The Last Century of Sea Power, Volume 2: From Washington to Tokyo, 1922–1945

By H. P. Willmott

“An important contribution . . . a thoughtful account of the years preceding the Second World War and, at much greater length, of the war itself.” —History

In this second volume of his history of naval power in the 20th century, H. P. Willmott follows the fortunes of the established seafaring nations of Europe along with two upstarts—the United States and Japan. Emerging from World War I in command of the seas, Great Britain saw its supremacy weakened through neglect and in the face of more committed rivals. Britain’s grand Coronation Review of 1937 marked the apotheosis of a sea power slipping into decline. Meanwhile, Britain’s rivals and soon-to-be enemies were embarking on significant naval building programs that would soon change the nature of war at sea in ways that neither they nor their rivals anticipated. By the end of a new world war, the United States had taken command of two oceans, having placed its industrial might behind technologies that further defined the arena of naval power above and below the waves, where stealth and the ability to strike at great distance would soon rewrite the rules of war and of peace. This splendid volume further enhances Willmott’s stature as the dean of naval historians.

Praise for The Last Century of Sea Power series

“The author, dean of naval historians, provides a sweeping look at, and analysis of, the transformation of naval power . . . Wilmott is fearless in his judgments.” —Seapower

“H. P. Willmott is the finest naval historian and among the finest historians of any discipline writing today.” —Bernard D. Cole, author of The Great Wall at Sea

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9780253004093

Book preview

THE LAST CENTURY OF SEA POWER

THE LAST

CENTURY

OF SEA

POWER

Volume Two: From Washington

to Tokyo, 1922–1945

H. P. Willmott

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

601 North Morton Street

Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA

www.iupress.indiana.edu

Telephone orders   800-842-6796

Fax orders    812-855-7931

Orders by e-mail   [e-mail]

© 2010 by H. P. Willmott

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

The Library of Congress has catalogued the first volume in this series as follows:

Willmott, H. P.

The last century of sea power : from Port Arthur to Chanak, 1894–1922 /

H.P. Willmott.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-35214-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Naval history, Modern—19th

century. 2. Naval history, Modern—20th century. I. Title.

D362.W68 2008

359’.0309041—dc22

2008015018

1 2 3 4 5 15 14 13 12 11 10

Dedicated to FY1645

and in praise of

Dissent, Uncertainty, and Tolerance

O lente lente currite equis nocti

and

to the memory of Everton, Sherry, Kondor,

Jamie, Suki, Lancaster, and Junior

CONTENTS

CHAPTER APPENDIXES

MAPS AND A DIAGRAM

TABLES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the first volume of The Last Century of Sea Power there was a preface that set out the terms of reference of this work, specifically the various considerations that over time established the basis of this work. This preface is not the place to repeat such matters and hence what was in the first volume a preface and acknowledgement in this volume should be no more than the acknowledgement section.

I would specifically acknowledge and offer my sincere and unreserved gratitude for all the help and advice I received from Ola Bøe Hansen, Hasegawa Rei, Paul Latawski, Captain Francesco Loriga, and Tohmatsu Haruo and from Jennie Wraight and Iain Mackenzie, and from Anthony Clayton, Sarandis Papadopoulos, and Steven Weingartner, and with these individuals I would add those persons who were always at my side that went beyond the call of friendship, namely Michael and Sara Barrett, Bernard Cole, Michael Coles, Gerard Roncolato, William Spencer and Andrea Johnson and family, John Andreas and Tine Olsen, Jack and Gee Sweetman, and Spencer C. and Beverly Tucker. To all of these people I would simply state my thanks and appreciation for help and camaraderie that are beyond my poor powers to acknowledge properly.

I would also acknowledge the support and encouragement provided by various colleagues and friends in a period of very considerable personal and professional misfortune and without whose quiet companionship what was bad might well have been nigh-impossible. Among those I would acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Tim Bean, Patrick Birks, Nigel and Martine de Lee, Paul Harris, Cliff Krieger, Jim Mattis, Lars Neilsen, George Raach, Kyle Sinisi, Frederick Snow, Patrick and Jennifer Speelman, David Vance, John Votaw, and David White, and with this acknowledgement I would state my hope that this book is some small token of my appreciation and esteem.

