No Washington Naval Treaty: Royal Navy refits?

[SealTheRealDeal]

If the WNT failed, what would the UK do? Obviously some more new ships will be built than OTL, but given the financial situation after WWI the UK would likely be hard pressed to seriously compete in a new naval arms race.

An obvious solution to this is the ships the UK has already built which iOTL were decommissioned to comply with the WNT. Which ships would be good candidates to retain, and are their any economical modernization options? For instance, could Iron Duke turrets be slotted into the Lions without a ton of work?

 

[Count of Crisco]

It seems that the UK could have afforded to build more ships if they diverted funds from paying reparations payments early, not arms race levels of new ships but enough to build some. The big issue they get into is that by not building significant new ships during the war the RN is a rough generation behind the USN and IJN.

 

[sparky42]

If there was no treaty restrictions, I kind of find it hard to imagine anything like the deep refits we saw OTL, I mean you had serious resources being spent that sometimes only marginally improved capabilities and could never rectify any serious flaws.

I‘m also of the view instead you would see a slower build rate of new ships and a reduction of the battleline naturally to larger more capable ships.

 

[Dorknought]

Anything coal fired will need to be replaced quickly. G3s and N3 replace all 13.5” super Dreadnoughts by 1930. Next gen G3 to replace QE and R class in early 30s. IIRC HM Treasury would support a force level of 16 new ships with a 20 year lifespan.

 

[Belisarius II]

It seems that the UK could have afforded to build more ships if they diverted funds from paying reparations payments early, not arms race levels of new ships but enough to build some. The big issue they get into is that by not building significant new ships during the war the RN is a rough generation behind the USN and IJN.

What reparations payments was the UK paying?

 

[Belisarius II]

Anything coal fired will need to be replaced quickly. G3s and N3 replace all 13.5” super Dreadnoughts by 1930. Next gen G3 to replace QE and R class in early 30s. IIRC HM Treasury would support a force level of 16 new ships with a 20 year lifespan.

You're saying the Exchequer would pay for 16 new capital ships by the early 1930s? Who do they plan on fighting.

 

[Dorknought]

You're saying the Exchequer would pay for 16 new capital ships by the early 1930s? Who do they plan on fighting.

They plan on defending the £…
At this stage they had convinced foreign banks that paper £ was a good as gold.
The budget was there, they were running at surpluses and subsidising armour manufacturers to maintain the capacity that they would be consuming in this case.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

It seems that the UK could have afforded to build more ships if they diverted funds from paying reparations payments early, not arms race levels of new ships but enough to build some. The big issue they get into is that by not building significant new ships during the war the RN is a rough generation behind the USN and IJN.

What reparations payments was the UK paying?

The amount of reparations being paid by the UK between 1919 and 1939 was nil. Are you confusing reparations with the cost of servicing the National Debt?

 

[Dorknought]

What reparations payments was the UK paying?

Interest payments about £300m per year

 

[Jellico]

You're saying the Exchequer would pay for 16 new capital ships by the early 1930s? Who do they plan on fighting.

Naval construction is Keynesian before it is fashionable. It is pumping free money into industrial towns that would otherwise suffer. As noted by Dorknought it also provides a steady drumbeat of production to keep the various industries alive. It should be noted that some of those are going to die anyway. Construction before 1914 was just insane in a way you rarely see, and that just wasn't German/UK rivalry.

If you are curious, look up the County cruisers. The RN needed distant station (big) cruisers badly. The ships would serve to keep industry alive with the lack of capital purchases. Beatty even did a good job, schmoozing the politicians. Treasury was more than happy to hand over the money. The key thing here is Japan got cast as the bad guys and that is what the money got spent on (see Singapore). The problem is that Beatty's successors weren't as good at the job and oversold Japan as an enemy to get too many cruisers too quickly. So treasury/Admiralty relations were poisoned for a decade.


Oh, I do want to see the Agincourt refit into an amphibious command ship. There were some creative ideas for all those old big hulls.

Another edit. What if I said a run of G3s would improve AA? The G3s had a requirement for pompoms and fire control more advanced than that in the earlier ships. 4 ships plus result in an ongoing build beyond what the Nelson's could provide meaning lower costs. More units, more chances for the faults to be discovered and debugged. Washington had a lot of hidden followon effects.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

The British Government slashed all public spending (not just defence spending) in the early 1920s. It was known as the "Geddes Axe" after Sir Eric Geddes who was chair of the Committee on National Expenditure. Maintain all government expenditure at 1921-22 levels until 31st March 1936 and you've got all the money you need for the British Army & RAF as well as the Royal Navy. See the Two Power Standard threads for more details.

Before anyone asks how the that's paid for the answer is simple. The "Geddes Axe" slashed taxation as well as spending so maintain taxation at 1921-22 levels until 31st March 1936 too.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

If the WNT failed, what would the UK do? Obviously some more new ships will be built than OTL, but given the financial situation after WWI the UK would likely be hard pressed to seriously compete in a new naval arms race.

Britain's financial situation wasn't as bad as it's made out to be. See Post 11.

