Washington and WWI

[chuck]

Had war not broken out in 1914, and the Anglo German naval race continued into the 1920s, would the ships produced by the rival navies in 1920 be stronger, weaker, or about the same as those cancelled under Washington treaty?

Let's ignore for the moment the fact that Washington ships enjoyed the benefit of the lessons of WWI, while the hypothetical no-war scenario ships we are talking about would of course be denied this benefit. Let's instead concentrate on whether the magnitude of the ships, their size, speed, thickness of armor and main gun caliber, would have matched or surpassed the ships of Washington.

I believe the answer is yes, and had Anglo-German naval race continued to 1920, 18" gun armed ships would be common place, and 50-60,000 ton 18" armed battle cruisers would be built.

Moved to history

[Filipe Ramires]

A bit of a debatable subject I guess. War lessons were essential for the development of most warships in the years after. Without them Navies would have probably developed in a slower speed. War makes technology research much more important then in times of peace.
Few lessons would have been obtained of how weak battlecruisers could turn out to be. There would be no ASW school at all. The submarine would have most likely remained as in "the eyes of the fleet" doctrine. The carrier would met little support since aircraft didn't have the chance to show up what they were capable of during the conflict. In conclusion, well, the big guns would remain as the main weapons in warships.

[Guest]

True, post Jutland ships definitely would enjoy considerable subtle superiority over pre-Jutland ships in ways that would not be immediately obvious from a casual reading of a table of displacement, speed, gun caliber and belt thickness. But what about displacement, speed, gun caliber and belt thickness? Were Anglo-German naval race on track to beat the G-3, N-3, 8-8, and Lexington/South Dakota had WWI not intervened?

The British and Germans upped the battleship gun caliber 3 times in the 8 years between 1906 and 1914, and it seems at least 1-2 major caliber increases would be in the works between 1914 and 1920.

For the British, the natural progression would have been 12", 13.5", 15", then 16.5" and 18". The German caliber progression is not so steady and predictable, but on the even of the first WW, the Germans seems to be in the process of abandoning their long standing practice of adopting smaller calibers than their adversary, and starting with the Baden class was making a play at caliber superiority over the British. The Badens were given 15" guns without knowing of the British decision to do the very same thing with Queen Elizabeth class, and the Germans thought the Baden would achieve temporary caliber supremacy over the British 13.5" ships.

I understand the Germans were planning a 16.25" gunned follow on to the Baden class battleships on the even of WWI. This suggests that the German at least had a good shot at beating the Japanese and Americans to the 16" mark. It is almost inconceivable that the British would let that pass unanswered. The British almost certainly would answer with 16.5" gunned ships, possibly even bypassing that stage and going directly to 18" guns.

I suspect that had WWI not intervened, the North Sea of 1920 would be teeming with ships that would not look weak next to the Yamato, at least superficially.

[Laurence Batchelor]

I was the first to answer No to this poll, then I forgot to post why!

I agree Chuck they would have got bigger in displacement, bigger guns, greater thickness of armour etc etc.
But I would say there is a finite limit, if you get to G3 N3, Lex size you seriously have problems with being able to support such ships logistically around the world.
Dry-dock size, crew manning numbers and for countrys which need a fleet to patrol a very spaced out empire, such big toys wouldn't exactly be the best option.
Could one ever get through Parliament the cost for three 9x26inch/34knts 65,000ton warships in peacetime?
Parliament would be like ah, but you can have 6 with 18" guns etc etc.

If its a case of keeping up with the Jones, say Japan makes some sort of 20" gunned beast by 1920, then certainly most other nations will have to instantly reply and have an excuse to lay before the suits who santion the money. It's too hard to predict this however.

If your in an arms race you might be able to gradually build bigger with each successive naval budget, but as I said you reach a point where it doesn't just become a point of ship expenditure or technical ability. There are quite a few extra assciated problems with verge large calibre guns. In some cases designers might have to go back to the drawing board and develop a whole new method of construction in order to make the barrel for instance.

