1930s British Sanity Options (Economy, Navy, Airforce and Army)

[Spencersj345.346]

Thinking about it perhaps the RN could in this hypothetical timeline use the 12 6" twin turrets and their fire control systems you'd get from rebuilding Nelson and Rodney with among other things DP secondaries with our previously discussed(way back in the early parts of the thread)capital ship rebuild plan and use them to build either 3 Amphions or 4 modifed Arthesuas(ie designed with 8 4" secondaries from the start) after the 2nd London treaty got rid of the total cruiser tonnage limit and then build them quickly so they'd be available within a couple years if being laid down

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Thinking about it perhaps the RN could in this hypothetical timeline use the 12 6" twin turrets and their fire control systems you'd get from rebuilding Nelson and Rodney with among other things DP secondaries with our previously discussed (way back in the early parts of the thread)capital ship rebuild plan and use them to build either 3 Amphions or 4 modified Arthesuas (ie designed with 8 4" secondaries from the start) after the 2nd London treaty got rid of the total cruiser tonnage limit and then build them quickly so they'd be available within a couple years if being laid down.

If that was done there would be a one-for-one cut in the number of Colony and Dido class ships laid down from 1937.

That might be a good thing because AIUI the naval armaments industry couldn't cope with the increase in the demand for cruiser turrets and fire control systems after the end of 1936 and that contributed to the Colony and Dido class taking longer to build that their predecessors. In your suggestion the demand for turrets and fire control systems would be closer to the available manufacturing capacity which might reduce the building times of the Colony and Dido class ships that were built in your TL.

 

[Spencersj345.346]

If that was done there would be a one-for-one cut in the number of Colony and Dido class ships laid down from 1937.

That might be a good thing because AIUI the naval armaments industry couldn't cope with the increase in the demand for cruiser turrets and fire control systems after the end of 1936 and that contributed to the Colony and Dido class taking longer to build that their predecessors. In your suggestion the demand for turrets and fire control systems would be closer to the available manufacturing capacity which might reduce the building times of the Colony and Dido class ships that were built in your TL.

Hmmmm less Crown Colony class and Dido class ships would be bad. This being said I suspect that it would be the 1937 Didos that got cut since the Crown Colony ships were better at mutiple roles. Mind you assuming the previous recommendations of the thread are followed through 2nd London doesn't lower the maximum size of cruisers and thus the Crown Colonies would almost certainly be slight improvements on the Edinburghs and as such would carry 12 4" guns which would help make up for less 5.25" guns in the fleet especially in the AA role. Plus giving the RN more time to work on the 5.25" mount before they finalized the design for production wouldn't be a bad idea since it had a lot of problems that another year or so of development probably would have mostly fixed

 

[fasquardon]

I'm not sure that what I've written answers the question. That's because it's not really finance that limits the number of ships that can be built, but the tonnage that can be built according to the terms of the First London Naval Treaty. IOTL all but 5,800 tons of the tonnage that was available was used.

Building only the Leander/Amphion type or only the Arethusa class or a mix of Leander/Amphion and Arethusa class cruiers would allow more ships to be built, but would the increase in quantity have offset the decrease in quality?

Interesting... Though weren't cruisers a priority for the British? It doesn't seem too strange that almost all the cruiser tonnage would be used while there was unused tonnage in the battleship and carrier allotments, given the empire's needs.

Something that occurred to me reading through the info you'd dug up. If the treasury did make more funds available to the RN, how much do you think the quality of the cruisers could have been improved?

fasquardon

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Interesting... Though weren't cruisers a priority for the British? It doesn't seem too strange that almost all the cruiser tonnage would be used while there was unused tonnage in the battleship and carrier allotments, given the empire's needs.

