Would heavy cruisers have been popular without Washington

[ar]

"Very few cruisaers".
The British had an absolute need for many cruisers, for Fleet AND for trade protection, regardless of the number of capital ships and ANY treaty or lack of.

Heavy cruisers in principle could only exist because of the artificial limitation on capital ships. No Washington Treaty, very few cruisers.

[Laurence Batchelor]

I've mentioned this before.
From Washington period onwards the Admiralty calculated they needed a cruiser strength of around 70-75 modern types.
This number was not dictated by Treaty, it was dictated by them looking at their global commitments and any future possible enemies.

What Washington did though was to force Britain's hand to build right up to 10,000 vessels from 1926 onwards as everyone else was doing or going to do the same to maximise the amount of tonnage they could cram in per vessel.

Because the Counties were so expensive and because of the 1920s/30s depression, Britain never was able to build anywhere near the number of cruisers the Admiralty had calculated and pressed that she needed.
Only later on in the 1930s did Government allow finance to have 50, which was still woefully inadequate.

This is why alot of the older cruisers C,D,E class etc were not scrapped by 1939.
Furthermore this is also why the RN had a cronic shortage of cruisers right throughout the war.
It didn't help that many projected cruisers from 1940 onwards were also cancelled to allow production to be shifted to more pressing types such as destroyers, escorts, frigates, corvettes, landing craft etc.
It also was done to help free up shipbuilding capacity for repairs which Britain was overburdened with throughout WW2.

[Werner]

When I said 'very few cruisers', I meant large, expensive ones of the Hawkins type.

[ar]

I had the feeling that you might respond that way.
In the nineteen twenties and into the thirties and assuming NO treaty, the minimum size for a trade cruiser would have to be around eight to ten thousand tons, using a treaty standard figure. THis is to get the required endurence. Number and size of gun is a different matter. Assume a minimum of seventy cruisers for trade protection, plus around thirty or more for the fleet. Total of about one hundred cruisers. Assume the usual esculation in size as building continues. What would break this would have been the depression coupled with lack of money.

When I said 'very few cruisers', I meant large, expensive ones of the Hawkins type.

[chuck]

What would break this would have been the depression coupled with lack of money.

Would the course of world's economy have been different without Washington?

[Werner]

8,000 tons is still a displacement in line with the "D" and Enterprise. Hawkins is more like 12,000 tons as I recall. It also had mixed firing after this had gone out of fashion in most other navies.

[ar]

Eight to ten thousand tons standard gives you eleven to fourteen thousand tons full. This will give the necessary range. Number and type of guns are a different matter.

8,000 tons is still a displacement in line with the "D" and Enterprise. Hawkins is more like 12,000 tons as I recall. It also had mixed firing after this had gone out of fashion in most other navies.

[Werner]

Since there was no treaty in the hypothetical, I did not realize we would be discussing "standard" tons.

In any event, "standard tons" were a number that could be adjusted and interpreted to suit the writer.

[Guest]

A standard tonnage - weight of all hardware plus all supplies except feed water and fuel oil - was a definition contrived by the British to ensure the particular needs of the British global defense does not handicap the British ships in tonnage.

But the British didn't seem to take full advantage of their own artifice

[Werner]

The US hated "Standard Tons", because although it neglected the weight of feed water and fuel, it included stores. Since the USN expected to have to steam at least 10,000 miles before any replenishment was possible, the quantity of stores was significant. Of course, you could supply SPACE for whatever you wanted....

The other issue for the USN was the "feed water". US habitation requirements meant USN sailors required at least 5X the water requirements of British sailors. The treaty called the supply for fresh water showerbaths "feed water". More water and more tankage and more equipment.

I think more creative minds were necessary.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Taking the discussion on a slightly different tack, if NO Washington then would cruisers main armaments by the 1920s & 1930s have got closer to Capital Ships?

Could we ever see a 4 or 6 gunned 10-12-inch armed cruiser with minimal armour?

Or without the 8-inch cap would navies be happier to keep the costs down and stick with 6-inch and go for lots of numbers?

