Dread Nought but the Fury of the Seas

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Peace

On the 30th December 1917, the war finally came to an end, as representatives of the Allies and Central Powers signed the Treaty of Stockholm.

Germany lost all her colonies, although not all to the supposedly victories Allies. German New Guinea, New Pomerania and the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago went to Australia. Territories in China and the northern Pacific went to Japan, while Britain and France gained all the African colonies except for an isolated inland region of German East Africa, which German militias had managed to hold until the end of the war.
In a separate treaty, signed in 1918, the German government would give up rights to this worthless patch of land to the newly formed League of Nations, which along with a series of settlements in the East helped the war-ravaged nation to secure American financing.

Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, although following a great deal of pressure from the other Allies, this was in lieu of many of the substantial damages claimed by the French government.
In these financial terms, the Treaty did not come close to answering all the demands or expectations. The French had wanted to make Germany to pay for the war, and although such sentiments certainly existed elsewhere, both the British and Americans could see that this was utterly impractical. Given the circumstances of the peace treaty, the fact that the Germans agreed to participate in an international commission to ‘compensate states for damage to civilian property due to German actions on land or the high seas’, was considered to be a remarkable achievement.

The timing was fortunate for the Allies, as the outbreak of riots and rebellions in Russia government during the final days of the Treaty negotiations could have significantly weakened their hand. British and American negotiators pressed for a quick deal, before Germany signed any form of peace with the Bolsheviks. Fear that the Germans might still be able to turn their entire army west was very real, as was the concern that morale at home might collapse if the war were continued.
Even in early December, people were becoming accustomed to the idea of peace. It wasn’t all over by Christmas, but military, industrial and economic planning in Britain and America was already beginning to move away from wartime thinking.

For the German government, the threat of revolution within their own country was still very real, particularly now that ‘another’ socialist revolution was occurring in Russia. In any case, there would be hard times to come. Germany’s resources and manpower were depleted, and the military position in the East was still unresolved (there was a ceasefire in place, but the western Allies were in a poor position to enforce terms on either the Bolsheviks or the Germans).

The naval position was much clearer. The German ships held at Rosyth would be, in effect, sold to the Allies. No actual money would change hands, it was a question of writing off compensation payments, although that didn’t stop the Germans complaining about the price. The Allies agreed to divide the ships amongst themselves and scrap them, and hence the Germans benefitted from little more than scrap value. The Kaiserin went to France, Konig to the USA, Konig Albert to Italy, while the rest went to Britain.

Numerous older German vessels would also be scrapped, but this would happen in Germany under allied supervision. The German Navy would not be permitted to lay down any new capital ships for ten years, meaning the first could not be started until 1928. Even then, no German ship would be permitted to carry a gun with a calibre greater than that of the smallest main armament fitted to a Royal Navy capital ship (12” at the time the Treaty was signed).

The British thinking was that this did not entirely humiliate Germany, as it left her with a sufficient naval force to keep any communist Russian force in check in the Baltic, and in due course to allow her to send token forces around the world to assist in League mandated operations against piracy, or the remnants of the slave trade. However, with a small number of older and less capable ships, they would have no hope of ever challenging the Royal Navy again.

 

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The Results of Sharing

The wartime sharing of experience with the Americans had not been entirely one-way. During an extended exchange visit to Washington in the summer and autumn of 1917, the Deputy DNC, Stanley Goodall, had been greatly impressed by the American practice of fitting a thick armour deck at the top of the belt, which served to create an armoured box around the vitals of a ship.
The multi-layered deck armour that would be fitted to the ‘Admirals’ had evolved from the need to catch any splinters that made it through the side armour, but the American system effectively extended the armour protection by deflecting shells that missed the top of the belt.
However, the American idea of eliminating armour elsewhere on the ship, the practice of ‘all or nothing’, came in for criticism from designers who looked at the levels of splinter damaged suffered at the Battle of Stavanger, and who therefore believed that the ends of a ship still need some form of protection.

Goodall was faced with limits as to what he could tell the Americans, but they were provided with a complete set of plans for one of the RN’s most modern ships, HMS Hood, as modified since the losses at Stavanger. Even at that time Furious was regarded as unrepresentative of a truly modern design, while the plans for the ‘Rodneys’ were still subject to change and were regarded as just a little too secret for such a new alliance.

From the American side, this access to British plans and after-action action reports raised suspicion regarding the ‘plunging fire’ excuse that the British had used in public following the loss of ships and turrets at Stavanger. The Americans suspected that the loss of Queen Mary was in fact due to a shell reaching the magazine through the ship’s inadequate end belt. In private, the British delegation agreed.
Regardless of the exact cause of that loss, it was clear that the Lexington-class battlecruisers compared poorly to Hood. At 32 knots, Hood was about 2 knots slower, but her eight 15" guns and 9" main armour belt offered superior firepower and protection than Lexington’s ten 14"/50 and 7" side armour (which had been increased in late 1916 from a mere 5”).
The two-level boiler arrangement had provoked hastily-stifled laughter among the British designers, however the delays caused by the urgent need for submarine-chasers and other light craft had allowed more modern boilers to be used and the machinery spaces to be rearranged, at a cost of lengthening the ships even more. The original 32,000-ton concept had now increased to 36,000 tons, although both armour and armament were still considered to be inadequate.

There had previously been suggestions that a new twin turret for the 14"/50 was an unnecessary expense, and that the ‘Lexingtons’ should be shortened to mount just three turrets, either nine 14”/50, or six of the 16"/45 gun that were being used in the ‘Maryland’ class. A reduction to six guns would reduce broadside weight, but would give the ships greater power to threaten modern battleships, as the 16" gun offered better armour penetration than the 14".
As the war ended, it was clear that if the Lexingtons were to be built at all, they would need to be redesigned once again. However, proposals for a version with eight 16" guns of the new Mk.2 50-calibre type would make the design even larger, and there was significant resistance from the Treasury at the prospect of making these six ships even more expensive.

Away from the design of ships themselves, there was great concern over the results of tests conducted after the Battle of Stavanger. Both Royal and United States Navies began to appreciate just how poor the performance of British shells was relative to their German equivalent. The USN subsequently took some comfort in the discovery that their own shells were tougher than the British versions, although there were still problems with fuse designs, which meant that they had a tendency not to explode.

This contrasted with the obvious effectiveness of the German ordnance, as there were numerous examples from the Battle of Stavanger of their shells defeating armour that the British equivalent probably would not have penetrated. Even the German 11" guns defeated 6" armour on several occasions, at ranges and angles of impact where a British 12" would not have done.

New shells were already under development in Britain, but the old tests and consequent assumptions had influenced the armour design of every existing British capital ship, particularly the battlecruisers. The German preference for lightweight shells and high muzzle velocities also provoked questions, as gunnery experts wondered whether these offered superior combat performance to the Royal Navy’s heavy, but relatively slow-moving shells.
With the end of the war, all sides wanted to study these problems before committing to the design of new capital ships.

 

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Farewell to Scapa

On 2nd February 1918, the Grand Fleet was formally disbanded, and for the first time in years, there was the prospect of capital ships of the Royal Navy being dispatched around the globe.

‘Victory Tours’ of the Colonies would occupy some of the older ships of the ‘Colossus’ and ‘Collingwood’ classes, with these dispatched to ports from Malta, to East Africa and Singapore.

Soon after the end of the war, Admiral Jellicoe stepped down as First Sea Lord. His reputation at the Admiralty had been damaged by the whispering campaigns surrounding his decisions at Stavanger, and further tarnished by the disruption caused by the abrupt German sale of four battleships to the Netherlands while he led the naval side of the peace negotiations.
However, to the public and to most in the Service, he was still one of the great heroes of the war, and so in addition to the peerage usually granted to retiring First Sea Lords, he was given a prestigious new commission. In March, he and Lady Jellicoe left the UK aboard HMS Indefatigable, on a mission to survey the Empire’s post-war naval defence requirements.

For only the second time in her life, HMS New Zealand would visit the country that paid for her construction, and it was planned that she would remain in the Far East for her entire two-year commission.
Neptune was sent to visit the newly acquired ex-German colonies in the Pacific on an extended eight-month circumnavigation, during which time she became the first British battleship to sail through the Panama Canal.
Following agreement with the Turks, Thunderer and Orion were despatched to the Black Sea to support White Russian forces, while their sister Monarch accompanied Royal Sovereign in similar operations near Murmansk.

The more modern ships were dispersed between the newly formed Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets.
The surviving 15" gun battleships were to be kept at home, with two battlecruiser squadrons, the first consisting of Panther, Lion and Australia, and the other of Renown and Repulse, which were due to be joined by Furious and Hood before the end of the year.
As in wartime, the battlecruiser force would prove to be relatively dynamic, as HMAS Australia was due be sent home to resume her place as flagship of the Royal Australian Navy once HMS Furious was ready, and there were plans for refits and other duties which would see units away from home for extended periods.
That summer, Repulse served as Royal Yacht when she took the King to Canada, and she was retained for royal duties when she took the Prince of Wales to India and Malaya late in the year. Once Hood was completed, Renown was taken into dock for an extended refit.

The Mediterranean Fleet would consist of the four ships of the ‘Iron Duke’ class, which were joined by Princess Royal once she completed a major refit in January 1919.

Conqueror would be sent to Hong Kong, where she would go into reserve as flagship of the China Station, while Ajax would serve a similar role, becoming a seagoing training ship at Singapore.

Superb and Temeraire would become training ships at Devonport and Rosyth, with the remaining older battleships, including the famous HMS Dreadnought, reduced to Third Fleet reserve as soon as they could be paid off.

 

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The Ultimate Battlecruiser

HMS Furious, the largest and most powerful warship in the world, was commissioned for sea trials on 18th March 1918. She was as great a leap forward in firepower and speed as had been seen since the launch of HMS Dreadnought. Each of her three turrets could fire a pair of shells that weighed as much as Dreadnought’s entire broadside, while in anything other than a flat calm she could outrun any destroyer.

Jane's noted that her guns were ‘believed to be of 16.5" calibre’ and could fire a shell that ‘weighs more than a ton, over a range limited only by maximum visibility’. Armour was described as being ‘on the scale of a battleship’, and the optimistic tone continued as displacement was listed as being approximately 40,000 tons, a guess which supported the claims of an extensive armour scheme. The nautical almanac also listed the ship’s speed as being 32 knots, but with ‘higher speeds certainly available in service’.

For once, the guesswork and propaganda was not exaggerated.
Furious' six 18” guns could fire a newly-designed 4-crh, 3,332lb ‘Greenboy’ shell at 2,270fps, which could penetrate the armour of anything afloat, at any likely battle range. Her engines were more powerful than those of any two foreign warships put together, and her 12” inclined armour belt provided protection as good as that of any battleship.

Since her design prior to the Battle of Stavanger, additional armour had been added to the roofs of her magazines, and following experienced with the ‘Glorious’ class, strengthening plates had been added along her foc’sle and sides. Even so, her true normal displacement was only 35,185 tons, and full load was just over 39,500 tons.

On trials off Arran in May, she comfortably achieved her design speed of 33½ knots, even while almost 3,000 tons over normal load displacement.
Three weeks later, with the machinery better bedded in and the crew more used to handling it, she was ordered out for a series of maximum-power trials, on which she was deliberately run a little lighter, at 36,160 tons. Her machinery was designed for 160,000 shp, and she reached a mean of 33.51 knots over four runs with 159,500 shp. For the next series, she used full forcing and closed condensers to achieve the staggering total of 189,120shp, with a mean speed over two runs of 35.03 knots.

