot be exercised at all points of the globe at the same time because even the strongest power lacks sufficient force. There has never been general control of sea communications but only local control over specific parts of the theater or fewer in number, to a greater or smaller extent, and depending upon one’s resources. Sometimes geography and the distribution of fleets shifted local control of the sea to the benefit of the weakened navy. Castex asserted that freedom to use the sea for one’s purposes ―confers opportunities for coastal raids, seizures on the high seas and conditions permitting old-fashioned blockade.‖ By achieving sea mastery, the stronger side can ―paralyze or at least restrict the enemy’s links with foreign countries. It can attack the enemy’s coast and exploit the advantages offered by conduct of ―combined‖ [actually multi-service or joint] operations and dictate the enemy intercourse with neutrals in the conflict.‖ 66

Castex wrote that the very term command of the sea ―gives the impression that its beneficiary enjoys the marvelous privilege of having to himself the immense expanse of the oceans or building a sort of barricade whose keys put in his pocket these totally banning peacetime users. This is misleading. It is utopian. All of the world’s united fleets would not suffice to achieve it everywhere. Nor would neutrals easily allow themselves to be cut off from trade.‖ In his view, one’s strategic command of the sea very often requires a forced decision about attacking or even invading the enemy’s coast. The term command of the sea is less meaningful than in the past, and it is more precise and less pretentious to speak henceforth only of the mastery of the surface, but in a restricted sense, as we think to master the sea. It is a new dilution, another step on the road to relativity.67

Castex had unfavorable views of the fleet-in-being concept as a means of contesting command of the sea by a weaker navy. He explained that it is ―excessive temerity for the inferior party to sail out into battle and destruction one cannot found great hopes of the method of the fleet in being against an active, enterprising adversary who is knowledgeable of his profession.‖ He agreed with Mahan’s view and disagreed with Corbett on the usefulness of the fleet-in-being concept. Castex asserted that the errors of the integral doctrine of the fleet-in-being concept consist of the belief that the mere existence of such a fleet suffices to produce an effect, even if said fleet is moribund, and that it will necessarily paralyze a superior enemy who is master of the sea.68

Castex gave much attention and thought to the effect airpower would have on the conduct of war at sea. He was perhaps one of the first theoreticians who believed in the possibility of employing aircraft against enemy maritime commerce and commercial ports. Such attacks will ―constitute a much greater novelty than air attack on commerce at sea.‖69 In his view, air mastery is even more relative than mastery of the sea, and the master of the air cannot hope to forbid it completely to his enemy by any permanent occupation of its three dimensions. The mastery of the air is even at a further disadvantage in this regard than the master of the sea because he can never prevent the airplanes of even the weakest adversary from conducting reconnaissance or even bombardments and then disappearing as quickly as they come.70

Castex wrote that the employment of ―the airplane against [maritime] communications will vary completely depending on whether they act against convoys or against isolated ships.‖In his view, escorted convoys can be attacked ―without hesitation, as a military formation because they leave no uncertainty as to their nationality. He was highly pessimistic as to the ability of a convoy to defend itself against an attack from the air. He asserted that the ships in a convoy are usually large, slow and unmaneuverable, and lacking antiaircraft protection.‖ Castex properly observed that if used, convoys would require strong air cover.71 ―There are no sufficient resources to provide too many convoys with the necessary protection.‖ In his view, the number of convoys must be reduced to minimize the number of aircraft required for their defense. At the same time, a ―system of huge and infrequent convoys is unworkable and the necessary concentration of air escorts can be managed if one has the initiative of operations. Castex properly observed if used, convoys would require strong air cover.72 The Allied experience in World War II in the Mediterranean and in the Arctic proved the validity of Castex’s views on the use of convoys in the face of the threat posed by the land-based aircraft.

Castex was more optimistic in the chances of merchant vessels surviving an air attack by sailing singly. He stated correctly that aircraft would be unable to force a ship to stop and identify itself, yet he wrongly believed that ―an airplane can easily be deceived by false signals, false flags, and camouflage‖ and that a blacked-out [merchant] ship would have a good chance of escaping the airplane at night. In his view, there ―does not seem to be any compromise between large convoys and the individually sailing merchant vessels. World War II proved wrong Castex’s view on the viability of using merchant vessels sailing singly not only in the littorals but on the open ocean as well.