Am I right by saying from memory the Kent's were the first Washington inspired cruiser laid down by a signatory power in around 1926?
If so, did this mean Britain shot herself in the foot as everyone else merely responsed in kind and immediately in the first round of this naval building competition, each country had maxed out already?
Unless of course you ignore the cap and build bigger in your next cruiser class.

[Werner]

The USN for one would not have built second-class ships. They would have continued the CC1-6 program, the Omahas and their would be no 8-inch gunned ship.

The US Naval officers of the period were uniformly against the 7 and 8-inch calibers. There was a strong effort to force a modernization of the "Big 10" ACRs, which had 10-inch guns and would have been among the most powerful cruisers in the world. BuEng said they could be re-engined cheaply to get 26 knots. More than that would require structural changes.

The BuOrd thought they could be made powerful enough for cruiser work at long ranges and last effectively until 1950.

[ar]

Very well then.
Eight thousand tons at light load gives about ten thousand fivehundred tons full.
Ten thousand tons light gives about fourteen thousand tons full.

This will give you the necessary range.
Number and type of guns are a different matter.

The US hated "Standard Tons", because although it neglected the weight of feed water and fuel, it included stores. Since the USN expected to have to steam at least 10,000 miles before any replenishment was possible, the quantity of stores was significant. Of course, you could supply SPACE for whatever you wanted....

The other issue for the USN was the "feed water". US habitation requirements meant USN sailors required at least 5X the water requirements of British sailors. The treaty called the supply for fresh water showerbaths "feed water". More water and more tankage and more equipment.

I think more creative minds were necessary.

[Werner]

Taking the discussion on a slightly different tack, if NO Washington then would cruisers main armaments by the 1920s & 1930s have got closer to Capital Ships?

Can't speak for Britain except to say they did not have a high opinion of Courageous & Glorious.

USN Scout cruiser designs 1915-1921:

1. 16 April 1915: Design 118: Scout Cruiser with 4 x 12 inch 14,350 tons;
2. 16 April 1915: Design 120: Scout Cruiser with 4 x 12 inch 22,850 tons;
3. Design 112: 10 x 6 inch @ 10,500 tons;
4. Sometime in 1915: 2 or 4 x 14 inch; 4 x 16 inch; all about 25,000 tons;
5. Design 130: 8 x 16 inch,30 knots, 10-inch armor; 52,000 tons;
6. Design 135: 8 x 16 inch, 30 knots, no armor, 16,000 tons;
7. Design 141: 8 x 16-inch, 30 knots, 4-inch armor; 30 Kts. 27,000 tons.
8. 1917 Scout became Omaha;

The General board felt that any cruisers would be at a disadvantage if it had less than 33 knots speed.


They also give quantities for the US cruisers needed. 53 light cruisers for screening operations and 20 to protect sea lines of communications.

So, the US need of 73 cruisers is not that far off British requirements, but where British ships would be between 6,000 and 8,000 tons, US ships would be of two categories: 7,500 ton types and 20,000+ ton types.

In general, I feel the US types do represent a gradual merger of cruiser and capital designs as Laurence speculated, and they also show a gross immaturity of the US long-range design process. I do not think this process "got it's feet" until the early 1930s and it's first fruit was North Carolina.

[chuck]

Taking the discussion on a slightly different tack, if NO Washington then would cruisers main armaments by the 1920s & 1930s have got closer to Capital Ships?

I don't think so. A very large number (18 by my count) of very fast, full fledged 16" battlecruisers would have emerged in the absence of Washington treaty. These battle cruisers would sweep the tonnage range between themselves and that of 8000-10000 ton fleet work cruisers clean. If anyone were to build a large, quasi-capitalship style cruiser that falls into that intermediate tonnage region, these large cruiser would appear to be death traps that would both draw and attention of the big battle cruisers and not be able to withstand that attention.

[Laurence Batchelor]

Thats my thinking.

The very large, fast and powerful battlecruisers which would emerge by 1925 from many of the leading navies which would make the idea of large cruisers redundant.

The fact still remains the USN & RN still needed lots of cruisers as the ideal global policeman, gun-barrel politics etc.
These navies would perhaps stick with smaller lighter 6-inch cruisers and perhaps try and make them 36knts so they can evade the newly completed battlecruisers?