This impressive achievement came at a cost, revealing many areas of weakness in the machinery, including among the coupling of the reduction gears and the alignment of the twin sets of turbines to each of the shafts. When she was docked after trials, severe pitting was found around the edges of the propeller blades, indicating that cavitation was occurring at these extreme loads. During her post-trial refit, the flexibility of the machinery mounts was addressed and a replacement set of props had a slightly larger area. The cavitation problems were largely solved, but no-one tried to push her up to 35 knots ever again.

Throughout her life, the ‘double turbines’ required a great deal of maintenance, as the gear sets wore out quickly due to flexing of the hull as she rode the seas. The strengthened machinery bedding helped, but the problem never entirely went away. The entire stern was also found to vibrate badly when she ran at certain speeds, which was only partly solved by a practice of running inboard and outboard shafts at slightly different rates.
In service, none of her Chief Engineers ever gladly pushed her machinery beyond 295 revolutions, which corresponded to about 162,000shp if everything else was working well. Nevertheless, this would give her close to 33 knots with a clean hull, even when at full load.
She was an incomparable thoroughbred; tetchy and injury-prone, but when fit and healthy, very, very fast.

Beneath the headline figures, her armour was limited, her hull was highly stressed and early firing trials showed that the immense blast of her guns damaged the decks and superstructure almost whenever they were fired. On firing her first full broadside in June 1918, several sailors swore that they saw the upper deck above their heads bend, while several members of the bridge crew suffered from mild concussion. She was promptly restricted to firing half-salvos or using reduced charges until a better solution could be developed.
However, none of these faults were widely known.

On the 18th August, her Captain welcomed the man who inspired her construction on board. Now showing his age and visibly tired after the strains of war, Admiral Fisher couldn’t help smiling as he boarded the largest and last of ‘his’ battlecruisers.
After lunch in the mess, the Admiral was presented with a model of the ship, inscribed with an adapted version of his own motto;

‘Fear God and Dread Nought but Furious’.

 

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The Peace Dividend

In the spring of 1918, contracts for dozens of Royal Navy ships were suspended or cancelled.
Most notable among these were the two battlecruisers Hardy and Rodney. Despite an extensive series of changes to the design, there were still questions as to whether they were effectively pre-war ships with supplementary armour added.
The DNC knew the design had been hastily and extensively modified on an ad-hoc basis, and now that the war was over, time could be taken to produce a completely new ship. Due to delays with construction following urgent war needs, neither ship was particularly far advanced, with Hardy’s frames only built up the lower deck.

However, the C-in-C Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Beatty, publicly argued that they should be completed, with the agreement of his close colleague, Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss, the new First Sea Lord. Both men knew that choosing to wait for something better, instead of accepting something already authorised was likely to result in nothing. Cuts in naval estimates would be deep, while the construction of even one or two modern ships would help to replace parts of an aging and battle-worn fleet.

Lloyd George’s coalition government had won the general election, held just before Christmas 1917, on a theme of building a land of prosperity fit for the heroes of the war. The horror of the war and the post-war financial reality led the government to decree that planners should operate on the basis that there would be no major war for ten years, but with the proviso that no decision should be made which would prejudice the Navy’s underlying readiness at the end of that period. France and Italy were exhausted, Germany was defeated, Japan remained an ally and the trading links with the USA had never been deeper.
Nevertheless, smaller, regional conflicts were to be expected. The situation with the Dutch remained tense, although they would be unlikely to threaten British trading links in any serious way for some years. Nevertheless, once they began to deploy their new navy, a British squadron might have to be made available to cover Malaya and the trade routes in the Indian Ocean.
In the short term, in the Arctic and Black Seas, British and Allied forces were preparing to support the White Russians in their fight against the Bolshevik groups who controlled huge areas of the crumbling Russian Empire.

With the threat of the German fleet all but eliminated, money for new warships was not a priority, but tough negotiations between the Admiralty, the yards and the government would save several valuable orders for ships that were still in their early stages.
By agreeing extensive cancellations of the construction of ‘legacy’ designs (for instance, large numbers of ‘M’, ‘R’ and ‘S’ class destroyers that had been suspended in November 1917), the Admiralty was able to preserve orders for newer ‘V’ class ships, which were all-new designs being built in the light of wartime experience.

A similar series of trade-offs was applied to cruisers, and it was hoped that the ‘Rodneys’ could also be preserved. However, in the year since their construction had first begun, there had been further weight increases, resulting in the hulls being very close to the maximum load they could realistically be expected to carry – even before any changes during their expected 20-year lifetimes. Nevertheless, they were what was available, as orders for new ships were unlikely to be forthcoming for some years.
In the short term, shipbuilding jobs would be protected by completing the ships, and some work could be transferred to the Royal Dockyards if their completion were postponed. The first firing trials of the new 16” gun had been conducted, with very promising results, and the Admiralty argued that the ‘Rodneys’ were still better than anything being built elsewhere.
Further changes were proposed, but the most practical option was to extend the outer bulge to increase beam to 105’, improving stability and restoring about 9” of freeboard once other weight increases were allowed for.

In April 1918, a compromise was reached. Hardy was cancelled, and in return Armstrongs would receive the contract for a major refit of Renown, which would include bulges and extensive improvements to the armour scheme.
Rodney would be completed to the revised design, and Fairfield’s yard were authorised to remove the outer plating and extend the bulges outwards. Normal Load had risen to 40,025 tons, with Extra Deep Load now above 45,000 tons. Trial speed was now expected to be ‘a little over’ 29½ knots, with a realistic sea speed of 28 knots.
The final twist in the tale of the Admiral-class battlecruisers had occurred. Of the four-ship class originally proposed in 1915, three would be completed, all to different designs.

The ‘Ten Year Rule’ meant that the Navy had some years to prepare, and other areas of the fleet required more urgent attention than the battle line. The need to resume patrols around the world had the Admiralty calling for a new generation of cruisers, with longer range or greater firepower than the ships of the ‘Arethusa’ and C-classes, which were much better suited to North Sea patrols. Four lengthened C-class ships (the D-class) had been laid down in 1917, and the Admiralty were able to secure agreement to continue their construction, but even so they were little more than slightly improved versions of the C-class.
Four much larger Hawkins-class ‘Atlantic’ cruisers, armed with 7.5" guns, were in various stages of construction, but their relatively high cost and top speed of only 29 knots were both causes for concern. A fifth ship, Cavendish, was being converted into an ‘aviation cruiser’; armed with both guns and fore/aft flying-off and flying-on platforms.
The Admiralty also pressed hard to preserve orders for a series of ships that had not yet been laid down. The E-class cruisers were to be very fast and better armed than older vessels, and with modest changes, it was thought that they might form a basis for future fleet cruisers.

Other studies were underway, usually combining longer ranges and higher speeds. These varied from a modest trade protection ship with six 6” guns, all the way up to a ‘mini Hood’, an armoured cruiser with eight 9.2" guns, an 8” belt and a displacement close to that of the old I-class battlecruisers.

Meanwhile, the need to renew and build up naval bases and docks in the UK, at Gibraltar, Alexandria and Singapore would also require funds. After Rodney, capital ship construction would not be a priority for some time to come.

 

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Trouble on the Hill

As the immediacy of the war faded and Americans turned their thoughts back away from Europe, the US government would become increasingly split over the future of the nation's naval expansion program. The 1916 Bill authorised 16 battleships and battlecruisers, all of which were now either under construction or in the detailed design stage. However, with the end of the war and the virtual elimination of the German fleet, the USA now had the world’s second strongest navy, and there were many who argued that the nation should reduce its proposed naval expenditure.
The cost of mobilisation and of moving the economy towards a war footing had to be met, and the costs were multiplied in the short term by the abrupt ending of the war. Factories had been redeveloped and men redeployed, and now all that had to be undone to move back to a peace-time economy.

The 1916 capital ship plans had been all but halted by the sudden need to convert troopships and build anti-submarine and mine warfare vessels. Although this programme was rapidly wound down in the opening months of 1918, the remaining three Maryland-class keels were only due to be laid that summer. None of the ships of the Lexington or South Dakota classes were yet on order.

Exchanges with the Royal Navy in the last months of the war had provided valuable insight into the design, tactics and equipment of the world's largest navy, which had been used to review the designs of America’s latest ships.
There were several areas of grave concern, not least in cruisers. The sixteen vessels of the Omaha class, several of which were already under construction, compared well with the Royal Navy’s C- or D-class cruisers, especially now that single ‘closed gunhouses’ were to be fitted fore and aft in place of the waist guns. Although not technically turrets, the gunhouses would serve to protect the gun’s crew from the blast of the four casemated guns mounted in the superstructures behind them.
The British ships had broadsides of five or six 6”, versus six for the improved ‘Omahas’, while the American ships would have far greater ‘end on’ fire (five guns vs two) and would be much faster and longer ranged.
However, the RN had larger cruisers under construction, the Hawkins class. With seven 7.5” guns (with a broadside of 6), these would be much more powerful than the ‘Omahas’, and it was known that the ‘Hawkins’ design also incorporated heavier protective armour. During the wartime exchanges, the US Navy’s designers had expressed surprise when they saw the Hawkins would be capable of burning both coal and oil, but were later told that this was to be changed to all-oil, increasing both speed and range.

In the spring of 1918, it was therefore proposed that the last four ‘Omahas’ be built to a new design to match these British ships. To save time and allow as much use of existing orders as possible, the layout of machinery and central hull structure was retained. The ships were given an extra 18’ of length and 6’ beam, with normal displacement rising to 8,000 tons. The two fore-funnels were trunked together to make room for the bridge structure to be moved aft, allowing a pair of superfiring turrets to be fitted forward. The greatly increased beam was necessary to compensate for the extra topweight, as main armament was increased to include six 8” guns.It was accepted that these redesigned ships would be 1½ knots slower than the Omahas, but even though they ended up several hundred tons over their design load, in practice there was little difference in service speeds, as the larger hull improved seakeeping, and the deficiencies in the machinery of the early ‘Omahas’ were partly overcome. During construction, they were described as ‘improved Omahas’, but in service they became known as the ‘Newark’ class, after the lead ship.

Newark-class cruiser USS Groton as completed in 1922.
Two of the class later had the aft funnels trunked together to make room for an aircraft shelter.​

Meanwhile, the British design for HMS Glorious had provoked interest in Washington, as had the British use of the ships as fast strike units and cruiser leaders. In American terms, Glorious was a ‘scout’, with 3-4" armour and four heavy guns, and was very similar to several designs that had been studied during the process that had ultimately led to the ‘battle-scout’ Lexingtons. Questions arose whether the Lexingtons were good value for money (they were the most expensive ships the USN had thus far planned), leading politicians to wonder if they should be replaced with cheaper multi-purpose ‘scouts’.

As 1918 progressed, the British became increasingly tight-lipped about any details of what they were doing, but it was obvious that Hood's sisters were being built to an improved design, which would clearly outclass the existing Lexington design in all ways other than speed. The large hull and three turrets of HMS Furious (about which the USN had few other details) suggested she was probably a prototype for these later ships, and American suspicions were that she and Hood’s sisters would mount 16” (or even 16.5”) guns.