Something that occurred to me reading through the info you'd dug up. If the treasury did make more funds available to the RN, how much do you think the quality of the cruisers could have been improved?

fasquardon

IIRC There was a 10% drop in manpower during the early 30s (?) I suspect that any increase in spending would first address that before translating into more or better hulls

 

[Schlock]

To be honest, the Leander/Amphion and Arethusa classes all gave good service during WW2, so having three more Amphions or four extra Arethusa class units is only going to be a good thing in my opinion.

The other thing to consider is that the Dido class was a development of the Arethusa design, so any design work done for a follow-on improved Arethusa isn't going to be wasted and would be folded into the development work for the Dido Class anyway.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Interesting... Though weren't cruisers a priority for the British? It doesn't seem too strange that almost all the cruiser tonnage would be used while there was unused tonnage in the battleship and carrier allotments, given the empire's needs.

Something that occurred to me reading through the info you'd dug up. If the treasury did make more funds available to the RN, how much do you think the quality of the cruisers could have been improved?

fasquardon

Not a lot because better ships would be heavier and we've only got 5,800 tons to play with.

I think that the best that could be done is to build Aurora as a Southampton. Friedman says she had to be built as an Arethusa rather than a Southampton (or even an Amphion) because there wasn't enough replacement tonnage available. When I tried to work it out more than enough replacement tonnage was available, but I'm inclined to trust his sources on this and not my own calculations.

Then the 3 Birmingham class cruisers ordered in 1935-36 could be upgraded to Edinburghs.

That would absorb 5,630 tons of the 5,800 tons that wasn't used IOTL.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Interesting... Though weren't cruisers a priority for the British? It doesn't seem too strange that almost all the cruiser tonnage would be used while there was unused tonnage in the battleship and carrier allotments, given the empire's needs.

The capital ship tonnage wasn't used because the First London Naval Treaty extended the battleship building holiday to the end of 1936.

I think building cruisers were given priority over building aircraft carriers until 1936 because of their age. That is the service life of a cruiser was set at 15 years until it was changed to 16 years for a ship laid down before 1st January 1920 and 20 years for a ship laid down after 31st December 1919 by the 1st London Naval Treaty. Meanwhile, the service life of an aircraft carrier was set at 20 years.

The existing aircraft carriers would become overage from 1937, but all but 2 of the cruisers laid down before 1920 would be overage by the end of 1938. That's why 22 cruisers and only one aircraft carrier were laid down while the First London Naval Treaty was in force.

Something that occurred to me reading through the info you'd dug up. If the treasury did make more funds available to the RN, how much do you think the quality of the cruisers could have been improved?

I don't believe that they would spend it on better cruisers. AIUI the ships that were built were fit for purpose as they were.

If the British Government and the voters that elected it had allowed the Treasury to spend more on defence in the first half of the 1930s MHO is that the Admiralty would have spent it on:

• The aircraft carrier that was to have been ordered in 1931-32. Meanwhile, the Air Ministry would have been given enough money to complete the "52-Squadron Scheme" by March 1935 and bring the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Air Force up to strength. IOTL the Home Defence Force of the RAF was 25% short of the 52-Squadron Scheme and the FAA was about 25% short of the number of aircraft that could be carried, but the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers, capital ships, cruisers and seaplane carriers.
• Giving Barham, Malaya and Repulse full modernisations along the lines of the one that Warspite and Renown had (except that it's unlikely that Repulse would have received the new secondary armament).

At most there would only be one more cruiser, that is an Arethusa, which would be built to use the 5,800 tons that could have been laid down by the end of 1936, but weren't.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

To be honest, the Leander/Amphion and Arethusa classes all gave good service during WW2, so having three more Amphions or four extra Arethusa class units is only going to be a good thing in my opinion.

That is as long as they were completed before the Colonies and Didos that they would be built instead of. Even better if it also reduces the building time of the 23 or 24 Colonies and Didos that are still built ITTL.

It's the Vanguard argument. That is instead of using the 15" gun turrets removed from Courageous and Glorious to reduce the building time for a new battleship, use the 6" turrets and fire controls removed from Nelson and Rodney to reduce the building times for 3 or 4 cruisers.