[Pieter]

I think the 10.000 ton limit should be seen in conjuction with the ban on the coonstruction battlecruisers. The appearance of Hawkins and Furutaka (a very similar design which is often overlooked) meant that something had to be done to counter them. In a non-treaty world these designs presented something of a dilemma. As the designers of Dunkerque, Kronstadt and Alaska would discover countering these vessels on a similar displacement was almost impossible and Hawkins/Furutaka killer designs would grow very quickly to 20.000 tons or more. In a no-treaty world this would mean that ships would be built with a very difficult design rationale now that 33 knot Hood, G3, Lexington and Akagi were around. These could never be built in the numbers required to hunt down a series if Hawkins and Furutaka's but which could hunt down the relatively few 20.000-ish tons Hawkins/Furutaka killers. No navy wanted to be left in a corner like that so a solution was found in simply freezing this small arms race at the point which it had reached at the time. Hence the combination of a 10.000 ton limit and a battlecruiser ban.

[Guest]

The fact still remains the USN & RN still needed lots of cruisers as the ideal global policeman, gun-barrel politics etc.
These navies would perhaps stick with smaller lighter 6-inch cruisers and perhaps try and make them 36knts so they can evade the newly completed battlecruisers?

Britain with her wide spread interests and the possibility of more remote regions of conflict, would have much more need for cruiser flag showing then the US.

US interests are much more concentrated, and with the Japanese right next door to the focus of American overseas interests, the US would look silly showing off with mere cruisers.

[Laurence Batchelor]

I disagree,

Read one of earlier posts, British blockade agasinst the central European powers during WWI stung American exports in a large way.
This demonstrates that already by WWI, some 14 or so years after over taking the British as the dominant economic power in the world she was already a nation enjoying a large part of her wealth derived from foreign export trade.
The Ford Motor Co., being a good example.

From around 1915 and into the 1920s from my reading of economics the USA's exports went up dramatically.

This in turn pushed them to have to secure that extra, highly valuable trade routes and markets.
This meant she started to need cruisers just as much as the RN, though not as many until a few more years in the future.

[Werner]

Britain with her wide spread interests and the possibility of more remote regions of conflict, would have much more need for cruiser flag showing then the US.

US interests are much more concentrated, and with the Japanese right next door to the focus of American overseas interests....

Not only is this true, it is consistent with the record. The Monroe Doctrine and defense obligations in the Philippines until independence in 1945 (agreed by treaty in 1935 but foreseen years earlier) were the only reason prior to 1921 for US cruisers. The "Peace Cruiser" role needed by the Monroe Doctrine was well served by the 1880-1900 era cruisers and CNO Pratt planned to replace them with gunboats of the Erie type (the "Treasury Class" Coast Guard Cutters are slightly modified Eries with a different stern counter).

The US planned to concentrate the fleet at San Pedro near Los Angeles, and keep it there except in annual fleet problems, or to wave the flag during problems in the Pacific. They never expected to keep more than a token force at Subic Bay and Manila, as "speed bumps" which would provide whatever political justification or cover suited Congress. As such, submarines and destroyers were the weapons of choice.

Irrespective of the economic benefits of Globalization, the US Congress of the period was very isolationist. The voting public was even moreso. Only Hollywood had any interest in what was going on abroad, and largely only to support the Communists in Spain during the Civil War there.

Republican pundits did not see a European war as desirable because it was very unlikely to be won. Better to sell food, trucks and machinery to both sides. The Pacific was another matter: plenty of emerging markets which could use US low and medium technology goods and pay premiums, as long as the colonial powers and Japan didn't get involved. I think Australia and The USA pretty much saw eye-to-eye, which was really a realistic assessment by Australia of British abilities to keep promises regarding defense and so on. After the rattle PM Billy Hughes made at Paris, they expected frigid relations with Japan.

The Washington and London treaties revalued ship types and made the cruiser "Battleship-lite". It became necessary to build cruisers because it was likely they in the future would be performing capital ship duties in peacetime as well as at war. There were too few battleships, and they were too expensive to expose them the way they had in the past. They became the great strategic reserve, the "H-bomb" of the era.