The 1916 Naval Bill required that new US ships be equipped with guns at least as powerful as those on contemporary foreign vessels, and it now seemed certain that both Japan and the UK had 16" gunned battlecruisers planned.
By the end of 1918, the design of the Lexingtons had therefore changed in light of developments in technology and information obtained. Armament was recast to consist of eight 16"/45 guns in twin turrets, with fourteen 5"/51 as secondaries, arranged in casemates along the long foc'sle deck. Twenty small-tube boilers would deliver 180,000shp through a turbo-electric drive, reducing the number of funnels to five (of which only three would show in profile). Length remained at 874', but the design now incorporated a three-layer torpedo defence system after the fashion of the ‘Tennessee’ class, which increased the beam to 99'.
Protection would consist of a 9” belt between end turrets, with a 3” deck covering it. Barbette and turret armour would be lighter than the latest battleships. Displacement would be 41,500 tons light, or close to 47,000 tons full load, with an expected trial speed of 33 knots.

The design for the South Dakota class super-battleships was progressing more slowly, but with far less drama; they had a powerful armament, excellent plans for fire-control systems (in American opinion, much better than the British), and their torpedo protection was considered to be good. Speed was perhaps slightly low, but at 23 knots it was close to the British ‘fast battleships’, which action reports showed were capable of no more than 24 knots in service.

In February 1919, Congress somewhat reluctantly approved funding for the construction of two ‘South Dakota’ class battleships and two ‘Lexington’ class battlecruisers. The funds for the remaining vessels would be delayed until future years.

 

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The Buffer Zone

In the spring of 1918, the Russian Empire erupted into civil war. The Tsar had been effectively deposed in April 1917, but the Provisional Government had continued the war against Germany. The failure of the 1917 summer offensive wrecked that government’s reputation, but it was still more than six months before control was lost entirely.

Early in 1917, desperate to bring an end to the war in the East, the Germans had allowed a collection of emigres and revolutionaries to travel to Russia, hoping they would seize power and call a truce with Germany, or at least tie up so many Russian troops that resistance against the German armies would crumble. Some of them suffered an early setback when it was revealed that they were supported directly by Germany, and so by the Autumn of 1917, they were still not confident of seizing power.
That meant it was too late for Germany. Fighting on two fronts was too much for her, particularly once the Austrians collapsed in the south. Although she was wobbling like a vodka-pickled sailor in a hurricane, Russia was still fighting, and so the German High Command concluded that the war had to be ended.

However, following the so-called ‘socialist’ revolution in Germany, the surviving Russian revolutionaries felt emboldened. Not only had socialism started on its irresistible path to power (or so they thought), they could now hope for further support from their comrades in Germany.

As the armies in the West were drawn down, and the Western allies heaved a sigh of relief over the end of the war, Germany began to consolidate her position in the East. The Prussian aristocracy and the industrialists who backed the new German government had created a veneer of socialism to harness the mood of the people, most importantly the soldiers and sailors. However, they did not have any intention of creating a workers’ state, rather a continuation of the public works and social programs that had been slowly evolving across the Reich over the past 50 years. With much-publicised government support, landowners could provide favourable deals for their tenants, while industrialists could adjust working conditions as productivity improved. Such changes could all be slightly in favour of the peasant or the factory worker, and if the people wished to call that ‘socialism’, then that’s what it would be called.

Naturally, the Russian revolutionaries who Germany had unleashed in the East believed strongly in their cause. Even if they had doubts, they had no choice but to continue, once they began fighting the Russian government openly. However, it was not a pleasant surprise for them to find that their relationship with the nominally socialist German government would be decidedly cool.

The end of the war had changed priorities, and the liberals, moderate socialists, military men and aristocrats who governed Germany had far more in common with the Russian Provisional Government (still nominally a monarchist one) than they had with the extremist Bolshevik groups.
The situation was a delicate balance. The British, French and Americans were actively fighting the Bolsheviks, but the German government certainly couldn’t contemplate this, for fear of provoking a genuinely socialist revolution in their own country. In any case, the Russian Tsarist government hated the Germans almost as much as they did the revolutionaries.
Despite the wishes of many German communists, they couldn’t actively support the Bolsheviks either, as that went against the wishes of the Allies and would deprive Germany of an opportunity to salvage some gains from the war.

German forces had halted their advance in October 1917, having acquired significant amounts of Russian territory which the Western allies were not in a position to force Germany to return. Furthermore, with the ongoing socialist revolution in Russia, it wasn't obvious to the Allied governments that returning the territory to the Russians would be an improvement over allowing the Germans to retain it in the short-term, pending a more stable situation in Russia.

As the Russian Revolution dragged on through 1918 and ’19, Germany consolidated her position along her Eastern frontier, and took several halting steps towards improving her own position.
In return for American loans (which were vital to pay for reconstruction works, both at home and in formerly-occupied areas of Belgium and France), the German government agreed to hold referenda in areas of the East captured during the war, alongside what was happening as a result of the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
To the chagrin of the Allies, several areas in Bohemia and around East Prussia voted to join Germany itself, with the result that post-war Germany actually became a larger country than it had been in 1914, despite the loss of Alsace-Lorraine.

With British, American and French support, a Finnish State had already been established in the north, and it was a foregone conclusion that the Finns would vote to confirm full independence.
A Polish state had been declared in the centre of the German-held lands (and it also claimed further territory in what was nominally still Russia), and the Poles voted for full independence. To the south, the Czechs and Slovaks had already formed their own governments, and the votes confirmed their formal existence among the nations of the world.

The Baltic Republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had been proposed by the League, with borders running approximately along ethnic lines. However, the Bolshevik Russians were strongest in the north, and they had fought effectively to control what might otherwise have been independent territory. The eastern boundaries of these new countries were therefore defined by the extent of the wartime German advance, and in the case of Estonia, a competing ‘Soviet’ state was established on the other side of the border.
All three small nations voted for full independence (rather than being a Protectorate under the new League of Nations), but German influence in the votes was extensive. Faced with powerful neighbours on both sides and German control of the Baltic, they very quickly entered Germany’s sphere of influence, and were soon well-armed against any Bolshevik adventurism.

With the creation of these new nations, Germany succeeded in retaining some control over the territory she had acquired in the East, while creating a buffer zone between herself and the Russians. American loans to these new states often paid for German guns (most of which Germany was legally obliged to dispose of under the Treaty of Stockholm), and that money was used to help finance the civil compensation that Germany had agreed to pay the western Allies.
In practice, the western Allies used the money to repay their own debts to the Americans.

 

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Hearts of Oak, or Rusty Old Junk?

By the end of 1918, the Royal Navy had demobbed the tens of thousands of hostilities-only men and reservists who had manned so many ships during the war. Hundreds of vessels were due to be scrapped or put up for sale, including all the pre-Dreadnought battleships, armoured cruisers and most pre-war destroyers.
Shipwrights and designers were turning their minds towards the next generation of warships, but there was no immediate rush; the Royal Navy was the largest and most powerful in the world, and the lessons of war could be usefully applied to many existing ships of the fleet. The Board set up to look into the future of existing vessels had worked through the year, and by the winter there were clear recommendations for the fleet.

All of the 12" gunned ships were obsolete, although it was thought they might have a role to play as a cheap, interim replacement for the old armoured cruisers. Years of focussing on the North Sea had left the RN without a modern fleet of ocean-going cruisers (typified by pre-war types such as the ‘Warrior’ or ‘County’ classes). Smaller ‘Town’ and ‘C’ class cruisers would be of value on various stations, but these ships had a relatively limited range and very limited firepower, and so a ship of force would often be needed to support them.
Building a new a fleet of new armoured cruisers would be expensive. At least twenty ships would be needed, and designs ranged from near-repeats of the ‘Hawkins’, a 9,000-ton, 29-knot ship with 7.5" guns, up to 17,000-ton vessels with 9.2" guns and capable of 32-33 knots.
While a suitable cruiser design was being selected and built, it was therefore suggested that some of the older battleships could fill this role. If they were converted to oil-firing and operated with partially manned secondary batteries (or perhaps only four of five main turrets manned), they could operate with much smaller crews than in wartime.
However, in this condition they would still be able to fill the role of flagships for foreign stations. Even if they happened to have to deal with a modern battleship or battlecruiser, they would still have a chance, where even the most powerful armoured cruiser would not.

The Board believed that the 13.5” gunned ships fell into two categories: Those that were not worth improving, and those that might usefully be refitted for further front-line service.
Most of the older ‘Orions’, ‘King George Vs’ and the surviving ‘Lions’ fell into the first category. An exception was HMAS Australia, which had been released to her home nation and would remain an effective flagship for the RAN for some years to come. It would be up to the Australian government to decide whether to pay for a complete a refit of the ship, due in the early 1920s.
Princess Royal had just completed a refit and was likely to be of further use, while Lion was in relatively poor condition. Although little more than six years old, she had been heavily damaged during the war, and it was unlikely she would ever be of use in the front line again.
The rest of these ships might still see valuable service as second-class battleships, or to help allow a battle-line to be formed on foreign stations. If not required for active roles, they would also make useful training vessels, and would represent a meaningful reserve force for some years to come.

The ‘Iron Duke’ class and the battlecruiser HMS Panther were of a slightly higher standard. All were currently in a good state of repair and would be capable of significant additional service. Their fit of heavier shells and their larger hulls made them a more attractive proposition for comprehensive refits in order to retain them until due for replacement in the 1930s.

The 15" ships were clearly the most valuable and would form the core of the battlefleet for many years to come. In the case of the five ‘Queen Elizabeths’ and four ‘Royals’, torpedo protection needed to be improved, as did the horizontal armour. Other than those issues, which would take approximately six to eight months in dock to fix, the ships represented some of the best fighting vessels afloat, and were regarded as fully comparable to the American’s latest ‘New Mexico’ class, or Japan’s ‘Ise’.

The brand-new Hood and the soon-to-be-completed Howe had both been modified during construction and were considered to be of an acceptable standard. Privately, doubts were still expressed over the arrangement of armour, however they would be two of the fastest and most powerful ships in the world, and any improvements would have to wait.
The battlecruisers Renown and Repulse would require significant improvements before they could be considered fit for war. Renown was due to enter dock for modifications in the New Year, which would add a 9” armour belt, along with bulges and thickened deck sections. Repulse had been fitted with experimental bulges in 1916, which could still do with improvement, but with every other ship in the fleet needing to be bulged, she would have to wait. Both ships were new, large and had powerful engines, and could accommodate these changes without sacrificing speed to an unacceptable level.

HMS Furious was not considered by the Board, but her limitations were known at the Admiralty and were the subject of some concern. However, following some strengthening after her trials, any further improvements would have to wait for a future refit. She was required in the Atlantic Fleet, and as the world's largest and most powerful warship, she would be a showpiece for the entire Navy.

Beyond that, there were ‘Fisher’s Follies’, neither of which the Board considered valuable in their present forms, if at all.
Superficially, Courageous and Glorious appeared to be good candidates to ease the shortage of large cruisers, but after having been salvaged from the Dutch estuary where she had been beached in 1917, Glorious was found to need an extensive rebuild if she was ever to sail again. Courageous' hull was also strained, having been driven hard during the last months of the war. These two had demonstrated that there was value in large, fast cruisers, but were not regarded as entirely satisfactory. They would need costly refits before they could see further service, and their unusual 14” guns and inferior turret design would always cause problems.
It was ultimately decided to scrap Glorious, having removed the machinery and other valuable equipment, while Courageous would be laid up.

 

[sts-200]

Bargain Basement Boats!

…must sell before the tide comes in.