I also wish to acknowledge my debt to those without whose patience, tact, and literary ability this book would probably have gone the way of many of the ships cited in these pages. Specifically I would wish to acknowledge my debts to Robert Sloan and Brian Herrmann of Indiana University Press, to Keith Chaffer for his professionalism and imaginative work upon the maps, and to the library personnel who professionally and personally have helped me at every stage of proceedings, Ken Franklin, Andrew Orgill, and John Pearce: I trust they will accept this poor acknowledgement of their support and efforts.

There remains one group that always appears in my acknowledgements section and for one reason: they have been the means of ensuring continuing sanity. I would acknowledge my debt to and love for my beloved woofers. Would that Everton, Sherry, Kondor, Jamie, Suki, Lancaster, and Junior be at peace and together, and in terms of my present debt and love for Mishka, Cassie, and Ozzie, and for Yanya, I would merely express my hope that much time will pass before they join their predecessors and chase together across the celestial fields.

THE LAST CENTURY OF SEA POWER

PART 1

NAVAL RACES

AND WARS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION: WASHINGTON, LONDON, AND TWO VERY SEPARATE WARS, 1921–1941

ARMS RACES ARE NOT the cause of rivalries and wars but rather the reflection of conflicting ambition and intent, though inevitably they compound and add to these differences. The First World War was not the product of Anglo-German naval rivalry, though this was one of the major factors that determined Britain’s taking position in the ranks of Germany’s enemies, and most certainly it was a major factor in producing the growing sense of instability within Europe in the decade prior to 1914. But if the naval race was indeed one of the factors that made for war in 1914—although it should be noted that the most dangerous phase of this rivalry would seem to have passed by 1914—then there is the obvious problem of explaining the war in 1939–1941, in that the greater part of the inter-war period, between 1921 and 1936, was marked by a very deliberate policy of naval limitation on the part of the great powers. Admittedly the arrangements that were set in place in various treaties had lapsed by 1937, and a naval race had begun that most certainly was crucially important in terms of Japanese calculations in 1940 and 1941 and indeed was critical in the decision to initiate war in the Pacific. In summer 1941, as the Japanese naval command was obliged to consider the consequences of its own actions and the full implications of the U.S. Congress having passed the Two-Ocean Naval Expansion Act in July 1940, the Imperial Navy, the Kaigun, was caught in a go-now-or-never dilemma, and it, like its sister service, simply could not admit the futility and pointlessness of past endeavors and sacrifices. But, of course, not a few of these endeavors and sacrifices had been military and Asian and most definitely were not naval and Pacific.

The obvious problem that attends any attempt to set out the course of naval history in the twentieth century is the place that the Second World War has come to occupy in popular perception. We as societies look to the two world wars, and specifically the Second World War, as the yardsticks against which other conflicts are measured, but that is exactly the wrong way to consider these conflicts. Perhaps the more relevant way of considering the twentieth century, warfare, and the two world wars is to start from the premise that these wars were so very different in so many ways from wars that came before and since that they should be regarded as exceptions and discounted from consideration as a basis of comparison other than with and against each other. But such matters really are of small account when set alongside what should be the proper consideration of the Second World War, and on two very different counts.

The first is that really there was no such thing as the Second World War. What is regarded as the Second World War was two partially overlapping conflicts that were largely separate from one another, though their common outcome and the fact that after 1941 certain powers were involved in both wars represent points where the two conflicts joined as one. The first of these two conflicts originated in eastern Asia, between China and Japan, and dates if not from September 1931—which is the date when the Japanese official histories begin their nation’s story—then certainly from July 1937 with the Lukouchiao, or Marco Polo Bridge, Incident and the start of Japan’s special undeclared war against her continental neighbor. The second conflict is the European conflict that began in September 1939. Neither of these two conflicts, however, represented a war: both were a series of campaigns that only came together in the course of 1941, for very different reasons and under very different circumstances. Of course such a perspective can be challenged, and rightly so on the obvious grounds: these were wars in terms of national commitments and in terms of both the nature and conduct of these conflicts. But what was in place until 1941 was a series of campaigns, some successive and others concurrent, that were joined in fearful array in the course of 1941.