You also have to upgrade all of your support structures, e.g. cordite supply firms, naval gun firms, dockyards etc. I'm no naval architecture but surely you have to start pumping money into also redesigning things like rudders, propellers, hull form etc as the ship gets much larger, more problems occur.

However I think the key point would be whatever warships were produced by 1920, without WWI intervening, would be far less effective as warships. So much was learnt during the War, from a technical and operational perspective.
The Admiralty spent a fortune incorporating all their wartime lessons into the G3 & N3 from 1918-1922, tank testing, live-fire tests, remote controlled target ships, testing the German armour plate, testing some of the German High Seas Fleet battleships and other systems and so on.

I think looking at the RN capital ships from 1910 to the ones in 1915, the leap was 12" to 15". For 1915-1920 in peacetime it would be either 18" or 20" so it would be similar to Washington era ships had there been no WWI. The key difference I think would be I'd doubt there would be an appreciation for a faster than 23knt battlefleet, so I doubt you would see a 32knts ship as well armoured as a G3 or anything the speed & firepower of an N3 as one.

With no understanding of the increased ranges battles were to be fought at; and without understanding the attack from aerial bombing; of course the threat of the torpedo; deck armour and anti-torpedo bulges/underwater protection would be way behind the Washington era ships.

In summary the gun calibre might be the same, or slightly more 22" maybe, but I repeat they would be far less 'effective' warships!
Most lessons of war are not learnt in the laboratory, they are learnt on the battlefield.

[Guest]

Could one ever get through Parliament the cost for three 9x26inch/34knts 65,000ton warships in peacetime?

Would the cost for five 8X15"/25 knot 32,000 ton warship passed through the parliament in 1895?

I think reasonably well balanced ships of about 45,000 ton can probably be built and supported without drastic new infrastructure. The G-3 and N-3 classes of warships were designed to work with existing infrastructure as much as possible.

But had there been no war, Britain's finances would be far stronger and the state of the country's physical economy overall would have been vastly more robust. So in the no war scenario Britain would be far more likely to have embarked on infra-structure expansion in the years leading up to 1920 than she had been in the real world. So the physical limitations constraining the G-3 and N-3 would have been less of an obstacle than they were in reality. So I suspect that in the no-war scenario, the likelihood of ships greater than 50,000 tons would increase considerably.

Incidentally, during WWI the USN conducted a series of design studies calling for innovative solutions to permit the construction of the maximally powerful battleship that could fit into the existing locks of Panama canal. The series of open ended design studies eventually reached 80,000 tons, 15X18" guns in quintuple turrets, and 30+knots. All of these designs adopted unusual, some would say problematical, hull shapes to fit into the Panama docks, and all of them had beams of less than 33m.

[Werner]

I think you can say the Germans would be working toward a thoughtful parity in design with the British (for example, the difference in caliber of guns would diminish), but it remains to be seen whether the pace of construction would continue, and what the British would do.

With an immense investment in nearly new first generation ships, I doubt the UK would be happy making them obsolete in the same way the did the Predreadnoughts. In addition, docks and facilities tended to limit the size of British ships in a way which did not impact foreign designs.

Even a cursory review of British designs indicates the operators and engineers had little say; therefore the fleet is an instrument of policy, not warfare. In this context, one would have to see how the RN stacks against the Army and other demands the government has to vet.

The Germans have a legal reason not to increase the size of the fleet. I think they were fairly happy with the 3rd Law, which would replace older ships more quickly, effectively advancing the art.

So, in summary, I see the British rate of growth slowing or stopping, with new ships lige G3 replacing older ships rather than expanding the fleet. Only a few super ships could be accommodated at a time, and a surplus would be a concern to the fleet because of the small number of docks available to service them.

The Germans would not expand their fleet beyond three active and one reserve division plus the battlecruisers. They would rapidly have disposed of old ships and built new designs corresponding (on paper) to British designs, but not materially superior.