In 1918, HMS Newfoundland was sold back to Chile, following a brief refit. Despite her deficiencies in protection, several senior officers had expressed a desire to retain this fast and powerful battleship, as she could be tactically compatible with the ‘Queens’ and ‘Royals’.
The Chileans were offered what must one of the biggest ‘buy one, get one free’ deals in history. The dreadnought Hercules was offered to them for a lower price than the Newfoundland, with the battlecruiser Invincible to be included in the deal. Very wisely, the Chilean government turned down this offer; the 12" gunned ships were virtually obsolete, and they knew they could only afford to keep one ship in service. The 14" gunned super-dreadnought, to be renamed Almirante Latorre, was superior to the Argentinian ‘Rivadavia’ class, and was therefore what the Chilean Navy wanted.

Across the Atlantic, the end of the war brought demands from Canada that Britain honour a pre-war deal, in which the battleship HMS Canada had been funded in return for Britain supplying materials and technical skills needed for the construction of several cruisers and destroyers. The matter had since been treated as a war loan, but there was still a desire to see Canadian shipbuilding benefit in some small way. An initial British offer to transfer a pair of cruisers was rejected, and so in 1919, machinery, funds and technical assistance was provided to assist in the construction of a ‘Carlisle’ class cruiser and a pair of sloops in Canada. There were hopes for a second ship, but HMCS Vancouver would be slow to build, and by the time she commissioned in 1923, the Canadian Navy faced other pressures.

On the 21st June 1919, the Dutch battlecruiser Sumatra sailed through the English Channel at the beginning of her first overseas voyage. Originally the German Hindenburg, she had been bought by the Dutch in 1917, and had since been refitted and training, while the tiny Dutch Navy began to expand to make use of the ships it had suddenly acquired. As Sumatra sailed, the crew of the De Ruyter (the former Baden) were in the early stages of transforming themselves into a coherent fighting force.

Sumatra accompanied another battleship, formerly known as Piet Hien, but which had reverted to her original name of Salamis since the Dutch had completed her sale to the Greek government earlier in the year. She was sailing to her new homeland, where she would join two ex-American pre-dreadnoughts in helping to deter the Turks from any future moves against Greece.
The Dutch could feel rather pleased with themselves over this deal, as the Italians had offered the Greeks the Konig Albert, while the British had offered to complete the powerful Almirante Cochrane (a sister of Newfoundland).
However, the Greeks wanted their new ship quickly, and didn’t want a worn-out ex-German 12” ship when they could have a newish 14” one. It had helped that, with more ex-German ships than they knew what to do with, the Dutch had been prepared to sell Salamis for a very good price.

The newly formed Kingdom of the Serbs and Croats had inherited most of what was left of the Austrian Navy, including five battleships (only two of which were dreadnoughts) and a numbers of cruisers, destroyers and submarines. However, with the former Empire’s two main naval bases now in Italian hands, and with little technical expertise, their fleet was unlikely to be going far. By the summer of 1919, all that could be managed was a training cruise by the Svent Istvan, on a trip that was shadowed by a vastly more powerful and experienced Italian force.
With such limited resources, the reality was that the new Serbian Navy would be obliged to concentrate on light forces, and perhaps its submarines, for some years to come.

Faced with a greatly reduced but still extant German Navy, and with the Italian Fleet having enjoyed considerable success during the war, France’s Marine Nationale had studied bringing the ex-German Kaiserin into service. However, it had proven too difficult, as everything about the ship was different to French machinery and practice. Several of her guns and a good deal of her equipment was stripped and used elsewhere, and the vessel herself ultimately became a floating battery at Toulon in the mid-1920s.

Neither the British nor the Americans were interested in putting obsolete ex-German ships into service, but the process of scrapping them would take some years and they could be of value in the meantime.

In 1919, Kaiser and Kronprinz were the subject of intensive firing trials by British warships. Shots were fired at short range from the 18” guns of Furious and the 15” guns of the monitor Terror, with charges reduced to simulate shells arriving from between 15,000-21,000 yards. Even at the longest range, an inert 18” shell penetrated Kronprinz’s 13.8” belt and appeared to be in a condition fit to burst. One of the new 15” ‘Greenboy’ shells penetrated the 14” belt at a range equivalent to 15,000 yards and exploded inside, although at a simulated range of 19,000 yards, a similar shell was kept out by the 14” conning tower.

British shells had shown very poor performance during the war when striking at an angle, and so trials were also carried out with the Kaiser moored so that hits occurred as if fired from 30-degrees off the beam. Old wartime shells would be broken by armour as thin as 6-8” when striking at such angles, but the new strong-walled types proved to be far more resilient.
Even at an equivalent of 21,000 yards, a new 15” shell successfully penetrated Kaiser’s 7.9” upper belt, while at 15,000 yards, an 11.8” turret face was holed, although on that occasion the shell failed to burst. At the conclusion of the trials, the Director of Naval Ordnance was satisfied that Royal Navy battleships were better armed than ever before, and that the 15” Mk.1 gun was once again one of the deadliest weapons afloat.

As Sumatra sailed through the English Channel on 21st June, Kronprinz was meeting her end off the north coast of Scotland. Royal George, Valiant and Hood fired on her with their 15” guns from ranges of between 17,000 and 20,000 yards. 106 shots were fired, with 19 hits registered, leaving her wrecked. She sank barely half an hour later.

 

[sts-200]

But What Use are They?

‘Six crashes in thirty-eight landings, and three of them fatal!’, exclaimed Commodore Bragg, the new chief of the Royal Naval Air Service’s Aviation Ship flotilla.
‘Yes Sir’, replied the Lieutenant flatly.
‘This has to stop’, continued Bragg, turning away and then back in exasperation.

Since receiving his new appointment, the Aircraft Carrier HMS Argus had begun to conduct her first air trials in the Moray Firth. Experiments on marked-out areas of ground, and even Argus’ first harbour trials had been broadly successful, but this next stage was what really mattered.
Everyone knew that landing an aircraft on a moving ship was never going to be easy, but the initial results were terrible. Bragg had seen lower casualty rates during his time in France, when the skies had been full of German ‘ace’ fliers.

‘It’s the winds on approach Sir’, stated the Lieutenant, ‘I know I was caught by them the last time I came in. I was lucky to make it; sorry to say I wrecked the kite.’
Bragg’s expression calmed. The young man in front of him was only the messenger, and in truth they’d all had high hopes for the success of Argus. Her slab-like shape, pointed only at the bows, had given her the nickname ‘flat iron’ in the Fleet, but the pilots’ version was ‘flat top’, as her top deck was completely free of obstructions.
He’d been aware of the experiments last year with the converted cruiser Cavendish, which had been a complete failure. The funnels had made the air too turbulent over the landing platform behind them, and a pilot who missed the relatively short deck would likely crash straight into either the sea or the superstructure. Now it seemed Argus had similar problems.
‘I think it’s two things, Sir. When chasing her to land, the smoke from the funnels can obscure the view, and then there’s no reference point.’
‘Ehh?’, interrupted Bragg with a frown.
‘Oh, I mean Sir, you can see the ship alright; but she’s so flat and featureless that you can’t judge distance. Then when you come close, you can’t tell how far you are above the deck. On top of that, the heat from the funnels makes it difficult to control the aeroplane just as you cross the stern.’
‘Hmmm’, mulled Bragg.
He could picture what the young pilot was saying, but he needed to know more. A few moments later, he had decided what to do.
‘Well, I suppose we’d better try it, then you can show me.’
‘Are you sure you want to take that risk Sir?’, asked the young lieutenant cautiously, ‘I mean, there’s only eight chaps who’ve landed on her … and three of those are, well … you know.’
‘Well, now’, replied Bragg, ‘I think the head of the Aircraft Carrier program should have landed on one at least once.’
Then he smiled, and added, ‘and the Admiralty aren’t going to change a ship just because a couple of young pilots say so!’

Thank God the RN was still in command of its own aircraft, thought Bragg as the Lieutenant departed. Toward the end of the war, there had been a proposal to merge the Navy’s Air Service with that of the Army, to create an entirely new force … ‘Royal Air Fleet’ or some such name, Bragg remembered. It had a certain appeal in wartime, allowing a focussed new service to dictate new designs and concentrate an ‘aerial attack’ on Germany.
However, as soon as peace had broken out, Chiefs in both services had sensed the danger in allowing their men and their budgets to be transferred to a new ‘competitor’.

-o-

Some weeks later, having survived a hair-raising descent onto Argus’ deck, Bragg was up in London, reporting his findings to the Admiralty.

‘Beardmore’s can move the funnels and add a side deckhouse in a couple of days. They’ve already built what they call a Conning Tower for the port side, and they say they can quickly use a crane to lift it onto the ship. Smart chaps, I must say … building bits of a ship then putting them altogether.’
There were nods of approval and agreement, before the usual dissent started to set in.

‘Do we really need these dedicated “aircraft carriers”?’, muttered a disapproving voice, ‘I mean, what are aeroplanes really good for?’
Bragg knew such a statement was out-of-date, as was the man who said it; aircraft had shown their potential during the war, even if it was still early days. He also knew such a statement was bound to provoke reactions from among the younger or brighter officers, and so it did.
‘You can’t land on an ordinary ship you know, and float-planes have their drawbacks.’
‘But a whole ship, even bigger than a cruiser, just to carry a dozen aeroplanes…?’
‘If we can take-off and land reliably, those dozen planes could do the scouting work of three or four cruisers – and you know how short we are of those.’
‘Huh!’, said the old Rear-Admiral, ‘…utter rot. I was with Jellicoe when he ordered an aerial search before Stavanger – a couple of those flying chaps went up. One of them we never saw again, poor chap; the other came back with a report of a fleet of ships.
Couldn’t tell us who they were, or exactly where they were though!’

Bragg felt that now was the time to step in, before the old fool really got going.
‘That was a good example of how not to do aerial reconnaissance, Admiral’, he said carefully. There was nothing like agreeing with your detractors to take the wind out of their sails.
‘We’ve come a long way since then – our newest aircraft have more powerful wireless and better instruments, and we have established search rules. Aircraft stay in contract with the fleet, so they can function as effective scouts.’
‘So we need a ten- or fifteen-thousand-ton ship to do the job of three 5,000-ton cruisers? … and it doesn’t work at all when there’s more than a slight breeze, ehh?’
Bragg tried once again, with a slightly different tack,
‘No Sir, no-one is suggesting replacing our cruisers. Aeroplanes can’t reliably do that. Maybe one day they will be able to fly hundreds of miles away from a fleet, or even engage enemy warships, but I’m a practical man. If we can halve the size of our scout forces by using aeroplanes, that saves us money and manpower for the rest of the fleet.
More importantly, Sir, there’s the consideration that our enemies are likely to use aerial reconnaissance too. That was proven during the war. If our fleets are equipped with fighter planes, we can deny the enemy that advantage.’

As the meeting drew to a close, he could see this was going to be like sailing upwind. Here they were, in the New Year of 1920, still having many of the same arguments that the Navy were having five years ago. Bragg was only glad that the First Sea Lord had been supportive so far, and with Admiral Beatty as his obvious successor, that would likely continue. It was obvious that aircraft were going to become more and more useful, and even become a threat as time went on, if the experiments with torpedo-dropping aircraft continued to show progress.

As he walked away down the Mall, Bragg could see that his problem was he couldn’t defend Argus as more than an experiment. Even if she worked perfectly, which she didn’t … yet … she wasn’t a traditional warship, she was effectively just a support vessel. Hopefully the rebuild of Cavendish would produce an alternate solution – a ‘flat top’ cruiser with both guns and aircraft, and therefore capable of working in all weathers.