For example, in eastern Asia after July 1937 a series of campaigns saw the Japanese conquest of much of northern and central China. Then, with the nationalist regime at Chungking refusing to enter negotiations that would confirm Japan in her position of primacy, two strategic bombing campaigns in 1939 and 1940 likewise failed to force the Chinese leadership to the conference table and to acceptance of defeat and acknowledgement of Japanese primacy and leadership in east Asia.¹ But thereafter, what had been a single conflict came to embrace five very different parts that were separated from one another to a surprising degree: the continuing conflict within China; a conflict throughout southeast Asia; a conflict in the western Pacific that was primarily concerned with fleet action and landing operations and that in its final stages embraced the bombardment of the home islands by carrier aircraft and warships and involved a strategic bombing offensive; a conflict in the western Pacific that was directed against Japanese shipping; and in the final stages, the campaign in Manchuria and northern China that followed from the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against Japan. To these military aspects of what was the Japanese war may be added two other conflicts: first, the political conflict throughout east and southeast Asia that was the product of the Japanese aim of creating a new order throughout these areas and that necessarily involved the attempt to mobilize the will and moral force of the peoples of east and southeast Asia to support the Japanese cause, and second, an economic dimension to the national efforts that obviously extended beyond the campaign against Japanese shipping.

In a sense, the situation within Europe was much simpler, or at least can be defined in simpler terms: between September 1939 and May 1941 Germany fought and won a series of campaigns against individual enemies, each of which was, in terms of demographic and economic resources, geographical position, and military power, much inferior to Germany. As long as Hitler was able to dictate the terms of reference of these conflicts, German success was so great that by the end of May 1941 the German domination of the continental mainland made the German national position all but unchallengeable, at least by the only state that remained at war with Germany. There was in military terms one element of continuity, and that was the war at sea, but with respect to the terms of reference supplied by Hitler, the events of September 1939–April 1941 did not represent the real war, which was the Volksgemainschaft. The struggle to achieve racial purity was more important than campaigns per se, though obviously they were related, because Aryan supremacy could not be achieved except by conquest of inferior peoples. In that sense struggle and campaigns were the two sides of a single coin, but in the European conflict’s first phases, when Germany was able to fight as it would, what it fought was a series of campaigns largely separated from one another, rather than a war.

This second matter is perhaps a more delicate one, involving national perspective, and specifically American and British national mythology in terms of these countries’ part in the fight, and hence contribution to victory. In terms of the British, the problem can be defined very simply: if, as Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) stated, 1940 really represented Britain’s finest hour, then what came next has to be anti-climatic, and one would suggest that there has been a deliberate sheltering behind the events of the Second World War to ensure continuing national importance and proper status. But in looking at the British military contribution to victory one confronts a troublesome point: between February 1941 and May 1943, in the course of the North African campaign, first the British and then (after November 1942) the British and Americans accounted for fourteen German dead a day: at such a rate, to have inflicted the total number of military dead that Germany incurred between 1 September 1939 and 12 May 1945 would have taken the British military 588 years. Perhaps that is an overstatement—it may be that it would have only taken 587 years—but the basic point is that while Britain was important in certain aspects of this anti-German struggle, most notably in providing continuity between 1939 and 1941, in the role of democratic beacon at a time when representative government was all but extinguished throughout Europe,² and in terms of a military commitment that was primarily naval, air, and positional, the British military contribution to Allied victory in terms of conquest and the inflicting of telling commitment and losses on Germany was minimal. Lest the point be doubted, the British naval dimension in Germany’s defeat was basically irrelevant: Germany was not defeated because it lost the war at sea.

The same basic point may be made about the American dimension. There is no disputing the simple fact that the most important single national contribution to victory over Japan was that of the United States. In terms of the German war, however, the American contribution helped complete the Allied victory, but it was only a contribution and not cause: it was not until the summer of 1944 that the United States was able to deploy armies in the field in northwest Europe, and by that time the issue of victory and defeat had been resolved, and on the Eastern Front. American air power and support for allies possessed more than en passant importance, but in Germany’s final defeat a whole number of matters came together, and perhaps the most important single factor was one very seldom afforded much in the way of serious consideration. The nature of the German regime and system precluded the consolidation of victories and the winning of endorsement and support across a continent; the result was that despite access to economic resources and industrial infrastructure not markedly inferior to that of the United States, Germany was out-produced by Britain until 1942 and thereafter was condemned to economic, industrial, and financial defeat as American production was added to the scales. But if there were important political and economic aspects of Germany’s defeat, in the final analysis that defeat had to be registered on the battlefield, and the most important single national contribution to victory over Germany was that of the Soviet Union, and at a horrendous price. Many statistics can be quoted, but perhaps two possess suitable poignancy: the total American dead in the Second World War was less than the number of Soviet second lieutenants who were killed, and of every hundred Soviet males aged eighteen in 1941 just three remained alive at war’s end.