In contrast to Mahan but like Corbett, Castex firmly believed in the need for close cooperation between the navy and the army. He explained that the ―relationship between the army and the navy must be as between infantry and artillery. As is infantry the queen of battle so the army is the queen of general strategy. Everything has to be subordinated to it because its success means the success of the general strategy. The navy is often to the army as the artillery is to the infantry; an indispensable support that allows it to accomplish its objectives.‖ He correctly stressed that the success of land operations is, after all, what matters the most. Only victory on land permits the occupation of the enemy territory and would convince the enemy that he is defeated. For Castex, the importance of sea power is directly related to its contribution to the victory on land. Only in exceptional cases can sea power achieve complete victory by itself.74

Castex highlighted importance of geography or physical environment on the conduct of war at sea. He wrote that an attack on and defense of sea communications is heavily affected by geography.Geography provides or withholds positions from which commerce raiders can base their action. It also provides a means of establishing a blockade. In the littorals, hydrography can serve the defender by protecting his coastal communications and hiding them from the actions of the attacker. The outer islands belonging to the defender constitute positions of defense behind which coastal traffic can circulate in more secure conditions; the defender also possesses internal channels or navigable canals, reefs and shallow water. In Castex’s view, the influence of geography on maritime operations is not constant but evolves with technological advances. For example, the water depth affects strategy (actually more accurately naval tactics and to some extent operational art) because of the ―consequences of employing submarines, mines and underwater obstacles.‖75

Castex’s main contribution to naval theory was his insistence on the need to have the conceptual foundations in order to have a sound naval strategy. Such foundations must be transparent and resilient; otherwise, they would not endure under the changing conditions.Castex believed that the absence of a coherent, historically grounded understanding of strategy ―prevented the smooth assimilation during Great War of events that instead created in many minds a profound and unnecessary upset.‖ Like Mahan, he believed in the validity of the historical method in developing a naval strategy. At the same time, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, he recognized that Mahan’s prescriptions must be modified to fit specific national circumstances and materiel conditions. Castex believed that historical principle was the best but not the only source of truth, and that advocates of materiel made an error in their single-minded focus on technology. Yet at the same time, they also offered a useful corrective to the historians’ tendency to think at a level of abstraction that avoided actual discussion of the conduct of war. He firmly believed that naval strategy must acknowledge both historical principles and materiel conditions.76

To be honest, Raoul Castex's main work falls more outside the immediate 1922 to 1830 era covered here, but it must be remarked that he was / is the third of the naval theorists who affected the treaty era, insofar as some people (The Dutch, the Germans, the Italians, and the Russians) latched onto his early writings as an antidote to Anglo-American navalisms. As a consequence, he was the penultimate fusist of the Mahanic and Corbettan approaches of how navies work in that he proposed an antidote. Insofar as the Americans of the era were concerned, if his ideas could be said to have any germinal comparison, it would be to those American naval officers who were not Clauseitz infected with the devious notion of looking at the enemy battle fleet's destruction as the center of gravity and center of decision fixed points in naval warfare. Those would be the naval Jominists, who would be obsessed with the characteristics of communications and with the para-limits of the battlespace boundaries. In other words the naval officers who did not believe Mahan was about "command of the sea" and "decisive battle" as so many read him, but more in tune with the use and denial of the sea as a main means to the end.

Thus in spite of what you read above about Castex, those Americans owuld have been more attuned with those parts of Castex's work, that saw the sea as a tool to national grand strategy than as an adjunct to the army or as a seeker of decisive battle. How do I know this? Because it is what I learned. We do not like Corbett, who forgot that when it comes to seapower, the navy is not subordinmate to the army, or to an immediater local tactical objective. The navy is the means in and of itself and unique to the environment in which it works and fights. If that tool is not so understood, then it will be frittered and squandered in ways and in operations that do not add or enable a nation to use the world ocean to its national ends and purposes.

Insofar as Castex and Mahan shaped the "fictional" American attitude for the Washington treaty, the theory behind what the treaty had to achieve for the Americans, was to shape material limits and means so that the United States Navy could project the national will upon the world ocean while the competitor states of the most obstructive nature to that national will would be hobbled. To reiterate:

Apr 16, 2023 16:03:17 GMT miletus12 said:

a. Halt the battleship building race. Done.
b. Save money. For the Americans; done.
c. Achieve parity with the British navy. Done.
d. Decouple the Anglo-Japanese alliance. Done.
e. Restrict the Japanese navy to a defensive only posture. Failed.
f. Ensure access to the Chinese market. Failed.
g. Keep the British out of the Pacific. Done,
h. Throw the British out of American home waters. Done.
i. Make Plan Orange executable. Done.
j. Keep the peace. Well, for as long as it could be expected after Wilson, Clemenceau and George botched Versailles up. Done.

Raoul Castex would have given the Americans a 3.5 out of 4.0. Corbett would have passed them. Mahan? 

“The history of sea power is largely, though by no means solely, a narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war. The profound influence of sea commerce upon the wealth and strength of countries was clearly seen long before the true principles which governed its growth and prosperity were detected. To secure to one's own people a disproportionate share of such benefits, every effort was made to exclude others, either by the peaceful legislative methods of monopoly or prohibitory regulations, or, when these failed, by direct violence. The clash of interests, the angry feelings roused by conflicting attempts thus to appropriate the larger share, if not the whole, of the advantages of commerce, and of distant unsettled commercial regions, led to wars. On the other hand, wars arising from other causes have been greatly modified in their conduct and issue by the control of the sea. Therefore the history of sea power, while embracing in its broad sweep all that tends to make a people great upon the sea or by the sea, is largely a military history...”


― Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783

He would have flunked us.