Hmmmm less Crown Colony class and Dido class ships would be bad. This being said I suspect that it would be the 1937 Didos that got cut since the Crown Colony ships were better at mutiple roles. Mind you assuming the previous recommendations of the thread are followed through 2nd London doesn't lower the maximum size of cruisers and thus the Crown Colonies would almost certainly be slight improvements on the Edinburghs and as such would carry 12 4" guns which would help make up for less 5.25" guns in the fleet especially in the AA role. Plus giving the RN more time to work on the 5.25" mount before they finalized the design for production wouldn't be a bad idea since it had a lot of problems that another year or so of development probably would have mostly fixed.

OTL 20 cruisers were ordered in the 7 financial years 1929-30 to 1935-36. That is about 3 per year.

The plan was to increase the building rate to 7 per year from 1936-37 onwards, but only 2 ships were ordered in the 1939-40 estimates for a total of 23 instead of 28. However, 6 ships were added in the War Emergency Programme so that effectively meant that 29 ships were ordered in the 4 financial years 1936-37 to 1939-40 instead of the 28 planned.

The sudden doubling of the building rate overloaded the naval armaments industry. Some of the first 11 Dido class ships were completed without four instead of five 5.25" turrets and two had to be completed with eight 4.5" guns. So building 4 Arethusas instead of the first 4 Dido's might mean that the required number of 5.25" turrets might have been available for the other 7 ships.

AIUI one of the reasons for building the Dido class was that it was thought that they could be built faster than the Colony class. However, the average building time for the 16 ships was 3½ years. However, the average building time for the 11 Colonies was 3 years and the average building time for the 20 ships that were ordered 1929-30 to 1935-36 was 2½ years.

Another thing is when do the 6" turrets and fire control equipment from Nelson and Rodney become available? IMHO they won't become available until about 1940 because Nelson and Rodney would be last capital ships in the queue for modernisation because they were the newest. Therefore, I think that the gun turrets would be used to build 3 Leanders or 4 Arethusas instead of 3 or 4 of the Swiftsure class. Or 3 of the Swiftsures could be armed with eight 6" guns in 4 twin turrets and eight 4" guns in 4 twin mountings instead of nine 6" guns instead of nine 6" guns in 3 triple mountings and ten 4" guns in 5 twin mountings. That might result in Lion, Tiger and Blake being completed 1945-46.

 

[Spencersj345.346]

If we look at the proposed refit timeline earlier in the thread Rodney's 6" turrets become available in 1936 and Nelson's in 1939. So the crusiers built around them would have to be modified Arthesuas since the turrets will become available in two batches of 6

 

[naraic]

It was considered that a year's wartime service aged the engines of a cruiser by between 4 and 5 years.

The Royal Navy built 28 C class cruisers commissioned between 1914 and 1919. One was lost in ww1. I think 21 of the remaining ships saw a year or more of service in ww1. I want to say 11 of them saw 3 years or more of ww1 service.

This meant that in the early 30s the Royal Navy had a lot of cruisers that were very worn out coming to the end of their service life with service from ww1 still in their bones.

A forward thinking officer could propose that the aircraft carrier would be the cruiser of the future with their fast speed and with aircraft to enhance their scouting range and that filling the aircraft carrier tonnage would be a more effective to spend money. However the fact that cruisers were coming to the end of their life made it easy to argue for funds for direct replacement.

Saying these cruisers are of date give us a carrier would be a completely different argument with the treasury.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

It was considered that a year's wartime service aged the engines of a cruiser by between 4 and 5 years.

Is that why the 1st London Naval Treaty said that a surface ship that displaced between 3,000 and 10,000 tons (i.e. a cruiser) laid down before 1st January 1920 became overage 16 years after it's date of completion, but if it was laid down after 31st December 1919 it became overage 20 years after its date of completion?