The problem that the Second World War presents in terms of this second volume of The Last Century of Sea Power can be defined very simply: how to separate the story of two conflicts without following well-worn paths. The answer should be to tell the story not of the successful application of victorious sea power but of the lessening effectiveness of defeated sea power, the separation between the German and Japanese wars then becoming self-evident; but more interesting would be, in the case of the European war, to look at the naval matters neglected over the years. But first the inter-war period.

CHAPTER TWO

WASHINGTON AND LONDON

ALLIES ARE NOT NECESSARILY friends, and victory, or defeat, inevitably weakens the links that made for alliances and coalitions: the conflicting interests held in check by common need invariably reassert themselves, often with greater force than previously was the case. the First World War saw the passing of four empires, three of them multi-national empires, and the triumph of what in July 1919 were the five leading naval powers in the world, but those five powers’ wartime cooperation and common cause did not survive such episodes as the Naval Battle of Paris and the negotiations that produced the treaties that closed the First World War.

The period between the end of the war and the Washington conference and treaties, between November 1918 and February 1922, was a strange one in regard to naval power, and primarily for one reason. The war resulted in the elimination of three major navies, those of Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, yet it ended with no fewer than three naval races, if not already ongoing then most certainly in the making: between Britain and the United States, between Japan and the United States, and, somewhat muted, between France and Italy. Leaving aside the latter, which never assumed importance or gained momentum in the twenties, the key development was the emergence of the United States as the greatest power in the world and its declared intention to secure for itself a navy second to none. To realize such an ambition the U.S. Congress authorized, in the act of 29 August 1916, the construction of no fewer than 162 warships, including 10 battleships, 6 battlecruisers, 10 cruisers, 50 destroyers, and 67 submarines. All of these warships were to be built between 1916 and 1919, and were in addition to a 1915 program that had made provision for 6 battleships, the general intention being that the United States would provide for itself no fewer than 60 battleships and battlecruisers by 1925. In framing its program the U.S. Navy, quite deliberately, had set aside the situation created by general war in Europe in favor of what it considered the worst-case possibility that might emerge after this war. What it planned for was the need to guard against either a German-Japanese or an Anglo-Japanese alliance that would be capable of threatening the United States in two oceans and preventing any expansion of American overseas trade. The total of 60 capital ships that were to be acquired by 1925 matched the total that Britain and Japan together might be able to deploy in a war against the United States. The least that could be said about such logic was that it grasped at the exceedingly unlikely in order to justify the manifestly unnecessary.

The program did not survive American involvement in the First World War, when more immediate needs took precedence, but with the end of the war the second to none logic reasserted itself, and on two separate counts: internationalism, or at least a Wilsonian version of internationalism tailored to American requirements, and status pointed to a resurrection of the July 1915 program and August 1916 provisions.¹ The crucial point here is that status was not related to any direct or immediate security need. What the United States sought was confirmation of greatness, and in this respect Britain found itself in an unenviable position with war’s end. For well over a hundred years Britain’s status as a great power, and indeed status as the world’s greatest industrial, trading, financial, and naval power, was synonymous with its assured naval superiority over potential enemies. Quite clearly Britain was unwilling to cede pride of place to any nation, not least in the aftermath of the defeat of the second-ranked navy in the world. But British intent to maintain its superiority faced three facts of life. First, Britain—like France and Italy—was morally and physically exhausted as a result of war, and most certainly psychologically spent by its efforts in a way that the United States was not. The total number of American battlefield dead in the First World War was fewer than the number of British missing at Ypres, and in the immediate aftermath of the November 1918 armistice, there could be no question of British pursuit of a course of action that might involve any major war or military undertaking. Second, Britain could not consider any course of action that might involve collision with the one power that had represented its greatest market and source of earnings, that dominated the Caribbean, and that was its greatest creditor. Third, with the end of the war Britain, in effect, had to pick up the bill for having been the first naval power to build dreadnoughts. The British margin of superiority in numbers of capital ships over the German Navy in the First World War and then the United States after the war was primarily vested, depending on perspective, in either aging, first-generation dreadnoughts or battlecruisers, and certainly both were obsolescent. Britain at war’s end had ten battleships and four battlecruisers that were armed with 12-in. main armament, were some ten years old, and were hopelessly outclassed in terms of size, armament, protection, and speed by the capital ships that were now in service: for example, the 18.4-knot Dreadnought, when it entered service in 1907, was accorded a standard displacement of 17,900 tons and a deep-load displacement of 21,845 tons, whereas the 31.9-knot Hood, when it entered service in 1920, recorded comparable figures of 41,200 and 45,200 tons respectively. Simply to maintain existing numbers thus presented Britain with massive problems in terms of both building and cost.

