Earliest the US Navy could match the Royal Navy?

[CthulhuFhtagn]

Honestly, if the Navy Department’s General Board had gotten their way in 1918, the USN would've had a much larger capital ship force than the RN in 1922-23, simply by extending the Naval Act of 1916 to cover another twelve battleships and sixteen battlecruisers, all of which would likely be on par with or superior to the South Dakota-class (BB-49 through -54).

The only real problem is, the USN would need a larger cruiser and battlecruiser force to outmatch the RN in practice, because as badly as the RN performed in WWI, there is a lot to say about how useful institutional aggressiveness is when you're commerce raiding. The USN of course was fairly deficient of cruisers until after the WNT went into effect, but had enough to support their operational requirements when taken with the USN's capital ships.

So there's more to it than just numbers, then? Why didn't the US develop cruisers like the other great powers?

 

[Saphroneth]

People using the simple numbers of industry have a point, though it's not as much of one as it seems - recall I said that I assumed the RN would know it was coming (if only because - who else is such an enormous navy going to be aimed at?), and in industrial terms Britain has an advantage due to their incredibly fast shipbuilding.


From another thread, my post:

Thing is, for this you want to have a modern US fleet which is basically ALL composed of big, fast ships (otherwise, you get an indecisive engagement where one side's fast ships can open the range, and the other has to let them go or risk their own modern ships taking licks from the enemy slower ships as they go past)
This basically means nothing with a speed below 21 knots - as that's the fleet speed of everything Dreadnought and later.
And the RN fleet as of about 1916 included no fewer than thirty-seven of the things...

Assuming that things kick off in 1916. What does the USN have with a fleet speed of 21 knots?
The South Carolinas are too slow.
So that means everything Delaware and later.
Eleven, with three more building.


So.
Given that the Royal Navy has a demonstrated ability to churn out capital ships at a truly insane rate (I'm talking three or four a year, with an individual ship being in the slips for under two years except in extreme cases - many of them being in the slips for under one year!), the USN will have to go for parallel builds (i.e. more ships at a time) to overcome the RN serial build capability (more ships out of the same number of slips in the same time).

That's as far as I can tell you offhand or with a quick Wiki - more would mean looking at the numbers of capital ship slips both sides had active in (say) 1918. But it means the USN battle line has a disadvantage of twenty-three to make good, against an enemy that is not exactly standing still. (And I didn't even count battlecruisers (all of them with higher fleet speed; count is 8+1 nearly finished and four just started, BTW, and that's assuming Jutland has happened and three of them have exploded), and RN battlecruisers were themselves capital-sized in the first place.




Okay, I'm going to pull numbers directly out of my arse.

Assuming that the USN's construction rate is double that of the RN, year by year, so the RN commissions four new ships and the USN eight. (The RN could absorb that, albeit with some difficulty; the USN would probably have a major manpower crisis. But let's forget that.) Let's also assume that fleet speeds remain at 21 knots, and that armament is no more effective on later designs - or not enough to matter, except that the USN only has to outnumber the RN 1:0.7 in order to get the decisive victory.

So we want thirty-seven plus 4x to be 0.7 times 15 (generous) + 8x.


And based on these WAGs, the break-even point is in... 1932, when the USN's fleet of one hundred and forty-one dreadnoughts attains decisive superiority sufficient to force the RN battle line of one hundred and one to battle.


Clearly my WAGs are producing absurd results.

Okay, let's try again. This time, the USN merely has to exceed the RN's numbers by 10%.
Break even is 1923, when the RN fleet is 65 strong and the USN fleet is 71 strong.

What about if the RN doesn't build anything and the USN builds three ships a year?
1924-5 or so.

Of course, in reality, both economies basically melt under the strain - and with no WW1 it is by no means guaranteed that the UK's economy goes first, since the world is still Sterling at this point and the UK is better than the US at commerce warfare... let's call it a toss up who's ruined and who's crippled.

This is precisely the reason they wouldn't really try to match one another by sheer numbers and instead just make a gentleman's agreement - in which case, OTL Washington Naval Treaty, plus two years for the US to build up to the treaty limits in all categories. Done.

 

[Saphroneth]

Honestly, if the Navy Department’s General Board had gotten their way in 1918, the USN would've had a much larger capital ship force than the RN in 1922-23, simply by extending the Naval Act of 1916 to cover another twelve battleships and sixteen battlecruisers, all of which would likely be on par with or superior to the South Dakota-class (BB-49 through -54).