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

To be honest, the Leander/Amphion and Arethusa classes all gave good service during WW2, so having three more Amphions or four extra Arethusa class units is only going to be a good thing in my opinion.

The other thing to consider is that the Dido class was a development of the Arethusa design, so any design work done for a follow-on improved Arethusa isn't going to be wasted and would be folded into the development work for the Dido Class anyway.

AIUI the Admiralty preferred the Leander/Amphion design over its larger cruisers armed with 8" and 6" guns because it was:

• fit for purpose;
• cheaper to build so it could be built in greater numbers, and;
• because it was smaller more of them could be built from the tonnage quotas.

AFAIK it only built the larger cruisers because its potential enemies were building them too.

With that in mind it might have been better to stick to the original plan and build 13 Leanders and Amphions with the 91,000 tons that the British Commonwealth was allowed to lay down after 1st April 1930 and complete before 31st December 1936 and then another 12 Amphions with the 86,070 tons that the British Commonwealth was allowed to lay down before 31st December 1936 to replace ships that would become overage by the end of 1939.

That would be a total of 25 ships (5 Leanders and 20 Amphions) compared to the 22 ships (5 Leanders, 3 Amphions, 4 Arethusas and 10 Towns) built in the same period IOTL.

AIUI the British delegation at the Second London Naval Conference wanted the cruiser limit reduced to 7,600 tons, which suggests to me that it wanted to go back to building cruisers of the Amphion type. However, the resulting treaty reduced it to 8,000 tons and they built a mix of Colony and Dido class cruisers, but the Colonies broke the Treaty because they were about 500 tons overweight.

It might have been better to continue building Amphion class cruisers, especially if the Admiralty had only built Leanders and Amphions while the First London Naval Treaty was in force. 27 would be built instead of the 11 Colonies and 16 Didos.

Another 8 or 9 would be ordered in 1941 instead of the Swiftsure class. All other things being equal 3 would be completed towards the end of the war, 3 would be completed with a main armament of three or four twin 3" gun turrets 1959-61 instead of the OTL Lion, Tiger and Blake, and the rest would be cancelled when the war ended.

Or to have built an "anti-aircraft" Amphion in place of the Colonies, Didos and Swiftsures. The larger hull of the Amphion might have made a main armament of twelve 5.25" guns in six twin turrets instead of the ten 5.25" guns in five twin turrets that the Dido was originally designed to have. That would have been more useful than a mixed armament of 6" LA and 4" AA guns because AIUI the RN's cruisers spent more time engaging aircraft than they did engaging surface warships. The larger number of guns and the higher rate of fire might have made up for the smaller weight of shell in surface actions and shore bombardment.

 

[naraic]

Is that why the 1st London Naval Treaty said that a surface ship that displaced between 3,000 and 10,000 tons (i.e. a cruiser) laid down before 1st January 1920 became overage 16 years after it's date of completion, but if it was laid down after 31st December 1919 it became overage 20 years after its date of completion?

This is one provision of the Treaty that I can't find discussions about why it happened. I can't find any back and forth. I would think it the most likely reason. That said many ships laid down before 1 January 1920 would not have the wear and tear from ww1.

I presume the British said they wanted any ship that saw service in ww1 to become overage after 16 years and someone else said they wanted certain cruisers completed after ww1 retired early.

I do strongly believe that the British considered many of their cruisers who saw service in ww1 as clapped out and ready for retirement in the coming years. I presume the specific details was subeject of negotiatons but I don't know what each parties interest was.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

This is one provision of the Treaty that I can't find discussions about why it happened. I can't find any back and forth. I would think it the most likely reason. That said many ships laid down before 1 January 1920 would not have the wear and tear from ww1.

I presume the British said they wanted any ship that saw service in ww1 to become overage after 16 years and someone else said they wanted certain cruisers completed after ww1 retired early.