The situation in which Japan found itself in 1918–1920 was even more complicated and difficult. Where one starts an examination of that situation is fraught with difficulty, but the United States’ purchase of the Philippines in 1898, which placed it cheek by jowl with Japan in the western Pacific, and the Russo-Japanese War, which in effect left Japan with no potential naval enemy in the western Pacific against which it could measure itself except the United States, were factors. Sufficient for our purpose, however, would be the Imperial Defense Policy statement of April 1907, which defined Russia as Japan’s most likely military opponent in eastern Asia but underwrote two sets of demands on the part of the Imperial Japanese Navy (the Nippon Teikoku Kaigun). In effect it sanctioned the taikan kyohoshugi doctrine, which stressed the importance of acquiring big ships with big guns, in the form of a construction program for eight 20,000-ton dreadnoughts and eight 18,000-ton battlecruisers. The justification for such a program was identified as the U.S. Navy. Both quite deliberately and mendaciously, the latter had been selected as, if not the only possible enemy, then the only potential enemy that could justify programs of the size that the Kaigun sought, and the sequel was perhaps predictable: the April 1907 statement and the Eight-Eight formula form the basis on which Japan started building dreadnoughts and battlecruisers and found itself by the end of World War I in a construction race with the United States.

This had come about partly because of the taikan kyohoshugi provision, which meant that successive classes of Japanese capital ships showed massive qualitative improvement; indeed, it is possible to argue that the Kongo, Fuso, and Nagato classes were in their turn the most powerful capital ships in the world. The problem was that by 1916 the Diet refused to authorize more than one battleship and two battlecruisers, at the very time when the United States was vociferously claiming the right to build a fleet second to none. The implications of American numbers for Japan need no elaboration; suffice it to note that had the U.S. programs been fully implemented, the Kaigun would have been rendered irrelevant. As it was, in 1917 the Kaigun secured authorization for the construction of sixty-three warships, three battleships included, and in 1918 two more battlecruisers were approved. In other words, on the back of the unprecedented prosperity that World War I brought to Japan, the Kaigun secured endorsement in 1917 of what was an Eight-Six program, and in the following year of its full Eight-Eight program. Nonetheless, between 1910 and 1918 fifteen American battleships entered service compared to six Japanese dreadnoughts and four battlecruisers, the Japanese battleship total having to be adjusted downward to take account of the loss of the Kawachi, which was destroyed by the explosion of its magazine when in Tokuyama Bay on 12 July 1918. What made the situation even worse for Japan was that even if the early American dreadnoughts were discounted from consideration, Japan’s position really did not change much, because in 1918 the United States had another five dreadnoughts under construction, compared to just two being built in Japanese yards. Thus the situation in which Japan found herself was potentially disastrous. Japan had been out-built 3:2 by the United States, and even allowing for the quality of its capital ships, there was no escaping the fact that Japan simply could not match either the immediate 1916 program or the general American intention with its 1925 perspective.

Such a situation was potentially disastrous for both Japan and the United States, but Japan’s reaction to the situation in which it found itself was all but willfully perverse. Despite having somehow taken on board the Eight-Eight formula, by 1918 Japan risked being overwhelmed by a United States that, without really trying, had comfortably outstripped it in terms of the number of capital ships built over the last decade. That, of course, was not how most Japanese naval officers saw things. In June 1918 the Japanese government undertook the first revision of its Imperial Defense Policy since 1907. Russia, then in the grip of revolution, remained the enemy on the mainland, and in effect the United States retained its position as the country against which naval provision had to be made. To deal with the American naval challenge, the Kaigun proposed that Japan should accept the Eight-Eight formula over an eight-year period, with the commitment to the building of three capital ships every year.

