four more D class cruisers

Would it not be cheaper to simply set scraping/replacement dates for the ACRs?
Cheaper yes, but it makes negotiations more complex. Many of the nations with them are keeping them in service because they do not have enough other cruisers, so they will not give them up until they have enough other cruisers. Yet they have an incentive to keep them in service as long as possible, so may drag their feet if they go with a scheme to replace them with normal cruisers, and then you have to set a minimum definition for such ships to avoid cheating by calling cruisers "large destroyers", "Combat Scouts" or "Fast Gunboats". You could set an absolute deadline, but you have to negotiate it between the five powers so it seems fair to all, and before that time the situation is not balanced
 
and then you have to set a minimum definition for such ships to avoid cheating
I'm really not sure you need to do much, we look at the treaty's with hindsight but they are full of ways to cheat if you where willing to and had the cash but at the time it was accepted that it was between gentlemen and everybody wanted the same anyway....

- No actual inspection mechanism to check for weights or gun sizes!
- No clear rules on what could be modified or rebuilt.
- No rules on what you could have sitting in a pile dockside.
- I could carry on but I'm not sure I need to?
 
I'm not sure,
-Japan cant walk out otherwise its fleet is out built by both RN and USN in new battleships and they realized they could not afford the race or they would not have signed the 60% they regarded as to little to win in the eastern Pacific (v 70%).
- What the USN wants is nearly irrelevant if the US politicians want to save money they will need to agree to something I think if you look at the negotiations they include lots of things that don't really make sense from a well understood navy/technical/hindsight mode but do if you think of a bunch of amateurs wanting to stop spending money.

Well said.
 
At the end of WW1 the RN had IIRC around 20 remaining ACR's which were decommissioned by the early 20's. The RN simply says that they will scrap them one for one with the other navies ACR. That negates any advantage for the other navies from keeping theirs. simplistic I know but possible good enough.
 
At the end of WW1 the RN had IIRC around 20 remaining ACR's which were decommissioned by the early 20's. The RN simply says that they will scrap them one for one with the other navies ACR. That negates any advantage for the other navies from keeping theirs. simplistic I know but possible good enough.
By Feb 22 when the WNT was signed only Antrim is left, the rest have been sold for scrap before then

IMO after thinking about it the destabilizing factor isn't the RN having only 1, but the USN/IJN and the MN/RM, namely the USN and MN having both more and larger ACR than the latter

I don't think this would prevent such a treaty with terms of cruisers 6"/7500t from being signed, but I do think that a supplemental treaty in the later 1920's would bring a 10,000t, 8" class into being in order to save the treaty system
 
Could the 4 cruisers been modified as AA cruisers from the outset?

I would say short answer is "not really". No one at that time understood what airplanes would turn into. After all, on most ships a few 12 pounders and heavy machine guns were considered quite adequate. Why build a whole ship around that?
 
I don't think this would prevent such a treaty with terms of cruisers 6"/7500t from being signed, but I do think that a supplemental treaty in the later 1920's would bring a 10,000t, 8" class into being in order to save the treaty system
I don't think it matters, nobody (civilian) in the late 20s wants to spend more on warships just look at the LNT for instance it cuts and slows down in every category. proor to LNT even the main battleships did not get that much spent on rebuilding them ACRs are getting northing so they are just gradually getting more obsolete and decrepit to worry about.

The correct RN reply to people wasting money on rebuilding ACR in the late 20s is to spend money rebuild or building its main BCs and BBs and come LNT to ask if it can keep Tiger as its a far balance by itself for the tonnage of the many over weight ACRs that USN and IJN seam to want to keep......
 
I don't think it matters, nobody (civilian) in the late 20s wants to spend more on warships just look at the LNT for instance it cuts and slows down in every category. proor to LNT even the main battleships did not get that much spent on rebuilding them ACRs are getting northing so they are just gradually getting more obsolete and decrepit to worry about.

The correct RN reply to people wasting money on rebuilding ACR in the late 20s is to spend money rebuild or building its main BCs and BBs and come LNT to ask if it can keep Tiger as its a far balance by itself for the tonnage of the many over weight ACRs that USN and IJN seam to want to keep......
Well the UK, France and US don't want to spend money, Italy and Japan on the other hand are rather more willing, and even France (along with Italy) was willing to screw the Geneva conference. With the treaty system all five powers have to agree, or it breaks down. More importantly the five powers were quite happy to spend money on large cruiser construction programs in the late 20's, and only the Depression stopped that willingness

Basically I am assuming Japan or Italy looks at the situation in the mid 20's, realizes they are outmatched by the USN and MN respectively in large cruisers, and proposes a modification of the Treaty system to redress that imbalance, and threaten to withdraw if they don't get that
 
I would say short answer is "not really". No one at that time understood what airplanes would turn into. After all, on most ships a few 12 pounders and heavy machine guns were considered quite adequate. Why build a whole ship around that?
Possibly to claim "merchant protection" and cite their own successes of torpedo planes in Gallipoli (three ships sunk by tops in 3 missions)
 