I do strongly believe that the British considered many of their cruisers who saw service in ww1 as clapped out and ready for retirement in the coming years. I presume the specific details was subject of negotiations but I don't know what each parties interest was.

As far as I can tell the nominal service lives of Royal Navy warships before the First London Naval Treaty were:

15 years for a cruiser​

12 years for a destroyer​

10 years for a submarine​

And that the service lives for these types of warship in the First London Naval Treaty, were closer to the nominal service lives of USN warships.

This is mainly from skimming through Friedman's works, but also Roskill's British Naval Policy between the wars.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Say assuming for some reason that the treasury forces the RN to build the Arethrusas for some reason is it a good idea to finish all six that were originally planned in otl? A couple more cruisers really could have helped at various points. Also is it plausible that the RN would build all of the Leanders to the same design as the Amphion subclass.

I skimmed through the relevant chapter in Volume 2 of Friedman's British Cruisers that is on Scribd and a lot of what I wrote in my replies is inaccurate to plain wrong.

One of the things that I was wrong about is the plan for six Arethusas. According to him there wasn't one.

The Admiralty's aspiration in the aftermath of the First London Naval Treaty was for a force of 50 cruisers at 31st December 1936. That is the 15 cruisers armed with 8" guns, 21 existing ships armed with 6" guns (5 Ceres class, 5 Carlisle class, 8 D class, 2 E class and Adelaide) and 14 new ships armed with 6" guns that would be built from the 91,000 tons that the Treaty allowed the British Commonwealth to build between April 1930 and the end of 1936. The 91,000 tons included Leander, which was ordered in the 1929-30 Navy Estimates, but not laid down until September 1930.

Therefore, Morris was wrong about there being a plan for 14 Leanders, he must have confused it with the desire to build 14 cruisers out of the 91,000 tons and as I wrote before 14 x 7,000 = 98,000 tons, which is 7,000 tons more than the Treaty allowed.

What Friedman wrote is that the Admiralty wanted to build 10 Leanders and 4 cruisers displacing 5,000 tons.

10 x 7,000 tons = 70,000 tons​

4 x 5,000 tons = 20,000 tons.​

​

70,000 tons plus 20,000 tons = 90,000 tons.​

The 5,000 ton cruiser became the Arethusa class. However, the Arethusas actually displaced about 5,250 tons.

Morris wrote that the revised plan was for 9 Leanders (63,000 tons) and 6 Arethusas (31,500) tons, but that's a total of 94,500 tons, which is 3,500 tons more than the Treaty allowed.

10 cruisers were ordered in the 4 financial years from 1929-30 to 1932-33. That is 5 Leanders, 3 Amphions and 2 Arethusas.

The 4 remaining cruisers of the 14 required by the end of 1936 had to be ordered in the 1933-34 financial year in order to be completed on time.

If 2 Amphions and 2 Arethusas were ordered, that would come to 25,400 tons, which Friedman says would exceed the 91,000 ton allowance by 2,330 tons. However, one Amphion and 3 Arethusas would only be 530 tons over an amount that Friedman wrote could be dealt with.

If the second option was followed there would be 14 ships by the end of 1936 made up of 5 Leanders, 4 Amphions and 5 Arethusas.

However, it was decided that cruisers with heavier gun armaments were needed. The result was the Southampton class. 2 were ordered in the 1933-34 Estimates along with Penelope the third Arethusa because there wasn't enough tonnage left out of the 91,000 tons for 3 Southamptons or 2 Southamptons and an Amphion.

3 Southamptons and Aurora, the fourth and final Arethusa was ordered in the 1934-35 Estimates. These were ships built under the terms of the Treaty that allowed ships that became overage between 1st January 1937 and the end of 1939 to be laid down before the end of 1936. There was enough tonnage available for 4 Southaptons, but Friedman doesn't explain why 3 Southamptons an one Arethusa were ordered.