The only real problem is, the USN would need a larger cruiser and battlecruiser force to outmatch the RN in practice, because as badly as the RN performed in WWI, there is a lot to say about how useful institutional aggressiveness is when you're commerce raiding. The USN of course was fairly deficient of cruisers until after the WNT went into effect, but had enough to support their operational requirements when taken with the USN's capital ships.

Hold on. Where are you getting the numbers on "larger"?
If we're talking dreadnoughts (i.e. fleet speed of 21 knots) then the US would under those terms have 11 + 3 building dreadnoughts and no BCs as of 1918. Assuming that Jutland happened and as such several RN BCs exploded, the RN has 8 BCs with 5 building, and 37 DNs.
If you mean that the RN scraps everything over the WNT limits and the US keeps building, then sure, that's easy. But that's also insanity on the RN's part.

OTOH, if both sides keep up their building programmes... see above post.

 

[Tallil2long]

People using the simple numbers of industry have a point, though it's not as much of one as it seems - recall I said that I assumed the RN would know it was coming (if only because - who else is such an enormous navy going to be aimed at?), and in industrial terms Britain has an advantage due to their incredibly fast shipbuilding.

The incredibly fast shipbuilding is intrinsically related to industry. The British had benn making the fast building of warships an industrial priority for a while. The U.S. had not. But if the U.S. made a deliberate attempt to harness their industrial potential to matching the RN, their superior industrial strength would've enabled them to swiftly catch up. It would take a few years to learn the best methods, of course, but certainly not multiple decades.

Fast shipbuilding is not a magic that only British people can learn. It is the deliberate harnessing of industry to a specific goal.

 

[NHBL]

Other ways...

The USA could become the number one navy almost without trying at some points. If the USA has a serious fleet--such as it did in 1914...then Britain could have a decisive battle with someone else--like Germany or France. Britain may win--but if the victory consists of Britain having three battleships and the other side having none, the USA is now number one.

 

[Saphroneth]

The incredibly fast shipbuilding is intrinsically related to industry. The British had benn making the fast building of warships an industrial priority for a while. The U.S. had not. But if the U.S. made a deliberate attempt to harness their industrial potential to matching the RN, their superior industrial strength would've enabled them to swiftly catch up. It would take a few years to learn the best methods, of course, but certainly not multiple decades.

Fast shipbuilding is not a magic that only British people can learn. It is the deliberate harnessing of industry to a specific goal.

Yes, I'm sure. But to actually both overcome the speed difference AND ALSO overcome the built up RN strength is required, not just speed alone.

See where I gave the USN twice the speed of the RN - when I did that, and calculated it out, it did indeed take over a decade simply because a head start of nearly two dozen has to be eroded. Even if the USN is building two more ships per year than the RN - which is, after all, the entire construction rate of the Kriegsmarine - it takes a decade or so to overcome that advantage.

Reaching per-year ship building speed parity can be done, and relatively quickly - for example, parallel building. Reaching per-slip build speed parity would take a bit longer (you've got to train up the crews, basically), but combine that with multiply parallel builds and the USN's construction rate can indeed exceed that of the RN by the early-mid 1920s.
Once that's done, it's a stern chase - the RN starts ahead, but the USN will overtake it. But it'll take a few years.


My late 30s calculation was instead based on a world where the WNT did go through, scrapping both of them back down to near parity, and then the USN kicked off a building race some years later (when the RN's build speed skills are largely lost, due to the attrition of the workforce into other jobs etc.) This means that they start nearly level, and the USN has the ability to basically swamp the RN in new builds - basically the Two Ocean Navy, brought up a decade or so. Under those circumstances, both sides are building off the drawing board, the RN still has a slight boost here because even after a decade or two hiatus they were generally quite efficient (Vanguard took 3 years in the slips, KGV took two), so I'm basically ballparking one-and-a-half building cycles.

 

[Tallil2long]

Yes, I'm sure. But to actually both overcome the speed difference AND ALSO overcome the built up RN strength is required, not just speed alone.

See where I gave the USN twice the speed of the RN - when I did that, and calculated it out, it did indeed take over a decade simply because a head start of nearly two dozen has to be eroded. Even if the USN is building two more ships per year than the RN - which is, after all, the entire construction rate of the Kriegsmarine - it takes a decade or so to overcome that advantage.