I think the Dreadnought race would have been over by 1920 or so.

[Guest]

If there had been no WWI, and the dreadnought race between Germany and Britain becomes a stalemate with each side committed all they have just to maintain a relative status quo in the North Sea, how would Britain react to the rise of Japan and the US?

Surely a Japan embarked on a 8-8 program, or whatever the equivalent of it would be in the no war scenario, would demand a very major diversion of British naval power out of the North Sea and thus upsetting the balance with the Germans.

[Werner]

The response to the Japanese 8-8 program would have been diplomatic, not technical.

In any event, Japan could have never built the 8-8 program. It would have ruined her.

[Laurence Batchelor]

I think reasonably well balanced ships of about 45,000 ton can probably be built and supported without drastic new infrastructure.
The G-3 and N-3 classes of warships were designed to work with existing infrastructure as much as possible.

I believe that not to be the case. Only 3 dry docks in all of the Royal Navy's global bases could accept them without replacing or enlarging them.

Even Portsmouth couldn't accept them without the entrance channel having an extensive new dredging program.

The same problem still exists today, you can't get a Nimitz into the Portsmouth Naval base for the very same reason!

Britain's finances would be far stronger and the state of the country's physical economy overall would have been vastly more robust

Debatable, perhaps by 1920 the German economy would be the undisputed master in Europe?
Britain was on economic decline as a world power from 1900 onwards.
But point taken WW1 bankrupted here!

I really can't see a large fleet made up of many ships around 50,000tons upwards, a few only perhaps. Cruisers are what Britian needs in peacetime.
A Battlefleet only takes priority if she's in and out an out naval arms/technology race and feels her superiority is threatened.

All of these designs adopted unusual, some would say problematical, hull shapes to fit into the Panama docks, and all of them had beams of less than 33m.

So how good was the buoyancy, water intergrity and of course anti torpedo defense on such ships?

I think the Dreadnought race would have been over by 1920 or so.

Why....colonism, empire building hasn't died?

If there had been no WWI, and the dreadnought race between Germany and Britain becomes a stalemate with each side committed all they have just to maintain a relative status quo in the North Sea, how would Britain react to the rise of Japan and the US? .

With the 'We Want 8 And We Won't Wait' Campaign Britain had that number as a superiority to the German High Seas Fleet by 1914.
She also in WWI stopped all new construction from 1916 onwards (except Hood), think of all that new construction from 1916-1920 or 1922.

How many nations in the world at this timeframe could build 6-8 dreadnoughts each year, without hampering too much other construction.
Of course the RN in peacetime for budgetary, and not capacity reasons never built that many, they didn't need to.
Just look at the early war periods when the QE's and R-class and battlecruisers were all being built at once.
There wasn't the delays back then that dogged the UK's warship building capacity like in the 1930s and WW2.

Whos to say, with the ousting of the Liberal Government she would not still year-on-year outbuild any other in nation in the world?
Lets not forget that most of the British Naval arms race with Germany was sanctioned under a Liberal Government, hell bent on pumping money into social reforms.
Britain still had the largest shipbuilding industry in terms of capacity in the world right up to 1939.
She could increase her superiority in numbers at anytime from 1915-1920 at a stroke, she could also as an added bonus always commandeer any foreign dreadnoughts then building in British yards.
Could any other countries do this?
Utilising all of these sources these extra Dreadnought numbers could then be used as new Eastern Fleet, to give Japan something to think about.
If Beatty's advice had been followed this would be based on a Northern Australian Port and not poorly placed Singapore.
Of course taking Dreadnoughts out of the North Sea means the force there to face Germany is weaker but is would still be either as big or just slightly bigger.
Is that enough of a deterrent I ask though?
The problem really for Britain is America by the 1920s there was real antagonism, largely fuelled from trade competition, Britain could take her on at that time but should would be the underdog.

[Guest]

All of these designs adopted unusual, some would say problematical, hull shapes to fit into the Panama docks, and all of them had beams of less than 33m.

