Showing Restraint
For the Royal Navy, meeting the requirements of the Washington Treaty would be simple; in fact it had practically already occurred. Simply scrapping the obsolete 12" dreadnoughts and battlecruisers would leave the RN within its tonnage obligations.
However, this did not leave any room for new ships, of which the RN was in desperate need. The USA and Japan would soon have several 16" gunned heavy ships each, all built with post-war armour schemes. The largest of these would outclass the 15" ‘Queen Elizabeths’ and ‘Royals’, and challenge even the likes of
Howe and the RN’s poster-child
Furious. Of all the Navy’s ships, only
Rodney could be regarded as a truly modern design.
Before Washington, the British government had agreed the construction of four new battleships and four battlecruisers, starting in 1921-22. The program would have been extremely expensive, and part of British enthusiasm for Washington was that it would limit the need for new construction. Happily for the Treasury, eight ships of 45-50,000 tons each was now far beyond what tonnage limits would allow.
With a limit of 36,000 tons of new construction per year, the older ‘Orions’, ‘Lions’ and ‘King George Vs’ were obvious targets for early replacement. Although they had proven valuable in securing Britain’s tonnage allocation during the negotiation, in an environment where cost was now a major driver, keeping these near-obsolete ships in service was no longer a priority. However, the oldest ships were not necessarily the least useful, and the battleships benefitted from the ‘light battleship’ exemption, while the heavier battlecruisers did not. Scrapping a ‘KGV’ or ‘Orion’ would free up only 14,000 tons, while disposing of a ‘Lion’ would free up 26,500.
It was regarded as advisable to make use the ‘training ship’ and ‘target ship’ exemptions as soon as possible. In the latter case, the old 12” dreadnought
Colossus was selected for conversion to a disarmed radio-controlled target, in which role she was expected to serve until 1927 when she would be replaced by one of the 13.5” ships.
The training ship was fundamentally more valuable and was expected to see a longer and more varied service life. Consequently, it was decided to use a newer ship in the role, and the 8-year-old HMS
Panther was selected. Her graceful lines were butchered by the removal of the fore-funnel (the forward boilers being disabled to comply with the Treaty), the addition of a deckhouse amidships in place of Q-turret and the hasty addition of an enlarged bridge. A-turret and most of the 4” guns were also removed.
The refit reduced her weight and her 24 surviving boilers were converted to oil fuel, which slightly improved their performance. On post-conversion trials she achieved 24.26 knots with 43,640shp, and this turn of speed allowed her to operate with the battlefleet during manoeuvres in later years.
HMS Panther, as a training ship in 1930
Aside from the 'zarebas' added during the Second War, she can be seen today in Belfast, little altered from this condition.
To make room for the two new 36,000-ton vessels that would be laid down under the 1922 Programme,
Panther, Lion and
Courageous would be disposed of in 1922, technically three years before it would become legally necessary, but the savings in manning the battle-scarred
Lion and
Courageous would help pay for the cost of conversion. A third 36,000-ton ship was expected under the 1923 Programme (due for completion in 1926), and so it was decided that
Princess Royal and one of the ‘Orions’ would end their careers in 1924.
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The question was; should the new vessels be battleships or battlecruisers?
In the years since Stavanger, the Royal Navy's definition of a ‘battlecruiser’ had changed significantly, and the pre-Treaty ‘H-series’ designs were all better-armoured than any RN battleship afloat. Meanwhile, battleship designs had massively thick armour (‘N-3’ had a 15" belt, inclined at 18 degrees, to be proof against 18" fire at 15,000 yards), but were still relatively slow at 23-24 knots.
Neither ‘H’ nor ‘P’ were possible in the light of Washington limits, but there was still a choice between a massively armoured slower ship and a more modestly armoured, faster version.
In the years after the war, British admirals were confident that their ships were faster than foreign contemporaries, but by 1922 it seemed that this advantage was open to question. In practice, the ‘Queen Elizabeths’ would not exceed 23½ knots once bulged, and the ‘Royals’ would be about a ¼-knot slower than that. Meanwhile, the latest US and Japanese designs were believed to be capable of 23 and 25 knots respectively. Even if those were only maximum trial speeds, it suggested the RN might have very little margin over the more modern foreign battle lines.
Following the improvements to
Renown and
Repulse, the RN had six modern battlecruisers; the newest ships in the fleet. The nine most modern battleships were the survivors of the ‘Royal’ and ‘Queen Elizabeth’ classes. In terms of firepower,
Rodney and
Furious outclassed them, and while
Hood and
Howe had the same guns, they could engage at greater ranges.
The armour of the 15” battleships could be improved, but the signing of the treaty meant that they would be at the core of the battlefleet for many years to come. The front of the battle line therefore needed to be stiffened with modern, well-protected battleships.
Senior officers' preference for fast ships meant that some of these would eventually be built, but in February 1922, the decision was made to build two battleships using the 1922 and ’23 tonnage allocations.
More innovative thinkers had suggested a programme of ‘4 ships in 5 years’, which would allow the first years’ allocation to be spread over the subsequent five, allowing each ship to be 44,000 tons. That would permit either a fast battleship with nine 16”, or a slow one with twelve. However, that was not ‘in the spirit’ of the newly signed Treaty, and when the Americans indicated that they would be laying down a pair of 36,000-ton battleships in 1922, it became politically impractical to play games with the limit. As one of the two leading powers, Britain had to show restraint.
In a Treaty world in which 16” guns would be the largest at sea, designers re-evaluated what level of armour would be necessary. 12” or 13” belts once again appeared to be realistic if they were inclined, particularly as wartime experience showed that likely fighting ranges were often in excess of 15,000 yards.
12,000 yards was now regarded as ‘close range’, while it seemed plausible that in good visibility, ships might open fire at close to the maximum range permitted by their guns.
The first effort was to reduce the design of
Rodney to 36,000 tons. It came close, but never quite made it. If built as a new ship, she would have been rated at 39,200 tons Standard (per Treaty rules, she had been declared at 40,000 tons, which was her ‘normal’ displacement). Reducing the weight of the complex multi-layered deck armour, removing crushing tubes from the bulges and replacing the conning tower with a lighter structure could bring this down to 37,300 tons, but going further required cutting back on more critical areas, or a complete redesign of the ship.
In earlier studies, it had been shown that nine guns in three turrets could be provided for less weight than eight in four turrets, if the guns were similarly protected. A new design was therefore prepared, and the resulting ‘1922A’ was an attempt at a hybrid battleship. Nine 16" guns would be carried, with the hull and superstructure based on the pre-Treaty designs.
Armour weight was saved on areas such as the barbettes (where they were a traditional 12” thick) to allow a relatively high speed to be maintained. Machinery would be derived from that of ‘G-3’, to give 80,000shp on two shafts, for a trial speed of 26½ knots.
Design 1922-A
Effectively a shortened 'D-33', with reduced engine power and concentrated armour (13" internal belt, 5" / 4" decks)