 

[sts-200]

Manifest Destiny is Expensive

America’s financial position was by far the strongest of the wartime Allies, but the post-war period still produced some nasty shocks. The monies spent on the armaments programme following the declaration of war had been almost entirely wasted; within 8 months the war was over, long before any of the new factories, shipyards or training facilities produced anything useful. In addition, millions had been spent on British and French equipment to help equip the American Expeditionary Force. In the months after the armistice, a vast amount of this equipment was delivered, and it was entirely useless.
Brand-new aircraft were sold to French furniture makers for the price of the wood they contained. Local farmers, and even American troops on their way home were offered unfired rifles for a few Dollars each, and everything from tanks to tents was either given away or burned. None of it was worth the cost of transport back to the States.
Around two million American volunteer soldiers had benefitted from a year or so of steady pay, regular meals and training courtesy of Uncle Sam. To many of the poorer, or less educated recruits it had been a boon, but its effects were short-lived as demobilisation proceeded rapidly through 1918.

After the war, America was owed vast sums by the other allies, most of which were secured against good collateral. In theory, she had little to worry about, however by the winter of 1919, the global post-war boom was losing steam. At that time, the British government decided that Dollar-denominated debt repayments would only be made at the pre-war exchange rate of $4.87 to the Pound, rather than the de-facto current rate of between $3.50-$4.00. As almost all the Allies’ credit had been arranged through London, the decision also benefitted France and Italy, who therefore swiftly joined Britain in supporting the measure.
This created a tremendous ruckus among the money men in Washington and New York, but it also had the paradoxical effect of strengthening Sterling, as governments around the world saw that the decision improved the state of British finances. Technically, there was little that the American financiers could do; the Allies were not dishonouring the debts, the collateral was still there, and there was no such thing as a fixed exchange rate.
The more radical among the Irish and German immigrant communities attempted to whip up anti-British feeling over this ‘short changing of America’, but the American public were largely unaffected by these financial machinations. Many more Americans felt satisfied that the country had avoided a long and bloody war, while jingoistic sentiments that ‘Germany surrendered the moment America showed up’ had at least some basis in fact.

However, there was also a general feeling that America had spent and loaned vast sums, and that she should be free to enjoy the benefits of peace. That did not necessarily include spending money on large armaments programmes, and so as the 1920 budget was being prepared, there was much debate within the US government over the future of America's naval program.
Currently funded construction would deliver a fleet of 25 dreadnought battleships and 2 battlecruisers by the end of 1922. Eight of these ships were equipped with 12" guns, and therefore had to be regarded as second-rate vessels. A further eight ships had been authorised, but funds had not yet been appropriated for their construction.

By contrast the Royal Navy either had, or was building, 42 capital ships; a significant margin over 27. Twelve of these were 12" gun vessels, but the Navy Department took note of the rumours that Britain seemed to be keeping some of her older vessels in commission as ‘second class’ battleships - effectively a replacement for the armoured cruisers that had been used before the war on foreign stations.
Given the financial burdens of the war and the greatly increased size of modern ships, American naval strategists assumed that Britain would scale back her building programme to no more than two ships per year, probably starting in 1920. If so, by 1925 the RN might have as many as 48 capital ships, with four to six more under construction.

Meanwhile, it was predicted that by 1925, Japan might have 17-19 such ships, with 4-8 more under construction.

Making the US Navy ‘the single greatest fleet in the world’ would probably require funding for an additional 20 vessels by 1925, while attempting to reach a dominant ‘two power’ standard would require an immense level of construction (the completion of 50-60 capital ships by 1930). Attempting to out-build Britain to such a degree would be a dangerous and provocative tactic that would certainly provoke a response. Given the British record of building ships remarkably quickly, reasoned analysis suggested that even America’s industrial power could not guarantee success for a generation.

On the other hand, adopting a ‘Risk Fleet’ theory with respect any other power was seen as equally dangerous. The strategy hadn’t worked for Germany before or during the war, as it hadn’t allowed them to override the superiority of the British Fleet, with consequent impacts on German wartime trade.
If America were to build such a ‘Defensive Fleet’ (perhaps 70% that of Britain), it would mean accepting British control of global maritime trade for the foreseeable future. Although the USA had ultimately come down on Britain’s side, the realities of war had still been a shock; American trade went only where the Royal Navy allowed it to go.

As the advocates of ‘Dominant Fleet’, ‘Equal Fleet’ or ‘Defensive Fleet’ continued to put their cases to each other, and to the legislature, the capital ships of the 1916 Bill continued to be funded at the typical pre-war rate of two-per-year. The Navy argued that it should have a pair of battleships plus one of the battlecruisers, but Congress wouldn’t budge and told the Navy to choose – either two battleships, or one of each type.

Just as funds for the 1920 ships, Saratoga and Montana, were being passed through Congress, the US Navy received a nasty shock.

 

[sts-200]

Hard Graft and Enterprise

In September 1918, four new light cruisers were ordered by the Royal Navy, although it would be nearly another year before the last of them was laid down.

The ‘E-class’ had originally been dreamed up during the war to counter the supposed threat of fast German cruisers. In fact, the Germans never built any such ships, but the design prepared by the DNC attracted considerable interest at the top of the Navy. Their latest battlecruisers could achieve speeds of over 31 knots, but at the time no RN cruiser was capable of more than 29 knots.
The need for faster cruisers had also been highlighted by the wartime sharing of information with the United States. Their new ‘Omaha’ class would (at least on paper) be capable of 34 knots, and Britain therefore needed an answer. The Omahas used casemated guns, which the British designers considered old fashioned, however they were powerfully armed with ten 6” guns, and were capable of firing at least five of them in any direction.

The Admiralty therefore succeeded in exempting the E-class from the general culling of orders for new ships that took place at the end of the war, and they later received an unexpected bonus. Originally, three ships were planned, but an order for one of the ‘D-class’ cruisers was found to be expensive to cancel, and the Sea Lords successfully lobbied for the contract to be reused to produce a fourth E-class.

Wartime designs for the E-class used conventional single shielded mounts for seven 6” guns, but experience of war showed the limits of these mounts, and the Admiralty wanted a better distribution of armament than was offered by five centreline and two wing guns.

The length of the ships didn’t change, but the internal layout did, while an extra foot of beam allowed for a new armament. The forward boiler room was rearranged from fore-aft to side-by-side, and this allowed the bridge to be moved aft. An ammunition space was moved amidships from in front of the engine rooms to behind the aft boiler room, bringing the three funnels closer together and creating more room aft.
The armament layout became reminiscent of the ‘Lion’ class battlecruisers, with two superfiring mounts forward, and the aft two mounts separated by the superstructure. Unlike the Lions, there was no engine and boiler room in between, but topweight and hull space considerations prevented the installation of superfiring mounts aft, while the position of Q-mount allowed another innovation; there was room for an aircraft launching ramp to be fitted behind it.
The mounts themselves were changed, with eight 6” Mk.XII guns carried in four twin ‘enclosed mounts’. Wartime experience had shown that crews in gunshields (particularly those that did not extend down to the deck) were very vulnerable. It was impractical to modify the hull design to fit proper through-deck turrets, but each of the new twin mounts carried 1” splinter plating at the front, roof and sides, which stretched back to provide protection for the loaders and handlers. To save weight, the back of the mounts was open, but even so, they proved too heavy for manual working and were fitted with electric assistance during construction.
In service, the mounts continued to disappoint, as hoist and pass-up arrangements for ammunition limited firing to no more than 4 rounds/gun/minute after the first few salvoes. Although no worse than many earlier cruisers, the expected improvements did not materialise.

Despite being somewhat oddly arranged, with some pairs of boilers side-by-side and others fore-aft, the machinery was more advanced than any previous cruiser, as it was based on the latest ‘Admiralty V-class’ destroyer leaders. Four shafts delivered 80,000shp, with steam provided by eight boilers. The arrangement weighed just 1,590 tons, providing over 50shp/ton, in comparison to the machinery of the last C-class cruisers, which delivered 44shp/ton, while the earlier ships had been less than 40.
Displacement was just under 8,000 tons normal, or 9,800 tons at full load.

On trials in 1922, HMS Euralyus achieved 33.55 knots on the mile with 81,100shp at 8,620 tons, and both Enterprise and Emerald made over 33¼ knots.
In service, they proved to be fast and seaworthy ships, partly due to their relatively large size, and partly thanks to the ‘knuckle’ that was formed by the flared bow and the plating up to the foc’sle deck.
However, the hastily adapted armament was never entirely satisfactory, and although reliable enough, the arrangement of the machinery was obviously in need of improvement. They were transitional ships, part-way between a wartime design, and the much-improved light cruisers that would be built some years later.

HMS Exmouth as originally designed with single mounts, and as she appeared after her 1925 refit with a prototype cruiser DCT.
Credit to Shipbucket for the original image.​

 

[sts-200]

The White Elephant in the Room

‘Is this accurate, or just an intelligence man with an active imagination?’, said the bluff, straight-talking Admiral, whose job would soon to be to supervise the construction of the US Navy’s latest battleships and cruisers.
‘No Sir, this is correct information. We’ve had rumours for some time, but the photographs and now this first-hand evidence all point to the same conclusion; the battlecruiser Furious has 18-inch guns.’
There was a muffled expletive from the end of the table, at which the Admiral glanced sharply around. He wouldn’t tolerate swearing in his command … except when he did it himself.
Mr Kramer, the representative of the Ordnance Department continued,
‘We also have suggestions that both Britain and Japan are working on 19-inch or 20-inch guns.’
‘Those are only speculative’, interrupted another voice, ‘let’s stick to the facts.’
‘OK…’, Kramer hesitated before continuing, ‘Furious has 18-inch guns, and we have obtained photographs of their newest battleship, still under construction, which seem to show the barbettes are the same size. Definitely bigger than their 15-inch, so it seems more than likely that she’ll have 18-inch when they finish her next year.’
‘How sure are you of this – I mean, you guys were wrong about Hood. You reckoned she’d have 16.5”, and yet the plans showed she had the same 15-inch gun they’d been using for years. Now you’re claiming an older ship has bigger guns…?’.
There were a series of sceptical murmurs from around the room.
‘There’s no doubt’, replied Kramer, ‘although it was blind luck. One of our Ordnance guys was liaising with their Navy, and he saw it clear as day; labelled 18-inch shells being loaded at Rosyth. They were taller than him, so I regret there’s no doubt, gentlemen.’

From his place at the head of the table, Admiral Taylor, the current Chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair had been observing and listening thoughtfully.
‘So there we have it gentlemen’, he intoned slowly, ‘however unpleasant the truth may be.’
He paused to look around the room.
‘The British have a capital ship with 18-inch guns, and probably another about to complete. We have yet to complete our first ship with 16-inch.’
Several men clearly wanted to speak, but Taylor waved them aside.
‘Yes, yes, gentlemen, I know what you’re going to say. The South Dakota will have twelve of our new 16-inch Mark 2, but I say again; they have this ship in service, South Dakota has only just been laid down.’

Admiral Taylor’s soon-to-be replacement would have felt sorry for his predecessor, if he hadn’t sensed the opportunity before him. Taylor had supervised the construction of most of the Navy’s current battlefleet; tough, well-armed ships, with enough speed to match most of their foreign contemporaries. Now however, if the US needed a new Navy, he would be the man to build it.