So how good was the buoyancy, water intergrity and of course anti torpedo defense on such ships?

I don't know how much reserve buoyancy they would have. Reserve buoyancy is largely an effect of the volume of water-tight hull above water, and these designs didn't look too low slung to possess reasonable reserve bouyancy.

The ships are very narrow for its size. The fact that their narrow strength decks would also be pierced by the enormous barbettes of quintuple 18" turrets suggest that their longitudinal strength would be suspect unless their structural design is very innovative indeed.

Since effectiveness of torpedo defense is roughly proportional to the depth of torpedo defense structure, these long and exceptionally narrow ships would probably not fare as well as more naturally proportioned ships of the same weight.

[Laurence Batchelor]

As I thought, compromised and merely a design study only, and effectively weaker in important ways as a ship of war, even if her firepower was improved.

[Werner]

Several countries might be able, and briefly willing, to build 8 x 20,000 ton battleships in one year, but I think only the USA could afford to sustain a construction program of 8 x 50,000 ton ships in a year. The race would be over because only one nation had the tax base and manpower to build such a flotilla.

Before the George V dock was finished at Singapore in the early '30s, where would the UK have maintained/based it's Pacific fleet? I don't think Cocatoo dockyard has the capacity; Hong Kong (I believe) does not have the depth to accommodate a damaged Dreadnought.

[Laurence Batchelor]

I'm under the impression only with the huge investment in your shipbuilding industry pumped in during WW2 could that could be acheived.
You were the only nation whole could build whole new yard complexs from scratch in WW2, no one else had the resources and were often too busy with warship repairing.

Not being a US naval shipbuilding industry expert I'm on shaking ground.
However from what I do know in WW1 or upto 1920 you don't have the yards and slipways in place, the machine shops, final fitting out berths, enough heavy cranes to lift all the barrels and turrets and armour plate, and of course the skilled labour force to implement this huge naval program of 8 50,000 ton ships in 1 financial year at a stroke.
Britain has all this ready, built and ready to go!

Thus in any naval arms race with Britain from 1914-1920 Britain would have a 2-3 year lead over the USA.

What the USA does have in place though, is unequalled finances, a massive untapped labour pool to train, and of course vast coastlines and ideal ports to build into naval yards and all the various factories and machine shops that would be required.

Therefore after those 3years once all thats built and in full swing, only then can you match capacity and exceed British capacity.
In the meantime what would Britain be doing in those same 3 years with her naval shipbuilding industry? twiddling her thumbs?

With no WWI Britain has so much money to throw around and to say....

Several countries might be able, and briefly willing, to build 8 x 20,000 ton battleships in one year, but I think only the USA could afford to sustain a construction program of 8 x 50,000 ton ships in a year. The race would be over because only one nation had the tax base and manpower to build such a flotilla.

...is plain wrong, do you have any idea the Billions we spent on shells alone in WWI?
The figures are mind blowing even today, and we're talking WWI-timeframe prices here!

Here's some expenditure figures for WWI:-

1913-14 �197.5 million
1914-15 �560.5 million
1915-16 �1,559.2 million
1916-17 �2,198.1 million
1917-18 �2,696.2 million
1918-19 �2,579.3 million
Source: Pollard (1969) The Development of the British Economy 1914-1967. Ch.2 p66.
Put that into WWI US Dollars maybe that might give a better appreciation.

Now if one QE cost �2million in 1915 and Hood �5million in 1920 (after all her rebuilding), hmm I wonder how many of those 50,000ton ships Britain could have in 1914-1920 if no WWI???

[Guest]

Several countries might be able, and briefly willing, to build 8 x 20,000 ton battleships in one year, but I think only the USA could afford to sustain a construction program of 8 x 50,000 ton ships in a year. The race would be over because only one nation had the tax base and manpower to build such a flotilla.