Reaching per-year ship building speed parity can be done, and relatively quickly - for example, parallel building. Reaching per-slip build speed parity would take a bit longer (you've got to train up the crews, basically), but combine that with multiply parallel builds and the USN's construction rate can indeed exceed that of the RN by the early-mid 1920s.
Once that's done, it's a stern chase - the RN starts ahead, but the USN will overtake it. But it'll take a few years.


My late 30s calculation was instead based on a world where the WNT did go through, scrapping both of them back down to near parity, and then the USN kicked off a building race some years later (when the RN's build speed skills are largely lost, due to the attrition of the workforce into other jobs etc.) This means that they start nearly level, and the USN has the ability to basically swamp the RN in new builds - basically the Two Ocean Navy, brought up a decade or so. Under those circumstances, both sides are building off the drawing board, the RN still has a slight boost here because even after a decade or two hiatus they were generally quite efficient (Vanguard took 3 years in the slips, KGV took two), so I'm basically ballparking one-and-a-half building cycles.

No reason to wait til the WNT levels the field. With a POD of no later than 1900, the U.S. could be matching British shipbuilding tonnage around the time the Dreadnought is launched, the introduction of which basically puts both nations at a level field. Since frankly, Pre-dreads just weren't going to project a lot of power across the Atlantic versus a dreadnought fleet.

 

[Tallil2long]

Anybody have any idea what fraction of national productivity and industrial output Germany applied to her naval construction programs?

Because if so, we can reasonably apply those same percentages to the (rather larger) U.S. economy and draw some relevant conclusions. I think the outcome will be at least parity with the RN by 1914-15. Especially as the U.S. isn't compelled to spend as high a percentage on the army as Germany did...

 

[Saphroneth]

No reason to wait til the WNT levels the field. With a POD of no later than 1900, the U.S. could be matching British shipbuilding tonnage around the time the Dreadnought is launched, the introduction of which basically puts both nations at a level field. Since frankly, Pre-dreads just weren't going to project a lot of power across the Atlantic versus a dreadnought fleet.

Okay... that may work for the DNs, though personally I'm not so sure that the US gets DNs at the same time (the Brits were leading naval innovators at that time). It also means you're having the ramp-up take only six years, and remember that British ship building was "we can build a ship in one year flat" at this point.

But in that case, then sure, the USN can potentially have parity in DN numbers. What about the PDNs? They're still a viable defence force, which frees up the RN DNs for action elsewhere:

Counting two ships ordered by Chile but taken over by the British, the Royal Navy had 39 pre-dreadnought battleships ready or building by 1904, starting the count from the Majestics. That puts them at 41 counting the Lord Nelson class ships.

It is going to take a non-zero amount of time for the USN to outbuild the RN in DNs sufficient to match them in that way - the USN's PDN numbers are approx. 20. That means, in other words, that the USN's construction rate would have to be fully twice that of the RN once the Dreadnought Revolution takes place, or the RN's DNs can take on the US PDNs before the USN DNs can take on the RN PDNs.
(And that doesn't even get into the fact that, historically, the RN were the ones to intro the super-dreadnought and the fast battleship.)

 

[Saphroneth]

Anybody have any idea what fraction of national productivity and industrial output Germany applied to her naval construction programs?

Because if so, we can reasonably apply those same percentages to the (rather larger) U.S. economy and draw some relevant conclusions. I think the outcome will be at least parity with the RN by 1914-15. Especially as the U.S. isn't compelled to spend as high a percentage on the army as Germany did...

Since the RN, OTL, was under cost constraints that were still quite present up until the Orions (first SDs) then we can probably assume the RN would be throwing more resources at the fleet earlier if the USN is making a bid for top dog, so factor that in too. (OTL, the Anglo-German Arms Race escalated to the point that the funds loosened up in 1909.)
If there's any real threat of an enemy naval power hitting parity (as opposed to threatening the two-power standard) then all the gloves come off, basically. Given how much money the Brits poured into their Navy even during WW1, we can assume that they have a lot to give in the absence of needing much of an army at all.

 

[CalBear]

Around 1925, maybe as late as 1930, assuming no WW I or some sort of UK/U.S. war intervenes.

The biggest issue for the U.S. isn't even in battleships, its in lighter forces, cruisers & destroyers in particular. The USN didn't get serious about destroyers until about 1916 with the arrival of the 22 ship Paulding class. Once it did, it went big fast with over 300 destroyers built in the next 3 years. Cruisers were a different matter, with a rather slow pace of construction in the interwar years and really NO construction prior to that in the CL/DDL categories.

The RN had a considerable lead in capital ships in the water, and UK yards were the envy of the world, but the U.S. was just hitting its economic stride in the early 1900s.