‘So, Sir, you believe we’ve been “Dreadnoughted” again? Everything we have will soon be obsolete?’
‘I don’t believe that’s the case. We have a solid, modern fleet; more modern than the British. It’s a question of we do next – what you will do, where you’re in this chair, John.
Furious is clearly a one-off, a prototype, and our C&R engineers have calculated she must have very light armour. If we assume she’s about 40,000 tons, they can’t see how she can have more than 9” armour; which fits, given what we know about Hood. We also know the British still favour layers of deck plating – wrongly, in my view – but their hull forms are excellent. I’d believe Furious was good for 32 knots, probably more.’
He paused thoughtfully, and to make sure everyone in the room was paying close attention.
‘Yes, ahh … The greater threat, to my mind, is this new ship, ahh… Rodney, they call her. She appears to be similar to Hood, but with a more compact citadel and larger guns. We had plenty of hints when they were over here during the war that they wanted to move towards heavier armour, and if they’ve sacrificed speed for firepower as well, then Rodney could be quite a ship.
Our people have taken what they know about Hood and worked on it. Worst case, Rodney could have 18-inch guns, armour about as good as South Dakota, and still make 25 or 26 knots.’

Taylor was well aware that there were several politically minded men in the room today, who might have their own angles to play. As if on cue, one of them chose this moment to speak,
‘So you’re saying the ships you’re laying down now are already obsolete, and you don’t know what the British will have by the time we finish them…’
Such a black interpretation of the facts had to be stamped on; it was the sort of dumb summary that could easily resonate in Washington, where it could do untold damage to the Navy’s reputation.

‘No, I am most definitely not saying that!’, Taylor said firmly,
‘We at C&R have already studied more powerful ships, including an improved South Dakota; we can build better scouts and we can match their latest destroyers.’
Nodding towards Mr Kramer, he added, ‘Ordnance are already working on an 18-inch gun… But, at two battleships or battlecruisers a year, we will always be in second place.’

He could see his words were having an effect, so he drove them home,
‘If the United States wants the greatest fleet in the world, we can deliver, but it will take ten years and Congress has got to start paying for it.’

 

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Summary of Designs – 1920

We’re going to be talking about ‘improved Rodneys’, ‘modified South Dakotas’, etc…, a lot over the next few instalments, so here’s a brief summary of what’s what in the story as regards the three major navies:

Royal Navy

HMAS Australia is a ‘Lion’ class ship.
4 x ‘Royals’ – Economy versions of Queen Elizabeth (so the RN has a total of nine 23½kt battleships with 8-15” guns)

Renown, Repulse – ‘Super Tigers’, 8-15”, 16-4”. Are being reconstructed to include a 9” armour belt. Normal Load to be 34,000 tons (28,500 as built), speed 29½ kts on trial, sea speed about 28 kts.

Furious – 6-18”, 24-4”, 12” belt (very narrow), 33½ kts
Hood – a little smaller than OTL. 8-15”, uniform 9” sloped belt to the upper deck, 31 kts.
Howe – as Hood but with 11” lower belt, thicker decks.
Rodney – fast battleship version of Hood with reduced machinery; 8-16” Mk.2, 12” sloped belt, heavy deck armour (but still layered), 28½ kts.

Drawings of some of these are in this post.

‘Hawkins’ class cruisers are as reality.
‘E-class’ cruisers are armed with 8-6” in twin ‘shielded gunhouses’, but are otherwise similar to reality.

United States Navy

Battleships up to and including the ‘Marylands’ are the same.

‘South Dakota’ – as OTL (12-16” Mk.2, 16-6”/53 , 13.5” belt, 3.5” armour deck, 23kts)
Two laid down in 1919. One laid down 1920. Three others due to be funded in ’21 & ’22.

‘Lexington’ – 8-16” Mk.1, 14-5”/51, 9” belt, 3” deck, 33kts
These are about halfway between the Lexingtons as laid down in reality and the original design of 1916. They have 5 funnels (3 in profile) and a three-layer TDS.
Two laid down in 1919. One laid down in 1920. Three others due to be funded in ’21 & ’22, but some debate as to whether these should be built to a new design.

‘Omahas’ – 10-6”/53, single fore/aft turrets instead of twins, otherwise very similar to OTL. Twelve ships under construction.
‘Newarks’ – 6-8” in twin turrets, light protective plating and decks, 32½ kts. Based on the Omahas, lengthened and widened to accommodate the heavier armament. Four ships under construction.

Imperial Japanese Navy

Settsu, Kongo, Ise, Fuso classes are the same.
Kawachi was sunk in 1918 due to magazine explosion (as OTL).

Nagato is about to be completed, Mutsu is further advanced and due to complete in mid-1921.

Kaga, Tosa – Design as OTL. Laid down Autumn 1919, expected to complete in 1922.

‘Amagi’ class – Broadly similar to OTL, with ten 16” guns, but with an 11” inclined belt, 3.7” armour deck. 41,500 tons (normal), with 30 knots hoped for. First two laid down in the spring of 1920.

-o-

Author’s note –

In reality from 1919 to 21, there were numerous British studies labelled ‘F’ thorough ‘O’ followed by a number, which covered many possible RN battleships and battlecruisers, including the famous ‘G3’ of 1920-21 (although be aware there were several variants of G3). Battleships were ‘L’ and onwards, while battlecruisers worked backwards from ‘K’.

To avoid confusion, I’ve used a slightly different reference system in the next few instalments. Any ships with ‘F to O’ designations are as in reality, while any adaptions have non-historic references (e.g. N-3 is the real thing, as in any reference book, while P-3 is fictional).

 

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Alphabet Soup

At the end of the war, the Royal Navy could outgun every other fleet on the planet put together. However, other nations had building programmes underway, and so that situation would not last for long, even without the rapid process of demobilisation.
In 1919, design teams turned towards producing concepts for the next generation of capital ships that would be built in the 1920s. There were numerous lessons that had to be learned from the experience of war, and particularly from the magazine fires and explosions at Stavanger and in the Adriatic. Torpedo protection was better in war-built ships such as Hood, but there was always room for further improvement.
Any new ships would have to be at least as good as the latest opposition. The naval mission to the USA in the last months of the war had provided a much better understanding of what was being built under the 1916 US Naval Bill, while the alliance with Japan had given relatively clear indications of what the IJN wanted over the next decade.

If nothing were done, by 1925 the RN would be outgunned at the front of the battle-line, although in the middle and rear the picture was less gloomy. The ‘Royal’ and ‘Queen Elizabeth’ class ships were effectively as powerful and were faster than their contemporaries, while the five newest battlecruisers were more powerful than anything yet completed abroad. However, both the USA and Japan were known to be building 16” gunned battleships and battlecruisers, while the RN would have only Furious and Rodney equipped with guns larger than 15”.

Despite the losses and damage during the war, there was no reduction in enthusiasm for fast ships, and in fact the performance of the battlecruisers seemed to confirm their usefulness in hunting, scouting and fighting roles. However, any future fast ships would need better protection than the unfortunate Queen Mary or Inflexible.
The battlefleet consisted of 21-knot, 23½-knot, 27-knot and 31-knot ships (discounting some obsolete 25-knot battlecruisers lying in reserve, and the 33-knot Furious). Some strategists argued for a uniform fleet of ‘very fast’ battleships similar to Rodney, capable of 27 knots and with battleship levels of protection. Others argued that new battleships should be tactically compatible with the more modern 23½-knot vessels (which were likely to be in service for at least another decade), and that faster, less-heavily armoured battlecruisers still had their place in future plans.
Starting at the top, with the C-in-C Atlantic Fleet, Admiral Beatty, there was no shortage of senior officers who believed in the value of vessels capable of well over 30 knots, while simultaneously arguing that battleships should also be as swift as possible. In an ideal world, they might even want 27-knot battleships and 33-knot battlecruisers, but the world of 1919 was far from being an ideal one.

Capital ship studies therefore fell into two categories, with conceptual designs over the following years that started with ‘A’, but which skipped about in a way that appeared to defy logic. In fact, the DNC appears to have allocated different concepts to design teams, and some of the letters appear to be associated with names rather than the ships themselves; for instance ‘J’ was a design worked on by a team working under a future DNC, Arthur Johns.

Studies into both types began with HMS Rodney, due for completion in early 1921. She was the RN’s newest capital ship design, and as a derivative of Hood she also had battlecruiser lineage.

The ‘A-series’ battleships were comparatively conventional, based on a deepened version of Rodney’s hull. A-2 mounted eight 18” guns, with 90,000shp for 27 knots at a load displacement of 44,000 tons. However, she had only a 12” armour belt and a 4” upper armoured deck – an improvement on Rodney’s layout, but not in terms of total armour protection.
A-3 attempted to do the same with nine guns in triple turrets, but work was stopped once it became clear that the armour protection could never be brought up to the standards that would be required of future battleships.

Work on battleships then slowed, while their faster cousins took priority, and it was not until 1920 that studies resumed with the ‘M-series’, which resulted from concerns over displacement, the possibility of plunging shells reaching the magazines through funnel or ventilator openings, and the need to increase torpedo protection. All guns were mounted forward, grouped fore and aft of a towering bridge structure. The hull was a totally new form, which dispensed with the inclined sides of Hood and brought the belt inboard, allowing it to be more steeply sloped than the 10-12 degrees of the earlier ships. Beneath the belt, the curved external form of the bulges was gone, replaced by a near-vertical side with a broad torpedo protection system inboard.
A few years earlier, American designers had found that alternating layers of liquids and voids were effective in stopping torpedo fragments and in limiting underwater damage. USN battleships had been constructed accordingly, with broad beams and a series of vertical bulkheads near their sides.
The layout of this system had been noted by British engineers during the war, and since then a series of explosive tests on full-scale mock-ups of bulges and ships’ sides had shown that these layers could be at least as effective as Hood’s system of crushing tubes and timber-clad bulkheads. There was also a bonus; if oil were stored in the liquid layers, fuel capacity could be increased without needing room elsewhere in the ship.

M-2 would carry eight 18” Mk.2 guns (a new design of 45-calibres length) on 47,500 tons and would be capable of 23 knots, while M-3 would have nine guns in triple turrets on 46,000 tons, with 23½ knots being practical due to the lighter displacement.
The grouping of guns forward also allowed for very heavy armour; there was a 15” belt over the magazines, sloped at 25 degrees. Tests had shown that this would provide immunity against the older 18” Mk.1 gun down to under 12,000 yards, while decks up to 8” thick would protect the magazines against ‘plunging fire’ out to effective maximum range.
A 14” belt and 7” deck over machinery spaces would provide equivalent protection against the RN’s new 16” Mk.2 gun (as was fitted to Rodney).

Another remarkable improvement with ‘M’ was the incorporation of a transom stern, which resulted from the Chief Constructor noting that the long, fine stern of ships such as Hood and the ‘A’ designs barely touched the water. Model tests soon confirmed that cutting 15’ or even 25’ off the stern had virtually no effect on resistance at high speed.

The ‘N-3’ of late 1920 was a development of ‘M’, with refinements based on new calculations regarding weights and stresses. Displacement increased to 48,500 tons, but it was effectively just a more precisely worked-out version of M-3, with a slightly less sloped belt to help increase the size of the citadel, improving stability in a damaged condition and providing better protection against shells missing the bottom of the belt (for instance, as the ship rolled).

In turn, this design fed into a series of possible derivatives with the ‘P-series’.
P-34 included twelve 16” Mk.2 guns in four triple turrets (hence the ‘34’), requiring length to be increased to 855’. Normal displacement was 52,000 tons, and it had the distinction of being the first RN design with a Deep Load over 60,000 tons. Power was unchanged, but the longer hull allowed speed to be maintained at 23½ knots.
Although broadside weight decreased from 30,000 to 28,000 pounds, the new 16” gun had been shown to be only slightly less effective than the 18” Mk.1 against vertical armour, partly due to its higher muzzle velocity. Hitting the enemy quickly and repeatedly was important, and there was an argument that having twelve ‘very good’ guns was perhaps preferable to having nine ‘excellent’ ones.