An obvious solution to this is the ships the UK has already built which IOTL were decommissioned to comply with the WNT. Which ships would be good candidates to retain, and are their any economical modernization options? For instance, could Iron Duke turrets be slotted into the Lions without a ton of work?

The only capital ships worth retaining after 1930 were the 15in gunned ships which was what happened IOTL anyway. However, as @sparky42 wrote you're better off spending the extra money on building new ships rather than modernising old ships. Furthermore, the only reason why the UK and other nations rebuilt old capital ships IOTL was that they weren't allowed to build new ones between 1922 and the end of 1936. There is no such restriction in your TL.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

You're saying the Exchequer would pay for 16 new capital ships by the early 1930s? Who do they plan on fighting.

16 ships laid down 1922-31 and (assuming each takes 3 years to build) completed 1925-34. That's a building rate of about one-and-a-half ships a year. IIRC the estimated cost of a G3 was £10 million so the cost of this building rate would be £15 million a year if the estimate was accurate. Under the WNT a capital ship became overage 20 years after its date of completion so if that building rate was maintained until the early 1940s the RN would have 30 underage capital ships by 1944.

That's reasonable to me.

 

[Simon Darkshade]

Coming in a few hours late means that the key issues have already been covered, particularly by the estimable Nomisyrruc.

Britain’s situation wasn’t as parlous as I’ve sometimes seen characterised in these parts, including a curious claim that communist revolution would break out should the debt to GDP ratio increased, but that was many years ago now. I do believe that Nomisyrruc has previously posted a lovely table showing RN/RAF/Army spending per year which also featured Debt Interest payments. Something important happens there in the early 1930s under Chancellor Neville Chamberlain, which I’d recommend looking into.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

I began writing this before @Simon Darkshade uploaded Post 14.

They plan on defending the £…
At this stage they had convinced foreign banks that paper £ was a good as gold.

IIRC civil servants in HM Treasury called sound government finances "The fourth arm of defence" and if I have remembered correctly they had a point.

The [budget] money was there, they were running at surpluses .. . .

FWIW (1) the average surplus in the 14 financial years running from 1st April 1922 to 31st March 1936 was £7 million (the average revenue being £833 million and the average expenditure being £826 million) which was only 0.84% of the average revenue.

FWIW (2) in the last financial year before the Geddes Axe (1921-22) revenue was £1,125 million and expenditure was £1,079 million which produced a surplus of £46 million (4.1% of revenue).

If taxation & expenditure had been maintained at that level for the next 14 financial years the National Debt would have been reduced by £546 million by 31st March 1936. The National Debt of the United Kingdom was £7,901.6 million at that date IOTL and £7,356 million ITTL. However, that doesn't allow for the money saved by the reduction in interest payments and the money saved from that could have been used to pay off more of the National Debt.

. . . and subsidising armour manufacturers to maintain the capacity that they would be consuming in this case.

Although I have few facts to support my theory, I suspect that the capacity retention subsidies weren't anywhere near as large as you think and didn't maintain as much capacity as you think. The only example that I can provide is armour making capacity which was 60,000 tons at the end of World War One and about 3,500 tons by the middle 1920s. For more details see the transcript of the official history on British War Production on the Hyperwar website.

 

[Jellico]

I firmly believe all the Washington Treaty did was distort the "market" of types of ships built. Historically the British didn't build up to the Treaty limits for reasons of finance and desire, while trying to squeeze under tonnage limits saw them build compromised and more expensive ships. The Japanese would have rapidly run into financial limits which would have naturally restricted them. With the US politics would have kicked in as the planned fleets of the other powers proved underwhelming.

No Treaty means the navies would have built less compromised ships, in the ways they wanted, at the limits they could afford. Ultimately remarkably close to reality, just with more suitable gear.

 

[Pauh the federalist]

The UK coped with the depression by cutting the military budget across the board. Any new ship building projects would likly be moderate at best which they may be able to componsate slightly by delaying putting older vessals into retirement by a few years but don't expect anything crazy as Britain did not have a lot of pressure navaly until the vary end of the interwar period (in 1922 there is around 15 years before italy invades ethiopia, japan goes all in on china or hitler has a chance to make germany a concern with significant military build ups which otl reversed course on british budget cuts). Relations with the japenese and italians were in flux but until the end of the interwar period the world's naval powers where either allied to her or British leaning neutrals. Germany although hostile was in no position to do anything since they needed to effectively rebuild thier fleet from scratch after the first World War and the german fleet no longer had colonial overseas bases meaning britan could contain germany in the north sea or north Atlantic. With hindsight it makes sense for a possible naval build up but in the moment with only the interwar data avaliable and looking for places to do budget cuts it would be a hard call to move for a massive budget increase for the navy at this period. I think the effect of no naval treaty would likly prevent meny otl budget cuts to the navy (or even see a slight bump) but the economic and political situation at the time would have prevented any significant budget increase short of a early diplomatic failures that speeds up the otl rifts in British leaning nations like Italy or Japan to spook them into pushing the budget.