I think you overestimate the practical advantages enjoyed by the US over European powers in full possession of their pre-WWI financial and economic resources. Much of the advantages enjoyed by the US after WWI stems from the generally sound state of her finances compare to debt laden states of the finances of European powers. WWI literally impoverished Europe. European physical capabilities atrophied as a result the huge financial and demographic dislocation of WWI. Even in raw material terms, Britain's war economy in 1939 was a far weaker one than the one that went into the war in 1914,

While in theory the US still could, if possessed with determination quite out of keeping with its tradition, eventually mobilize her greater industrial base to catch up, in short terms of 10 years or so Britain possessed vastly greater naval ship building resources as well as economy entirely adaquate to run those resources at full output so that there is no doubt who would have won an naval arms race in the 1920 if there had been no WWI. I think Britain, at peace and possessed of 1914 resources, would have no problem sustaining construction program of 8X50,000 ton ships each year almost indefinitely especially since the sort of war of that era made less other demands on the economy than would the war of 1939.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Before the George V dock was finished at Singapore in the early '30s, where would the UK have maintained/based it's Pacific fleet? I don't think Cocatoo dockyard has the capacity; Hong Kong (I believe) does not have the depth to accommodate a damaged Dreadnought.

Shortly after WWI Beatty made a detailed report on a future war with Japan and how the Royal Navy needed to plan for this eventuality.
He stated the Eastern Fleet should be based on an expanded Northern Australian Port, and not Hong Kong or Singapore, they were strategically in the wrong place.
As history shows us his report was not heeded.

I've not found to date however who made the fatal error and said ah yes Singapore, thats the best place chaps!

See earlier post if no WWI Britain has lots of money to spent in the 1920s & 1930s, she would not have had a stight a belt as she did do.
She could make a proper job of an Eastern Base, not the bodge-job which was Singapore.

[Guest]

Also keep in mind that even at the height of Anglo-German arms race, despite the marshal music and hyper-nationalism, Britain spend a smaller percentage of its GDP on defense than it is spending now. It is reasonable to suppose that a Britain feeling dire threat to her position could increase its naval spending by a factor of 10 for at least 5-10 years. If she could build 8 25000 ton battleships a year on its actual budget, surely she can manage 8 ship each twice that size on a budget 10 times larger.

[Werner]

Also keep in mind that even at the height of Anglo-German arms race, despite the marshal music and hyper-nationalism, Britain spend a smaller percentage of its GDP on defense than it is spending now. It is reasonable to suppose that a Britain feeling dire threat to her position could increase its naval spending by a factor of 10 for at least 5-10 years. If she could build 8 25000 ton battleships a year on its actual budget, surely she can manage 8 ship each twice that size on a budget 10 times larger.

Yes, Chuck, but the 1910-1915 period is when a mechanically trained or inclined individual was worth much more to the economy at business than in the military. 50,000-75,000 productive young men would mean a lot more to the economy then. In addition, look at the huge number of cruisers and other ships that were saved from the scrapyard by the declaration of war. Obviously, the rational idea of the number of men needed by the RN was much smaller than the number actually recruited at the start of the war. I'm sure a few trawlers or destroyers would have done better than Hogue, Abukir, & Cressey

[Guest]

I think HMS Incomparable would have a solid shot at being built had there been no WWI. The actual merits of a class of extra-long range, lightly armored, 6X20" gun battle cruisers is not the main point. The main point is such a ship would surely prompt a general rise in the average gun caliber of all subsequent dreadnoughts. If Incomparables were to become actualities, then as soon as data on the Imcomparable becomes general knowledge, I suspect all new battleships on the drawingboard anywhere in the world would be immediately reworked to incorporate guns at least 18" in caliber.

What huge beasties the guns of August deprived the naval world.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Think of all the millions of young men who would not be killed on the battlefields of Europe, or get disabled.

They would now be able to work in the heavy engineering sector or join the Royal Navy to man these extra large vessels.

They would also be paying taxes of course!

[Werner]

I'd rather have British and German motorcars.