P-3 blended the two earlier design, using nine of the 18” Mk.2 45-calibre guns in the same hull as P-34. This allowed machinery power to be increased, with eight large boilers delivering steam for 80,000shp through two shafts. The relatively full hull wasn’t optimised for speed, but the combination would deliver 26 knots at a normal load of 51,000 tons.

However, in design terms none of these massively powerful battleships were pursued so aggressively as their battlecruiser cousins, in part because of the influence of the wartime leaders Admirals Beatty and Jellicoe, who both regarded fast ships as more useful. By 1920, Beatty had reached the position of First Sea Lord, while Jellicoe’s 1919 report into Imperial Defence requirements supported his wartime observations that fast capital ships were more valuable than slow ones.

 

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Alphabet Soup 2 – Battlecruisers

Battlecruiser concepts also started with what designers knew and understood; the Royal Navy’s latest and best all-round ship, HMS Rodney, herself a derivative of Hood.

They got off to a flying start with the ‘C-series’, which used an expanded version of the hull form of Hood with a transom stern to maximise available length.
These were effectively ‘Super Furious’ designs, which removed many of the deficiencies of the original ship. The hull was deeper and stronger, and a uniform 12" belt reached the upper deck, which would have 4-5" of armour. Furious’ bizarre turbine arrangements and numerous boilers were replaced with the machinery of Hood, slightly improved to deliver 140,000shp.

At 875' x 106', C-2 was a flush-decked, transom-sterned ship with eight 18” Mk.1 guns in four turrets. Turret protection was improved to match that of Rodney, with 15” faces and 5” roofs, but the twelve 6” in shielded mounts were as in earlier ships. Displacement was 48,500 tons (normal), and speed would be 30 knots.
C-3 had nine 18” Mk.1 in three turrets. Displacement decreased to 47,900 tons, but speed would still be 30 knots.

Royal Navy commanders salivated when they saw these concepts, but as ever the devil was in the details, and the designers never regarded the C-series as more than a baseline. It did highlight several issues; that nine guns in triple turrets could be provided for virtually the same weight as eight in twin turrets, and that (as Rodney's designers had found) the Admiral-class hull form and machinery was being pushed to its limits.

The ‘D-series’ could be regarded as hybrids of Hood and Rodney, and were the last of the Admiral-class derivatives. With transom sterns, length was 860' and beam 106', with an armament of 16" Mk.2 guns.
D-2 was simply modernised and stretched version of Rodney, with the hull altered to allow a full set of improved Hood machinery to be fitted, and to give a slightly deeper torpedo bulge (thereby increasing its effectiveness). Overall weight of armour was slightly less than Rodney, but it was better distributed, as deck armour would consist of a single thickness of 3-5” on the upper deck, while protection to the ends of the ship was virtually eliminated. However, the changes were something of a disappointment, as models showed that 140,000shp was expected to deliver only 31 knots at a normal load of 43,100 tons.
D-3 had nine 16", with the barbettes for the triple turrets being better protected than on the original twins. At 43,600 tons, speed was perhaps a tenth of a knot less than D-2, but this still counted against them.

Neither ‘C’ nor ‘D’ could be regarded as entirely satisfactory. Deck armour had been made more effective, but not more extensive, and all the designs had the same 12”, 10-degree inclined belt as Rodney. Torpedo protection was only slightly improved, and at realistic seagoing loads, it was unlikely that the C-series would achieve more than 29 knots.
It was known that the Americans were building their ‘Lexingtons’ with a speed of at least 32 knots, and the Japanese were certainly designing 30-knot or 32-knot battlecruisers. Aside from this immediate concern, a further factor was that these ships would be required for a great deal more than eight years of front-line service. In an era of larger ships and post-war austerity, this new generation of capital ships would be expected to serve fifteen or more years in the front line.
Once those facts sunk in, it was believed that ‘C’ and ‘D’, although impressive, would be too slow to be competitive battlecruisers into the 1940s.

However, some months later, the series was revisited with D-33, although she was in fact an entirely new ship, derived from the hull form and improved machinery of the later ‘I-series’, but with a more conventional layout. Power was increased to 160,000shp, displacement to 45,500 tons and speed to 32¼ knots. Protection was also improved, in the form of an internal 12” inclined belt, with six new twin turrets for the 6” battery.

D-33, from January 1921​

 

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Alphabet Soup 3 – ‘I’ for Incomparable

In the spring of 1920, the ‘I-series’ were a breakout into a totally new design, developed in conjunction with the ‘M-series’ battleships.

I-3 had three triple turrets mounted forward (with A & B superfiring and Q abaft the bridge), with all the machinery aft, in an effort to reduce the length of the heaviest portions of deck and belt armour. Unlike pre-war designs, where machinery had often been better protected than the armament, the new ships would require the heaviest armour over the guns to ensure that no shell could ever reach the magazines, as was believed to have happen to HMS Queen Mary at Stavanger. However, designers were also aware that these new ships would be expected to fight at longer ranges, where shells would genuinely be plunging, and so relatively heavy deck protection was needed in addition to a thicker belt.
For I-3, the ship's size was increased to fit in new machinery, and at 925' x 108', with 180,000shp, she would be capable of 32½ knots and armed with nine 18" Mk.2 guns. The armour belt was internally mounted and sloped at 25 degrees, making the 12" of armour as effective as 15" would be in an ‘Admiral’ type design. Decks were 7" thick over magazines (with 4-5” elsewhere), with weight being saved by sloping the sides of the deck down to meet the top of the belt. Main armament was better protected than ever, as turrets had 8” roofs and secondary guns were mounted in twin turrets rather than semi-open shields.
The innovative, weight-saving design meant that the ship would displace only 52,000 tons, despite the increases in size and speed.

Questions still remained, and the I-series were intended as a way of trialling new ideas, and so there were a series of variants over the next few months.
I-4 looked at increasing the number of guns, which was perhaps more important for a battlecruiser than their individual hitting power. She would mount twelve 16" Mk.2 guns in three quadruple turrets. Speed and armour were the same, but length rose to 935' and normal displacement to 53,500 tons.

The existence of the ‘I-2’ design was not officially acknowledged for many years.
Six 20" 42-calibre guns would have been mounted in twin turrets, and would have totally outmatched any other ship, anywhere, while the ship’s own armour would provide protection against the 18” Mk.1 gun at all practical ranges above 15,000 yards. Displacement would be 54,500 tons and speed 32 knots.
However, the immense blast effects of the 18” Mk.1 gun were now well known, and with manufacturing technology nearing its limits, it was debatable whether a 20” gun would be much more effective than the proposed 18” 45-calibre weapon. Even so, several months later the firm of Armstrong’s, the only one with a factory capable of making 20" guns, were told to keep quiet when they suggested that they could also build a 21" gun, if it was required.
If I-2 ever came to light, it would raise the ante with every other power, with far greater certainty than Furious had done. In a world of 15” and 16” ships, a 20” battlecruiser would reset the naval race in the same way that Dreadnought had done a generation earlier.

Unlike in 1905, the government were keen to avoid provoking an outright building race, while cooler heads at the Admiralty pointed out that the Navy needed more than just a few super-ships such as Furious or I-2; it needed powerful but realistic vessels that could support the battle-line and be built in numbers.

I-3 was perhaps more attractive than others in the series, but the biggest problem with any of the designs was their size; they would not fit in any existing Admiralty dock, and so in addition to being immensely costly ships, they would require expensive new docks.

 

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Alphabet Soup 4 – Small but Sensible

In the autumn of 1920, the ‘H-series’ battlecruisers were an attempt to take the best features of the ‘I-series’ and use them in a smaller ship. H-3a, b and c were all 860’ long with a 106’ beam, and so would fit in existing docks. They carried two triple 18" Mk.2 45-calibre turrets and would achieve speeds in excess of 33 knots.

The initial version, H-3a, mounted all guns forward of the bridge in super-firing turrets, while a powerful secondary armament of 16-6" guns in twin turrets would be mounted aft. Decks would be up to 9" thick, and the 18-degree inclined belt armour was 14" thick over the magazines and 12” elsewhere. Speed was 33½ knots, and all this was achieved on a displacement of 45,000 tons.
However, while all these new designs had very heavily armoured turrets, there was still an argument that a single lucky hit could knock out 50% of H-3a’s firepower, and a very unlucky hit might disable one turret and jam the other. H-3b and H-3c rectified this by mounting the turrets fore and aft of the bridge. Without the need for any long, heavy barbettes, H-3c came in at just 43,750 tons, with a speed of close to 34 knots.

An attempt was made to produce an H-4, with eight 18” guns in two quadruple turrets, but it resulted in a ship more than 880' in length. It still suffered from being a two-turret concept, and as it would not fit any existing docks, the outline design was never completed.

To some in the service, the H-3 designs represented a great deal of displacement and cost for a ship with only six main guns, while many more were not keen on any design with fewer than eight guns. However, if viewed as a ‘fully-armoured Furious’, the H-series showed that firepower, speed and armour could be achieved on reasonable displacements, if six guns were considered adequate.

Few details survive of the ‘G-series’, and indeed there may only have been a G-3, which was an attempt to cut the size of the ‘I-series’ by reducing the calibre of the guns rather than their number.
Outline details show her to be a ship of 46,000 tons with nine 16" Mk.2 guns, capable of 32½ knots. Deck armour was thinned over the machinery spaces to just 2”, although magazines were still heavily protected by a 14” belt and 8” deck.
Tantalisingly however, the design probably triggered the re-examination of the D-series and the sketching of D-33 as a way to compare the guns-forward design with a traditional one. The absence of plans may also be because G-3 was part of the inspiration for what was subsequently built, and drawings may have been re-used or kept secret when new ships were finally laid down in 1922.

The final pair of these smaller designs were neglected by most seagoing officers at the time, as they were seen as too small and limited. They did, however, have considerable appeal to a debt-laden government.

E-2 was an attempt to take the battlecruiser back to its roots, while saving money and weight in the process. It was a much smaller ‘I-series’, with six 16” Mk.2 guns in three turrets, while secondary armament was reduced to ten 4.7” guns in twin shielded mounts. The main turrets were heavily protected, but during the design process there were suggestions that a ship with four lightly armoured turrets might be preferable to one with three heavily armoured ones.
Torpedo protection was up to the latest standards, but the ship’s main armour was an 11” internal belt, inclined at 18-degrees, with 10” over the machinery, intended to keep 14” shells out of the machinery and 16” out of the magazines at longer ranges. Deck was 5” and 4”. Machinery was described as ‘modernised Hood’ which meant new boilers and 140,000shp, which would give 32 knots at a load displacement of 35,200 tons.

R-3 did much the same for battleships, with two triple 18” Mk.2 turrets, one at each end of a relatively stubby 590’ hull. Armour consisted of a full length 14” external belt and a 6-7” deck. Displacement fell to just 33,000 tons, and 60,000shp was expected to deliver 23¾ knots.

By the New Year of 1921, the Constructors and the Admirals were closer to agreeing what was needed. By that time it was clear that the existing 15” ships would form a major part of the fleet for many years to come, and so new ships would have to reinforce them. Other navies were known to be building 30 or 32-knot battlecruisers, and so very large 27 or 28-knot battleships seemed to be simultaneously too slow and too fast for the Navy’s needs.
A mix of powerful battleships and fast, but less heavily armed battlecruisers therefore seemed to be the way forward.