By this time Kaigun doctrinal orthodoxy had embraced the conclusion that massed battle fleets and extended battle lines were unviable, that in effect no battle formation should consist of more than a couple of divisions numbering more than eight dreadnoughts or battlecruisers. Thus the Kaigun was feeling its way to the idea whereby in eight years it would come into possession of three fleets each with eight capital ships. At the time that the U.S. Navy was thinking in terms of battleships and battlecruisers of unprecedented size and armament, the Kaigun was drafting plans and recasting its designs in order to provide two high-speed battleships (the Tosa and Kaga) capable of 26.5 knots and armed with ten 16-in. guns in five twin turrets, followed by two more fast battleships (the Akagi and Amagi) that, on a full-load displacement of 47,000 tons, were to have the same ten 16-in. guns, slightly thinner armor, and, with an almost 50 percent increase in power, a speed of 30 knots. These two ships were authorized in 1919 and laid down in 1920, while their sister ships Atago and Takao were authorized in 1920 and laid down in 1921. They were deliberately conceived as direct counters to the British Hood, then nearing completion, and the American Saratoga-class battlecruisers.

These six ships, however, were not the sum of Kaigun aspirations and planning at this time. With various designs being cast and recast and initial appropriations voted, there were two more classes for which plans and designs were being prepared. The first, planned for the 1921 program, was a four-strong class of slightly improved Tosas; the second, planned for the 1922 program, was a four-strong class of battleships nearly one hundred feet longer than the members of the Tosa class and afforded thicker armor, the same speed, and eight 18-in. guns. All had been assigned their respective shipyards, with the Kure and Yokosuka navy yards and Kawasaki at Kobe and Mitsubishi at Nagasaki each assigned one unit from each class.

Overall the Japanese situation is cause for a certain wonderment: the fact that Japan was out-built by a potentially decisive margin between 1906 and 1916 seems only to have deepened a commitment to a failed Eight-Eight formula, which, both despite and because of its inadequacies, thereafter was expanded. But at this stage of proceedings there emerged onto center stage a number of other considerations that together were to spell a halt to any naval race and that were to result, in part, in the Washington conference, November 1921–February 1922, and in the naval limitation treaty of 6 February 1922.

Three of these other considerations were of specific and primary importance. First, there was throughout the world a post-war reaction to any prospect of an arms race. The pre-war Anglo-German naval race was widely regarded as having been a major cause of war in 1914; even if this was somewhat simplistic or mistaken—and arms races are primarily the symptom rather than the illness—there was no mistaking the force of this particular argument in terms of public belief in many allied countries: there was a determination to avoid a new naval race just as there was a general confidence and hope vested in the League of Nations as the means of ensuring peace.

Second, and a point to which reference has been made obliquely with respect to Britain’s position, the cost of an individual battleship had more than tripled in little more than a decade; nonetheless, the price, around £7,500,000 or $34,500,000 each, was not altogether excessive.² But, of course, the point was not the cost of an individual capital ship: naval construction programs necessarily had to involve many capital ships and their attendant cruisers, destroyers, and auxiliary support shipping, plus, given the growth of size of ships in recent years, major capital programs for expanded slips and docks. By 1921 Britain, Japan, and the United States were committed to programs that would have involved costs of £252,000,000/U.S.$1,152,000,000 for just the required number of capital ships, and herein perspective is provided by a number of related matters. The United States had emerged from the war as industrially and financially the world’s greatest power, with the second largest merchant fleet in the world, but the American national debt had risen from about a billion dollars in 1914 to nearly $27 billion in 1919, and in 1918 almost seven dollars in ten of all state spending was financed by borrowing. The political and naval leadership of the United States might insist on the acquisition of a navy second to none, but such matters as financial orthodoxy, reduced state spending, and general economy pointed in a somewhat different direction. Britain’s position was similar and merely reinforces the point: the First World War saw a fifteen-fold increase in state expenditure in Britain. The projected expenditure estimates for 1918–1919 (£3,146,475,568) provided for six votes—spending on the army (£974,033,762), munitions (£562,227,196), the navy (£356,044,688), shipping (£285,466,121), the financing of debt (£281,344,867),³ and the provision of loans to allies and dominions (£264,575,684)—that were each greater than the sum of state spending in 1913–1914 (£194,994,468), and the loans, munitions, and shipping expenditure had never existed prior to the outbreak of war. By 1919 the British government was in the process of trying to reduce expenditure to a more modest £1,231,076,000 for 1920–1921, a reduction of three-fifths of state spending from the 1918–1919 level, with debt and the armed forces in 1920–1921 accounting for 49.88 percent of all state spending. The desire to return to prewar days carried with it a return not simply to the laissez-faire state but to financial orthodoxy and the lowest possible level of government spending commensurate with real needs—and extra dreadnoughts did not fall into this category.

