Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 270 (Part 2)" video.

  1. wrt the question about Mutsu, as Drac said, there was no way of knowing how useful Mutsu would be twenty years in the future. The original plan was for Japan to retain Settsu. Her sister, Kawachi, was sunk by a magazine explosion in 1918. With Mutsu, Japan was nearly 14,000 tons under her treaty quota. With Settsu instead, Japan would have been 26,000 tons under quota. Settsu would age out in 1931, but Japan would still only have 47,000 tons of headroom under their limit, not enough to build two treaty max ships. My favorite plan, as it makes the math the easiest, is to stick to the 5:5:3 ratio in "post Jutland" ships, and parity with the UK having one 42,000 ton ship, The IJN to have Nagato, Mutsu, and Tosa, while the US completes all four Colorados, plus one Lexington to act as consort to the carriers, and the UK builds four Nelsons to complement Hood. But the objective of the treaty was to stop spending money building ships. From what I have read, the Japanese had a lot of national pride tied up in Mutsu, and were determined at the conference that they were not going to give her up. What they ultimately did was probably the best possible outcome, with minimal waste for both Japan and the US, and minimal extra construction cost for the UK.
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  2.  @tomdolan9761  from my reading, the calculus in the Harding administration was that Congress was going to cut off funding for the building program, regardless. So Harding called the conference to try and talk the other powers into halting construction as well.
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