In the spring, the government announced a new construction programme of two battleships and two battlecruisers would be included in the 1921 Programme, and it was expected that a further ship of each type would follow in both 1922 and ’23. The exact designs were not specified at that time, but by the early summer, the RN had placed orders for two ‘fast battleships’, each very similar to N-3. Battlecruisers were still the subject of debate, with arguments raging between the merits of H-3c, or the more conventional D-33.

 

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The Sun Rises

Having suffered few losses during the war, Japan emerged with her position greatly strengthened. She had gained isolated island colonies in the Western Pacific, which were of relatively little economic value, but which showed that Japan had her own sphere of influence. Their military value was more significant, as they could act as a base to shield the home islands against any potential future threats from the East.

Japan had long pursued a programme of having eight modern battleships and eight modern armoured cruisers. Unfortunately for them, the nature of a ‘modern’ ship had changed rapidly in the ten years since the latest version of this plan had been proposed, and by the end of the war, the Imperial Navy had only three battleships (with another nearly ready) and four battlecruisers that were truly modern. There were two older ships that effectively qualified as dreadnoughts, but this was reduced to one in 1918 when Kawachi exploded at her moorings, in yet another magazine accident that resulted in heavy loss of life.

With her new colonies and having fought alongside the Royal Navy against the Germans in both the Pacific and the North Sea, Japan clearly had a place to maintain in world affairs. A powerful fleet was not only necessary to guard Japanese waters, but it was an important source of prestige. In response to the American 1916 Naval Bill, the Japanese Diet authorised a further four capital ships of each type in 1917 and ‘18.

By 1921, all of these vessels had been laid down, with the two ‘Nagato’ class fast battleships very nearly complete, and a pair of more powerful ‘Kaga’ class battleships already launched. By virtue of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japan had considerable access to British designs and expertise, which had helped to kick-start both their shipbuilding industry and design bureaux.
Nagato was the first design completed entirely in Japan, and although it benefitted from British experience with ‘Queen Elizabeth’ it included a novel hull design and an armour scheme that was closer to an American ‘all or nothing’ design.

With a flush deck and a more powerful armament of ten 16” guns, the ‘Kagas’ were a further great improvement, and included an inclined belt. Nagato’s top speed of 26 knots was maintained in the new class, a fact that was concealed from even the British, who initially believed that the two classes were capable of no more than 24 knots; much the same speed as their own fast battleships.
It was not an entirely unreasonable deduction, as the ‘Kagas’ were not especially large ships, and with RN levels of machinery space and habitability, such a combination of powerful armament and high speed would not have been possible on as little as 39,000 tons. However, Captain Hiraga, the Japanese Chief Designer had quickly accepted the use of larger boilers, and so the machinery of the ‘Kagas’ could be made smaller and lighter. In addition, the secondary battery was closely spaced and smaller mess decks were accepted, starting a tradition of relatively cramped but heavily armed ships.

In the other direction, Japanese naval architects had been much impressed by the designs of HMS Howe and HMS Rodney, at that time the largest and most powerful battlecruisers in the world.
Although official Japanese enthusiasm for a powerful fleet was high, the great cost of the new building programme was also being noted, and it was therefore essential that every ship be as capable as possible. The 28-knot battleship Rodney appeared to be a template for a new type of warship, combining battlecruiser speeds and battleship levels of armour. Japan had not been slow to seek information from German sources either. The German battlecruiser doctrine of preferring armour over armament did not agree with Japanese ideas, but the fast, well-armoured German ships had stood up well to RN fire during the war.

For a nation that could only afford to build a limited number of ships, the ‘heavily armoured battlecruiser’, or the ‘lightly armoured fast battleship’ seemed to be a useful concept, providing that the extra armour did not restrict the ship’s offensive power.
Consequently, Captain Hiraga’s design for the battlecruisers of the ‘Amagi’ class was adapted based on these new ideas, to include heavier armour than might otherwise have been the case. A full length 10.8” thick belt (actually 275mm, and usually described as 11”) was inclined at 12-degrees and covered by a 3.6” (actually 90mm) deck, with light splinter protection extending up to the fourteen 5.5” secondary guns that were mounted in casemates on the foc’sle deck.
With a broadside totalling 22,000lbs, the ‘Amagis’ would be the most powerful battlecruisers afloat.

There were also unique weight-saving features. As with the Kaga-class, the flush deck was inclined fore-aft to reduce hull volume while retaining the advantages of strength. As with Kaga, the boilers were physically larger and more tightly arranged than those of the British ships, allowing 132,000shp to be delivered from 19 boilers, with machinery rooms significantly smaller than Howe.
On a ship 25’ shorter than Rodney, an extra pair of 16” guns had been squeezed in amidships, and the increased power would deliver 30 knots when at a normal displacement of 41,500 tons.

Amagi and Akagi were laid down in March 1920, and a further two followed in the spring of 1921.

 

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America First

At the end of the war, the USA was committed to building a vast new fleet, with dozens of battleships, cruisers and destroyers, each as powerful as anything else in the world. This would be in addition to the fleet she already had; a navy that had few modern cruisers, but a series of well-armed, well-armoured battleships. Four ships of the ‘Maryland’ class were under construction, each with eight 16"/45 guns. The interruption caused by the need to build anti-submarine, mine warfare and cargo ships during 1917 had slowed the pace of this huge programme, and it was not until 1919 that construction started on any of the last 12 of the capital ships that had been authorised in 1916. Even then, it was only for two battleships and two battlecruisers, with another one of each funded in each of the following two years.

Once it was complete, the ships of the 1916 Bill would make the US Navy comparable in tonnage and power to the Royal Navy, although not in numbers. However, after the greatest war the world had ever seen, the costs of completing the programme were questioned. A major conflict on the high seas seemed to be unlikely within the near future, and an increasingly isolationist nation was asking why America needed a fleet the size of the RN, particularly when building such a fleet might easily trigger a naval race with Britain.
As the recent war had demonstrated, Britain could build powerful ships with remarkable speed, and even with America's industrial might, an attempt to challenge the predominance of the RN was a risk. When it was learned that Furious had 18” guns and was capable of speeds ‘in excess’ of 32 knots, it shocked the Navy Department to the core. Informed guesses that Rodney was a fast battleship armed with 18” guns only heightened concerns. The US Navy was about to commission its first battleship with 16” guns, and she would be capable of just 21 knots.
It seemed the British had already moved on to the next step up.

There were calls for a ‘1920 Navy Bill’, with a further sixteen capital ships equipped with yet more powerful guns, plus further squadrons of light vessels. The 1916 ships would see America draw level with Britain’s existing fleet, and this new Bill would make the US Navy the greatest in the world.
However, the costs of this proposal, and the ongoing costs of such a large Navy were of great concern to Congress, many of whose members wished to limit expenditure. Having funded four ships in both 1917 and ‘18, the remainder of the 1916 Bill was being funded at the rate of two per year, meaning that the last pair would not be laid down until 1922, if nothing changed.

Preliminary designs for the ‘1920 ships’ included a set of 55-61,000-ton battleships armed with either eight or ten 18” guns. Belts were 15” or 16” thick, and a main armour deck was up to 6½” thick. Speed was either 23 or 25 knots.
Battlecruisers were of similar displacement, due to the need to transit the Panama canal. Capable of 30-33 knots, most designs mounted twelve 16” Mk.2, with armour belts either 12” or 13.5” thick. There was also a ‘hybrid’ design, with eight 18”, a 15” belt and a speed of 29 knots.
A fleet of cruisers with either eight or ten 8” guns was proposed, along with ocean-going destroyers of up to 2,500 tons displacement, each mounting four to six 5” guns.
There were also plans to increase the rate of capital ship construction to three-per-year, while advancing the last of the 1916 ships by a year. Even so, it meant that that the last ships of the 1920 Bill would not be laid down until 1925.
Such immense power wasn’t cheap, and the projected costs were even higher than the 1916 Bill; once submarines and auxiliary vessels were included, the price of the plan exceeded $1 Billion, for construction alone.

However, 1920 was also an election year, and President Wilson’s aspiring successor soon found that there weren’t many votes in following Wilson’s policy of ongoing overseas interventions. His challenger, Senator Harding, stated that he would put American interests first. He would reject American membership of Wilson’s ‘League of Nations’ and would distance America from its recent wartime partnerships. Harding saw his country returning to ‘normality’; independently minded and keeping to itself, free of the need to intervene in the troubles and concerns of other nations.

That in itself was a legitimate reason for wanting a powerful navy, and there were other reasons too.
During the war, Britain had demonstrated her ability to put pressure on US trade, and despite Wilson’s determination to be an international statesman, the other Allied powers hadn’t often followed his council, either at Stockholm, or since.
The limits of the President’s authority (and as his detractors said, his ability) also showed in the matter of Irish independence. Wilson took an interest in the matter, but he regarded the British solution of an Irish Free State as one that would placate the vocal Irish-American lobby at home. However, the UK successfully retained Ulster, as well as ownership of the naval bases at Berehaven and Queenstown.
The timing was unfortunate, as the agreement was signed just a month before the Presidential election. It lost Wilson the support of many Irish-American groups, who saw only that Ireland was still divided, was still tied to the King and Commonwealth, and was ‘ringed by British warships’ as one Chicago newspaper put it.

More directly, the Anglo-Japanese alliance might allow either power to put pressure on America’s trade in the Pacific. Japan’s newly acquired ex-German colonies stood across the sea lanes to the Philippines, while British territory now extended to the islands of the Bismarck Archipelago, just a few hundred miles to the south.
In a worst-case scenario, it was even conceivable that the two might be bolstered by the ex-German ships that the Dutch could now deploy to their East Indies colonies.


These potential threats to American interests could not be disregarded, but in the spring of 1921, the new American administration wanted to cut the budget. The nation was wealthier than ever before, but both debt and taxes had risen dramatically since 1914. After the wartime boom and a brief but sharp post-war recession, America’s economy was showing signs of recovery by the time the new administration took office, but military spending was still an obvious source for many of the savings.
The new President had successfully harnessed sectors of public sentiment to decry Wilson’s policies of taking America out of her state of isolationism. Wilson himself hadn’t run for office, but his nominated successor was tarred with the legacy of broken promises over not going to war in Europe, and of seeking to become embroiled in ‘Old World’ affairs through the founding of the League of Nations.

After years of war, all other nations were tired and indebted, and America's new leaders thought there was a chance to avoid the cost of a new naval race before it even started.
However, they had to act quickly. In the spring of 1921, British diplomats were instructed to begin discretely contacting other major powers, with a view to organising a summit on the post-war order at sea, and possible reductions in naval construction.

Having played the ‘no foreign interference’ card so heavily, President Harding could not go to London in order to sign away America’s ability to develop as a naval power. Any summit in London would be controlled by the British, and this would only reinforce their strong position on naval matters. Even a fair treaty could be portrayed as a case of Britain telling America what she was permitted to do.

The British were talking quietly to neutrals and allies, and even to a few of their ex-enemies, in an attempt to build a general consensus before talks took place.
Meanwhile, Harding’s administration acted much more quickly. After the barest minimum of diplomatic discussions, in May 1921 the US government publicly extended ‘an invitation to all parties, in a spirit of neutral friendship’ to attend a conference on naval arms limitation.

If difficult decisions had to be made, it was in the administration’s interests to make them in Washington, where America could at least be seen to lead. All the major naval powers were invited, but bringing everyone into the same room was not as easy as it seemed.