Challenge: Pre-Dreadnoughts Galore!

[Douglas]

With a POD no earlier than 1915, have the Great Powers retain a large number of pre-dreadnoughts in service until at least 1940. No points if you convert them all into barges.

[wemayberry]

It would have to be a change in the terms of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. Perhaps an expansion of the second class Battleship category? OTL all ships with guns larger then 8" where lumped into the Capital Ship tonnage hence a lot of the Pre-Dreadnaughts & WWI Monitors had to be scrapped inorder to keep the most modern Battleships around. A few ships were kept for gunnery training but were supposed to be modified so as to be useless if war broke out.

Not sure what else might be possible to keep as actual warships, though use as school ships in peacetime with wartime use as amphib gunnery support/transports could be interesting.

[CalBear]

The Washington Treaty is clearly the biggest stumbling block. Without it, as agreed to, the pre-dreds actually would have been valuable at lest into the early days of WW II, and perhaps well into the war as convoy escorts where their 17-18 knot speed would have been less of an issue, shore bombardment ships, or as coastal defense ships. The down side of the types in all of these roles is, of course, that they were far less capable than more modern designs.

It might be possible to keep the pre-dreds by altering parts of the Washington Treaty or by making the requirements more specific (it was kept general so there would be less wiggle room). Something like a 10 year holiday on ANY new construction over 15,000 tons instead of the 5:5:3, creating a class of "20 knot or below reciprocating engine" sub capital ships, excluding ships commissioned before 1911 (the first generation dreadnoughts were almost as obsolete as the pre-dreds by 1920), or any number of other schemes could have been used.

With enough yard time, the last few pre-dred BB classes, especially the Lord Nelson class and the Japanese Satsumu class the older hulls could have been improved in protection (especially against torpedoes) and given a more rationalized secondary battery. A modified Lord Nelson or Connecticut, with improved 12" guns (12"/50 in place of the original 12"/45 in the case of the U.S. ship) 4.5" or 5" secondary DP guns and some medium AAA (40mm or 1.1") and modernized fire control would have been a serious opponent for anything the KM could put to sea short of the Scharnhorsts and would have been able to hold even those BC at arm's length in many circumstances. The question is how much yard time and how much money it would take to modernize the old girls.

The problem with any of the changes in the treaty is that it would have given the Royal Navy a significant, although not decisive, advantage over both the IJN & USN. Neither the Japanese nor Americans were going to allow that to happen. With the American Congress ready to go all out on the 8/8 construction plan, the more or less bankrupt UK wasn't about to push for something that might just get either the Americans or Japanese to walk out of the meeting and set off another naval arms race.

[David S Poepoe]

The Washington Naval Treaty is only the second largest hurdle here. The first is the cost of the war and the demilitarization. When it comes to the bottomline the navies will most likely cut the older warships to cut expenses.

I don't see the retention of any pre-dreadnoughts as being cost effective. Even if one has to completely refit an old battlewagon, like the USS New Hampshire, with new engines, guns and armour one still have a warship not nearly as capable as the most recently built battleship but as nearly expensive.

[Astrodragon]

The pre-dreadnaughts were so outclassed by the later dreadnaughts that no rational navy would keep them. They would have upkeep costs at least as high as a modern ship (probably higher, they were coal fired), virtualy no underwater protection, and so on.

Cheaper by far to build new rather than to try and modernise them.

The only likely way to keep them is for Dreadnaught not to have been built!

[Lord Brisbane]

The problem is, more modern and capable battlewagons were being scrapped as well as the "pre-dreadnaughts" (HMS Tiger comes to mind, a shame indeed!)

[drakkon]

July 1921. Billy Mitchell convinces his peers; Airpower is recognized as a serious threat to battleships 20 years early. This has a major influence on the negotiations at Washington.

1922: We get a modified version of the Washington Naval Treaty. At least some Pre- Dreadnoughts are retained by all navies that have them. However, the treaty mandates that these ships must be striped of their main guns. All are retrofitted with dozens of anti-aircraft guns.

So many Pre- Dreadnoughts remain in service, albeit as Fleet AA defence ships, not Big Gun battlewagons.

[Andrew Hudson]

The pre-dreadnaught was obsolete, the reason for the retention of 6 german pre-dreadnaughts was that they were the only battleships Germany was allowed under the Treaty of Versailles and they were gradually being replaced by 1939. The panzerschiffes were effectively only slightly more heavily armed pre-dreadnaughts.

The only way they would have been retained would have been if the Washington Treaty had resulted in the scrapping of all modern capital ships i.e anything with a heavier armament than 4 or maybe 6 12 inch guns which isn't very likely.

A more plausible scenario would have been an earlier POD in the early 1900's with Beresford becoming first sea lord instead of Fisher but the most likely result would have been that other countries would have overtaken Britain in the naval arms race. Dreadnaughts were cost savers by having the armament of 2 or more ships on one hull. There is virtually no way they would have survived

[DD951]

As an aside, someone (not me) on the Naval Fiction section of the Navweaps boards has written a few stories based on this premise, focusing on the continuing adventures of the USS New Hampshire in that TL, although there hasn't been an update in several months- they're called 'The Old War Wagon' or something like that.

