Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 325 (Part 1)" video.

  1. wrt the question about carrier conversions if the Washington treaty occurred a few years later. I agree with Drac that the Japanese would have been looking at converting the Kiis. wrt to the USN, SecNav Daniels had proposed another building program to follow the 1916 program that included the Lexigntons. But Daniels was gone with the change of administration in 1921. A four year delay in the treaty would put the conference during the Coolidge administration. Coolidge was even less interested in defense spending than Harding had been. As Drac said, given the attitude in the US during the time, I doubt the USN would have had a big capital ship program in the 20s. It was apparently the US that proposed the battlecruiser conversion clause of the treaty. Without battlecruisers under construction, the US would not have proposed the clause. If the UK has a G3 follow-on under construction, it might propose the conversion clause, but why would the US agree to it? I am not sure the conversion clause would have existed at all. Without the special clause, conversions would be limited by the treaty's general carrier specification of 27,000 tons. Or, the conference could fail entirely, as the 1927 (Coolidge administration) conference failed. There may not have been a successful naval conference until First London, in 1930, motivated by the depression.
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  2. wrt the question about battleship guns being downsized at the turn of the century, as Drac said, the key development was smokeless powder. Black power burns very rapidly, so building a gun with a longer barrel is pointless, as the charge would be fully burned before the shell exited a barrel longer than 30 calibers, or so. The smokeless powders that were introduced around the turn of the century burned much slower, enabling longer barrels. As Drac said, I suspect the issue driving the downsizing was weight, because you really are not comparing the weight of a black or brown powder burning 13"/35 to a smokeless burning 12"/40. but the weight of a smokeless burning 13"/40 to a 12"/40. Gun weight plays a role in ship size, and cost. The BB4 Iowa was built as a smaller, cheaper, battleship, than the Indianas, just as Mississippi and Idaho were built as a smaller, cheaper, alternative to the Connecticuts, and downsizing from a 13"/35 to a 12"/35 played a role in downsizing the entire ship.
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