Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 319" video.

  1. wrt the question of the Washington treaty being delayed for 3 years. That puts the start of the conference at November 24, during the US election. President Harding died in August, 23, so Coolidge is POTUS, running for a second term. From my reading, the US called the Washington conference because there was a sense that Congress would withdraw funding for the current construction program, regardless what other countries did, so Harding decided to try to get other countries to limit construction in sync with the US. In that light, Washington would have been completed, but all the Lexingtons and South Dakotas could very well have been cancelled and cut up on the slipway, regardless what anyone else did. In reality, Coolidge would probably have started the conference a month or two earlier, as a campaign ploy. In Japan, the quake was in August, 1923. Amagi was laid down in December 20. Without the delays due to the treaty negotiations and conversion to a carrier, Amagi would have been in the water, and safe, when the quake hit. The second pair of Amagis were scheduled to be complete in December 24. There would have been an argument that the second pair of Amagis needed to be scrapped. Both Tosas would be complete. None of the Kiis or 13s would be complete. So, net, the IJN gains the two Tosas and first two Amagis. As the US would have unilaterally scrapped the Lexingtons in 22-23, there would have never been a clause allowing conversions that exceeded the treaty 27,000 carrier limit, so the second pair of Amagis, and the Kiis, are all broken up, rather than be converted. In the back of my mind is the thought the G3s and N3s were a bluff. When the US and UK were negotiating the tonnage escalator in 37, the UK was looking for a limit around 42,000, because that was what their facilities could handle. As the G3 and N3 exceed that displacement, I suspect they were not intended to actually be built. Of course, a 1924 Washington conference could very well have failed, entirely. In February 1927, Coolidge called a conference in Geneva to limit total tonnage of smaller ships, as the original Washington treaty limited capital ships. The conference failed. I have read the British were making comments to the effect "the US is trying to buy parity on the cheap". The US would probably walk in to a 1924 Washington conference with the same idea: force other nations to draw their naval strength down to what the US had. The other nations would probably react the same way they did in 27, and, effectively, tell Coolidge to take a flying leap.
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