The third matter is perhaps the most difficult to define and evaluate because it presents perspectives that were not generally held. There were within the major navies schools of thought that questioned the course of confrontation and possible conflict on which their countries and services seemed to be embarked in the aftermath of war. Within Britain there was a general disbelief that the country could set itself on a course that might lead to war with the United States, while in Japan the twenties was the time of constitutionalism at home, imperialism abroad; the latter was primarily peaceful and stressed cooperation between powers, not exclusiveness.⁴ This period saw the emergence, first as navy minister and subsequently as prime minister, of Admiral Kato Tomosaburo (1861–1923), who was the very embodiment of the belief that the only eventuality that could be worse for Japan than an unrestricted naval construction race with the United States would be war against that country. To Kato an unrestricted naval race could only result in the remorseless and irreversible erosion of Japan’s position relative to the United States, and Japan had to seek security through peaceful cooperation and diplomatic arrangements rather than through international rivalry and conquest. The Kaigun itself saw its role as deterrent and, in the event of war, defensive, but individuals such as Kato saw Japan’s best interest served not by confrontation and conflict with the United States but by arrangements that limited American construction relative to Japan and that provided the basis of future American recognition and acceptance of Japan’s regional naval position.

In the United States there was a large and vehement anti-British lobby that at various times in the twenties proved very important, at least negatively: it could forestall Anglo-American cooperation and agreement. There were many officers within the U.S. Navy of such persuasion, but equally there were many who had been party to wartime cooperation and who were well aware of the pre-war period of collaboration and support between the British and American navies in China and the western and southwest Pacific. There was also those in the U.S. Navy who saw internationalism in racist terms: the United States and Britain, being primarily Anglo-Saxon states and peoples, should not find themselves on opposite sides of the fence. But if this pointed in the direction of détente if not entente between these nations and peoples, then there was the obvious problem. Britain remained allied to one country, Japan, that clearly did not meet requirements, and Japan presented one very specific difficulty for the United States: Japan’s acquisition of German possessions in the Pacific north of the Equator placed it astride American lines of communication between the West Coast and the Philippines, or expressed another way, across the U.S. Navy’s line of advance from Hawaii to the western Pacific.

But the crucial development in terms of naval matters lay in the public repudiation in the November 1918 election of President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) and internationalism and then the refusal of a Republican-controlled Congress to ratify the treaty of Versailles and with it U.S. membership of the League of Nations. The basic point was that a second to none navy and an unprecedented U.S. overseas commitment went hand in hand, and once the American public turned its collective back on internationalism, the second to none navy was left, metaphorically, if not on the rocks then certainly aground. The November 1920 election resulted in major Republican victories, with Senator Warren Harding (1865–1923) elected with a record 60.32 percent of the poll: if the victory itself was predictable, its margin was not.⁵ The election was very deliberately fought, on both sides, over the Wilsonian legacy; with the return to normalcy and an overwhelming electoral repudiation of Wilson, the Democrats, and internationalism, the navy second to none was very literally dead in the water.

But December 1920 saw the British government adopt a one-power standard, and in that development lay the basis of future limitation. Adopted by the Imperial Conference of June 1921, where Canada advised Britain to end the Japanese alliance and Australia advised Britain to renew it, the espousal of the one-power standard went alongside public indication that the British government intended to call a conference on Pacific and Far Eastern affairs (7 July). At the same time, within the Harding administration a proposal for a naval limitation conference involving Britain, France, Italy, and Japan was under consideration, and with the British government’s announcement the two parts came together with the American proposal for a conference that would embrace both subjects, naval limitation and the affairs of east Asia and the Pacific (11 July).

