Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Kongo class in WW2 - Battlecruiser or Fast Battleship?" video.

  1. My two cents worth: a navy can call a ship whatever it wants. The RN called the Courageouses "large light cruisers". That classification appears to have been accepted by the Washington conference, as the Courageouses are not listed among capital ships on either the retention or disposal lists. So the Courageouses appear to have been grandfathered, as were all the other cruisers that exceeded treaty limits for cruisers. That opens the door to the possibility that, if the RN had continued with the classification of "dreadnought armed cruiser", all of the ships now regarded as "battle cruisers", would have been recognized by the treaty as "cruisers.
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  2.  @AddumEnied  the carrier conversions were quite inefficient at carrying aircraft. I suspect that the US, and Japan, both shot themselves in the foot by doing the conversions, rather than building carriers from the keel up, which could be optimized for carrying aircraft. There is an alt history, however, where, at the Washington conference, Japan demands to be allowed to build a 42,000 ton capital ship, because of Hood. So, to make tonnage available to complete Tosa, Kongo is converted to a carrier.
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  3.  @jacqueshejeije7499  no specific name, or number, for that alt history scenario. I generate alt histories as a hobby during the winter. The Washington treaty intervention provides a wide range of possible scenarios. That scenario of Tosa being built, is based on a factual position by the UK negotiators that they were willing to accept an individual ship displacement limit of 42,000 tons, because of Hood. The US pressed for a 35,000 ton limit, because it didn't want to spend the money to build anything bigger. The treaty allowed Japan to have 315,000 tons of capital ships, but the retention list in the treaty shows Japan having only 301,320 tons. Not enough room for Tosa, without reclassifying Kongo, to free up her 27,500, giving Japan 41,180 tons, just enough to allow for Tosa to be completed.
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  4.  @adam_mawz_maas  The two Lexingtons and two Amagis that were converted are on the capital ship disposal lists. The Courageouses are not. Chapter 1, Article IX, says that only the ships that would otherwise be scrapped, are eligible for conversion under that Article. Again, the Courageouses are not on the disposal list, nor retention list, so are not covered by the capital ship provisions of the treaty. If I missed a clause and am mistaken, please point out where I am wrong.
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  5.  @AddumEnied  battlecruisers have length and speed going for them. But, the hull is the wrong shape. A battlecruiser's stern is long and tapered, for speed, but it does not have much buoyancy to support a hangar and flight deck. Look at the hull form of a Yorktown, for instance. The aft part of the hull is much fuller, so it can support more weight. Compare Kongo to Courageous. Courageous is 4' narrower, but 80 feet longer. Courageous could carry 48 aircraft, according to Wiki, for it's 24,000 tons, normal load. A converted Kongo would probably be in the same ballpark wrt aircraft capacity. Yorktown, at 25,500 full load, was 16 feet shorter than Courageous, but 20 feet wider, and could carry 90 aircraft. I have had some vigorous discussions, over the years, about the wisdom of converting the Lexingtons, as the USN could have built three Yorktowns, and built Wasp as another full sized carrier, for the displacement of the two Lexingtons, and had more aircraft deployed, with more operational flexibility, and more surviveability. In the 1920s, the one carrier resource that was limited was tonnage. Battlecruisers are very wasteful of that tonnage, for the number of aircraft they can carry.
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  6.  @KingoftheWinterWolves13  When President Harding called the conference, the estimation was that Congress was going to withdraw funding for the building program that was then in progress, regardless. So Harding decided to try and negotiate a treaty so everyone else would stop building too. It is quite possible that the South Dakotas and Lexingtons would have been cancelled by 22 or 23, even without the treaty. A conference in 25 may well have failed. President Coolidge, who became President when Harding died in 1923, called a conference to further limit naval strength in 1927. The conference was a failure. From what I have read, the US was trying to get the other powers to draw down their fleets to the size the US was willing to fund, which wasn't much. There has been a fable, for decades, that, when the US Army asked for more funding to buy aircraft, President Coolidge supposedly said "why can't they buy just one aeroplane, and take turns flying it?" I have read that the UK delegation left the 27 conference proclaiming "the US is trying to buy parity on the cheap". Without the Washington conference, the UK-Japan alliance may have remained in force for some years. The UK might have been able to restrain the Japanese building program, before economic reality forced the Japanese to pull back on their program some. There would be no restraint on Japan fortifying the former German colonies in the Pacific that Japan retained after the war via a League of Nations mandate.
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  7.  @jacqueshejeije7499  the one that has Tosa completed, and Kongo converted to a carrier? Does not have a name, or number. My winter hobby is creating alt histories, and the Washington treaty provides multiple variations. Example: In June of 1918, Congress put a clause in the annual Navy appropriation bill demanding the Navy make a start on the capital ships that had been authorized in 1916, but not laid down due to the change in priorities in 1917. Congress had authorized the 6 42,000 ton battleships in the 1917 Navy appropriation bill. Those points are both true. The alt history: SecNav Daniels says to Congress, in 1918, that the 42,000 ton battleships make the Colorados obsolete, so recommends cancelling the three Colorados not yet laid down as a waste of taxpayer's money. Additionally, as the Navy had a large quantity of 14"/50 guns, and Maryland's construction is not far advanced, Maryland be completed with a 12-14"/50 armament, rather than be a logistics headache as the only ship in the fleet with 16"/45s. Then the Washington treaty prevents construction of the South Dakotas. As Colorado and West Virginia were never laid down, Delaware and North Dakota are retained. As the three "post-Jutland" US battleships, Tennessee, California, and Maryland, all have 14" guns, the treaty allows them to be upgunned to 16", for parity with the 16" armed UK and Japanese battleships, but the US never pursues the upgunning of those three ships, due to cost.
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