If You are changing the RN, by adding four more D's then you are changing the Admiralty thinking and the allocation of moneys. In this ATL it is not unreasonable for the Admiralty to do the following.
1. To save money,cancel all the Hawkins bar the two already launched. (Hold the hulls on the slips until the treaty is signed, bargain them away for no 8" gun cruisers)
2. Hold all ACR in the reserve fleet until the Treaty is signed (Bargaining chips, Get rid of your ACR's or we keep ours, Oh! by the way we get more 6" cruiser tonnage for scraping so many ACR's).
3. Going for total tonnage on cruisers and not numbers if 8" cruisers are not banned. All ACR, 8'and 6" cruisers count to the signatories permissible cruiser tonnage. (this again helps get rid of the ACR's from every one.
4. If any other nation keeps an ACR RN demand to keep one or more 13.5" BC as a counter (Possibly argue as an alternative that the older and less capable 12' BC's are kept by the dominions for trade protection and to not count against RN tonnage. Again really only a bargaining posture)
5. If no 8" cruises then Both Cavendish and Hawkins are fully converted as experimental carriers. The Admiralty later argue for 10,000 trade protection carriers to be exempt from the carrier tonnage totals.
 
The butterflies on this one have mean more interesting than I expected.

I understand the 7.5 inch single mounting was pushing limit of what could be manually operated due to shell weight so RN probably wouldn't miss the Hawkins as straight up cruisers that much.


If You are changing the RN, by adding four more D's then you are changing the Admiralty thinking and the allocation of moneys. In this ATL it is not unreasonable for the Admiralty to do the following. 1. To save money,cancel all the Hawkins bar the two already launched. (Hold the hulls on the slips until the treaty is signed, bargain them away for no 8" gun cruisers) 2. Hold all ACR in the reserve fleet until the Treaty is signed (Bargaining chips, Get rid of your ACR's or we keep ours, Oh! by the way we get more 6" cruiser tonnage for scraping so many ACR's). 3. Going for total tonnage on cruisers and not numbers if 8" cruisers are not banned. All ACR, 8'and 6" cruisers count to the signatories permissible cruiser tonnage. (this again helps get rid of the ACR's from every one. 4. If any other nation keeps an ACR RN demand to keep one or more 13.5" BC as a counter (Possibly argue as an alternative that the older and less capable 12' BC's are kept by the dominions for trade protection and to not count against RN tonnage. Again really only a bargaining posture) 5. If no 8" cruises then Both Cavendish and Hawkins are fully converted as experimental carriers. The Admiralty later argue for 10,000 trade protection carriers to be exempt from the carrier tonnage totals.
If You are changing the RN, by adding four more D's then you are changing the Admiralty thinking and the allocation of moneys. In this ATL it is not unreasonable for the Admiralty to do the following. 1. To save money,cancel all the Hawkins bar the two already launched. (Hold the hulls on the slips until the treaty is signed, bargain them away for no 8" gun cruisers) 2. Hold all ACR in the reserve fleet until the Treaty is signed (Bargaining chips, Get rid of your ACR's or we keep ours, Oh! by the way we get more 6" cruiser tonnage for scraping so many ACR's). 3. Going for total tonnage on cruisers and not numbers if 8" cruisers are not banned. All ACR, 8'and 6" cruisers count to the signatories permissible cruiser tonnage. (this again helps get rid of the ACR's from every one. 4. If any other nation keeps an ACR RN demand to keep one or more 13.5" BC as a counter (Possibly argue as an alternative that the older and less capable 12' BC's are kept by the dominions for trade protection and to not count against RN tonnage. Again really only a bargaining posture) 5. If no 8" cruises then Both Cavendish and Hawkins are fully converted as experimental carriers. The Admiralty later argue for 10,000 trade protection carriers to be exempt from the carrier tonnage totals.
 
Well the UK, France and US don't want to spend money, Italy and Japan on the other hand are rather more willing, and even France (along with Italy) was willing to screw the Geneva conference. With the treaty system all five powers have to agree, or it breaks down. More importantly the five powers were quite happy to spend money on large cruiser construction programs in the late 20's, and only the Depression stopped that willingness

Basically I am assuming Japan or Italy looks at the situation in the mid 20's, realizes they are outmatched by the USN and MN respectively in large cruisers, and proposes a modification of the Treaty system to redress that imbalance, and threaten to withdraw if they don't get that
In OTL the RN were unhappy in the late 20's because they wanted to build more, lighter cruisers. And the USN and IJN were happy with fewer heavy cruisers.

In TTL the unhappiness would be the other way round.
The end result would probably be something like the 1st LNT, at about the same time, with the cruiser piece changed as the RN would hold a stronger negotiating position.
The status quo suits them, instead of the USN and IJN.

Possibly get something like:
Each signatory has a number of cruisers.
Each sub-category counts towards that number.
a) 8-10,000 tons, or any guns over 6" and up to 8". Allowed up to 2 aircraft. Counts as 1.5 cruisers.
b) 5.5-8,000 tons, all guns 6" or less. Allowed up to 1 aircraft. Counts as 1 cruiser.
c) 3-5,500 tons, all guns 5.5" or less, or less than 6 guns of 5.5 to 6". No aircraft allowed. Counts as 0.6 cruisers.

The USN and IJN could build the large cruisers they want, although fewer of them (and without putting a ridiculous number of 6" guns on any of them).
The RN, MN, and RN could build the smaller 6" cruisers they did historically.
And the old RN C&Ds, the IJN Sendai & Natori classes have there place to play as second line 0.6 cruisers (even if some do have to land a gun or 2 and replace with AA).
 
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