 

[Tallil2long]

Around 1925, maybe as late as 1930, assuming no WW I or some sort of UK/U.S. war intervenes.

The biggest issue for the U.S. isn't even in battleships, its in lighter forces, cruisers & destroyers in particular. The USN didn't get serious about destroyers until about 1916 with the arrival of the 22 ship Paulding class. Once it did, it went big fast with over 300 destroyers built in the next 3 years. Cruisers were a different matter, with a rather slow pace of construction in the interwar years and really NO construction prior to that in the CL/DDL categories.

The RN had a considerable lead in capital ships in the water, and UK yards were the envy of the world, but the U.S. was just hitting its economic stride in the early 1900s.

If the U.S. got serious about matching the RN, the lighter units (DDs and cruisers) should be the first to catch up, given their shorter building times. And I very much doubt the U.S. would, under this circumstance, wait till 1916 to get started. It wasthe very lack of a strong, likely opponent in the early years of the 20th century that lulled the U.S. into falling behind in lighter units, I suspect.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

The thing is that using OTL as a benchmark shows the US creeping ahead in world war one. It had a major expansion plan that the British would need to counter and they decided OTL not to bother and instead come to an agreement.

As impressive as the British ship building was the treasury was less so and a second naval race would wreck British finances.

Would probably wreck US Finances as well unless its no longer a democracy or some equally absurd POD!

And continued build we have 6 South Dakota Class and 6 Lexington Class vs The 4 N3 and 4 G3 respectively

Which would have been Quantity vs Quality

After that? Who knows but I would expect the US Navy to grow larger year on year but for the British ships to retain their qualitative edge for many years to come.

 

[Saphroneth]

Would probably wreck US Finances as well unless its no longer a democracy or some equally absurd POD!

And continued build we have 6 South Dakota Class and 6 Lexington Class vs The 4 N3 and 4 G3 respectively

Which would have been Quantity vs Quality

After that? Who knows but I would expect the US Navy to grow larger year on year but for the British ships to retain their qualitative edge for many years to come.

Hence why my opinion is that the easiest way for the US to match the RN is to do so after the WNT, because that's an OTL treaty which strips both sides back down to parity in the first place.

 

[Admiral Halsey]

Which would have been Quantity vs Quality .

I believe you mean Quality VS Lesser Quality.

 

[deathscompanion1]

Would probably wreck US Finances as well unless its no longer a democracy or some equally absurd POD!

And continued build we have 6 South Dakota Class and 6 Lexington Class vs The 4 N3 and 4 G3 respectively

Which would have been Quantity vs Quality

After that? Who knows but I would expect the US Navy to grow larger year on year but for the British ships to retain their qualitative edge for many years to come.

The US actually had a surplus at this time if I remember correctly. It could fund a lot more than Britain could for sure.

 

[Saphroneth]

I believe you mean Quality VS Lesser Quality.

Eh?
The 1920 SoDaks weren't the 1940s SoDaks. The 1920 ones were 12x16" beasties with 8"-13" belts.
Meanwhile, the N3s were 9x18" beasties with 13.5-15" belts.

 

[Saphroneth]

The US actually had a surplus at this time if I remember correctly. It could fund a lot more than Britain could for sure.

Well, if we assume the Brits have everything they used OTL in WW1 to spend on ships... (Remember, OTL WW1 basically burned through the entire accumulated savings of the British Empire and then some.)
Thing is, a naval race against an unfriendly power is for Britain an existential threat, and the money is apportioned appropriately.

 

[Admiral Halsey]

Eh?
The 1920 SoDaks weren't the 1940s SoDaks. The 1920 ones were 12x16" beasties with 8"-13" belts.
Meanwhile, the N3s were 9x18" beasties with 13.5-15" belts.

I trust the US Armor Protection schemes better then the British ones. Plus putting the third turret between the Bridge and funnel doesn't seem like a good idea.

 

[Saphroneth]

I trust the US Armor Protection schemes better then the British ones. Plus putting the third turret between the Bridge and funnel doesn't seem like a good idea.

What's your evidence for the armour protection scheme disparity - as in, can it really overcome a difference of about 50% in armour thickness and near that in shell weight?
Heck, plunging fire -
SoDak 3.5 in deck
N3 6-8 in deck


As for the turret position, it was a choice taken to increase armour thickness and lower center of gravity. It would of course hamper firing ahead and astern, but broadside would be unaffected.