The premise of that TL is that in the lead-up to the Washington Naval Treaty negotiations, the major powers decide that keeping a few predreadnoughts around as second-class battleships for convoy escort, shore bombardment, showing the flag, etc., might be a good thing, and in the @-WNT, a series of clauses allows the retention of a handful of predreadnoughts as combatants, more or less what NHBL posted, but with reconstruction clauses allowing for improvements in defenses against air and submarine attack more or less like what could be done with battleships under the historical WNT. In the mid-1930s, the US, essentially as a New Deal public works project, comes up with a rather creative interpretation that pretty much abuses the clause to "reconstruct" its predreadnoughts into brand-new pocket-battlecruisers with 12"/50s & a bunch of 5"/38s, to fulfill the cruiser-killer role that was a major rationale behind the OTL Alaskas. When the stories left off, New Hampshire had just had a rather interesting encounter with the Graf Spee in the South Atlantic in 1939.

If one wants the major powers to keep some predreadnoughts around for WW2, that would probably be how one'd go about it, even though I don't find the premise entirely plausible- even if the politicians back in 1921 would have gone for bigger fleets, the predreads were obsolete and worn out, and the admirals would have tried to push for a few more of the more generally useful, merely obsolescent, and somewhat worn out early dreadnoughts to stick around.

A POD that butterflies away the existence of dreadnoughts would have to be pretty massive, as even if the British didn't go for the type at first, someone would have in short order as the type had the advantages of allowing for smaller more powerful fleets and was what the development of long range gunnery as shown in the Russo-Japanese War was requiring; the US had already designed and ordered the South Carolinas, while Italy and Japan both had such ships on the drawing boards in 1905. A naval treaty that eliminates anything with more than a handful of 12" guns is borderline ASB, as in the historical WNT, the fact that Japan already had a 16" ship in service, the US was about to, while the Hood was popularly seen as a supership that could have her way with any other warship afloat at the time required a lot of delicate negotiations to get a sort of balance everyone'd sign off on as nobody wanted to junk their brand-new and most powerful stuff. From what I've read in Friedman's books, the historical WNT size limits were what the USN regarded as the minimum necessary for a warship that would be useful in a Pacific campaign, and this led to the US to be hostile towards British proposals to futher reduce the size of ships, often rejecting them outright (reducing battleships to 25000 tons/12" guns being a common one)

[Markus]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hudson

A more plausible scenario would have been an earlier POD in the early 1900's with Beresford becoming first sea lord instead of Fisher but the most likely result would have been that other countries would have overtaken Britain in the naval arms race. Dreadnaughts were cost savers by having the armament of 2 or more ships on one hull. There is virtually no way they would have survived

I agree, the idea of an all big gun ship was persued by many nations(Italy, USA, Japan). IIRC the Japanese would have actually beaten the British but they could not get enough 12" guns in time, so a mixed armament had to be used.

That being said, the PDN are IMO dead no matter what. They are utterly obsolete as BB by 1914, recognized as deathtraps in case of a torpedo hit in 1918 and would be pretty worn out by the 1930´s.
You can modernize them but why? You would have to spend a fortune on anti-torpedo protection, engines, guns and still get a ships that´s not useful for anything but shore bombardment and commerce protection.

[NHBL]

I've been writing "The Old War Wagon," but had RL time issues. That's why I wrote the revised Washington Treaty I just posted--as an excuse to keep my state's namesake ship involved in the action.

New Deal projects don't have to make economic or military sense--they just have to put people to work, hopefully in yards with politically connected Congresscritters. That said, the rebuild is comprehensive enough to create a somewhat useful warship...

The "rebuild" could almost be described as jacking the ship's bell up, and building a new ship under it. Some of the treaty rebuilds were close to doing that, anyway.

The other nations aren't doing quite such comprehensive rebuilds...

[David S Poepoe]

Why not just let the US keep the predreadnoughts it wants to, but allow the other powers to scrap theirs? Keeping HMS Dreadnought around would be better than keeping HMS Lord Nelson.

I would consider the possibility that the US would sell some of it predreadnoughts off to various Latin American countries and then, probably post-Pearl Harbor, offer to buy them back in order to reinforce the battleline.

I've read 'The Old War Wagon' and felt that all that was missing was it powering up its engines and taking up station along side the Spacecruiser Yamato.

[JedidiahStott]

One simple way to keep some pre-DNs in service, would be if the Washington treaty, instead of specifying tonnage of capital ships, had worked on a points basis.

Each country would have been allotted a certain number of points. Points would be allocated ('used up'), on the basis of so many per 1000 tons, so many per 6 inch gun, so many per 18 inch , so many for a ship with x inch armour, so many per shaft horsepower etc. (the degree of detail limited only by the patience of the delegates).

The points system could easily have been so weighted as to heavily penalise modern powerful BBs while being less punitive on older ships.

And this would logically allow extension to cover all warships, not just capital ships and aircraft carriers.

The result would be to place a limit on naval strength (and thus 'prevent' the naval arms race - hah!), but to offer more in the way of options . A few big new BBs? Or rather more older slower less powerful pre dreadnoughts? Or lots of cruisers? Or mixtures of the above. Someone would almost certainly have opted for including some pre dreadnoughts (which didn't suck up so many precious points) in the mix.

(Yes, it is reminiscent of the system used by quite a few computer games)

[BigWillyG]

Would having major naval tensions during the '20s help them to survive? As it was the Washington conference happened in part to stop a naval arms race between the USN and the IJN. If you don't have it and you end up with a cold war between the US and Japan,pre-dreadnoughts might be kept to keep fleet numbers up. They may only be kept in reserve but they'd be brought back whenever a US/Japanese conflict occured. I could see pre-dreadnoughts being kept much as WWII era cruisers and destroyers were kept in reserve throughout the Cold War. IOTL the British did keep all the guns from scrapped ships in the interwar period for wartime shore defenses and for arming merchant ships.