The Washington conference, attended by nine countries,⁶ opened on 12 November 1921 and resulted in the conclusion of seven treaties, of which four were specifically relevant to naval matters, namely, the four-power treaty of 13 December 1921, the nine-power and Sino-Japanese treaties of 4 February 1922, and the naval limitation treaty of 6 February. These treaties were accompanied by the ending of the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

The four-power treaty was an agreement between Britain, France, Japan, and the United States to respect one another’s possessions and rights in the Far East and to consult with one another in the event of crisis. As their common date suggests, the nine-power and Sino-Japanese treaties were linked. Under the terms of the first the territorial integrity of China was acknowledged by all parties, certain rights that had been exacted over the years were restored, the promise of restoration to China of various financial provisions that were the prerogative of certain powers was given, and the Open Door policy, so beloved by the United States not least because as the world’s greatest industrial power it stood to benefit most, was confirmed. The Sino-Japanese treaty made provision for the Japanese surrender of various rights that it had exacted in Shantung province, that is, captured German concessions that should have been returned to China with the end of the First World War.

The naval limitation treaty limited the size of the battle forces of five major navies by aggregate tonnage and size of individual units. With capital ships limited to a maximum displacement of 35,000 tons and not allowed to carry a main armament larger than the 16-in. gun, Britain was afforded 580,450 tons of capital ships, the United States 500,650 tons, Japan 301,320 tons, France 221,170 tons, and Italy 182,800 tons. There was to be no new construction for ten years, and the replacement of capital ships within twenty years of completion was prohibited, but reconstruction in order to provide for increased defense against air and submarine attack was permitted within the limit of maximum increased dimension of 3,000 tons. With certain provisions to take account of various special circumstances, such as British retention of the Hood and the right to build two battleships to balance Japan’s right to retain the Mutsu, the various scrapping arrangements provided for Britain and the United States ultimately retaining 500,000 tons of capital ships, Japan 300,000 tons, and France and Italy 175,000 tons. Similar arrangements were crafted with reference to aircraft carriers, which were allocated on the basis of 135,000 tons for Britain and the United States, 81,000 tons for Japan, and 60,000 tons for France and Italy, the maximum size of a carrier being 27,000 tons with provision for all powers being allowed to build two of 33,000 tons subject to aggregate totals remaining within overall quota allowances. Because aircraft carriers, on account of their newness, were deemed experimental warships, they could be replaced at any time, again subject to aggregate totals remaining within overall quota allowances. There were, however, no provisions limiting the aggregate tonnage totals, numbers, and displacement of cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. There was agreement between the Americans and British on a 10,000-ton displacement and 8-in. gun main armament for cruisers, but not on the crucial question of replacements: the American position was that cruisers should be afforded a seventeen-year life expectancy, but the British, after a hard-working war, needed to replace units on a shorter time scale. Likewise, there was general agreement that destroyers should not exceed 1,500-ton displacement, with destroyer leaders afforded an additional 500 tons, but there was no other agreement about overall numbers and aggregate tonnage, and no agreement about submarines, in terms of their being either banned or limited by size and numbers. These matters, however, were to be left to future conferences; at the Geneva conference in 1927 the cruisers issue again, for a number of reasons, would defy resolution.

The overall result of the Washington limitation arrangement can be summarized very briefly: Britain scrapped and the others did not build. That is not wholly accurate, but the general sense is correct, and the advantage conferred to Britain under these arrangements can be gauged by the fact that Britain scrapped seventeen capital ships and canceled contracts on four 48,000-ton battlecruisers, whereas the United States scrapped four dreadnoughts and cancelled contracts on eleven capital ships with another two units—the intended battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga—converted to aircraft carriers. Inevitably the fact that Britain was obliged to scrap so many capital ships was cause for denunciation on the part of many of its naval officers and the naval lobby, but the fact was that at war’s end the British, having lost five capital ships during the war, had forty dreadnoughts and battlecruisers,⁷ plus one more battleship under construction. Of these, ten dreadnoughts and two battlecruisers were laid down before or in 1909 and were armed with 12-in. guns, and all had ceased to be with front-line formations by the time of the Washington conference; indeed, two, the Dreadnought and Bellerophon, had been sold and scrapped, and another three, the Téméraire, Neptune, and Hercules, had been stricken even before the opening of the Washington conference. The remaining five battleships (the Superb, Collingwood, St. Vincent, Colossus, and Agincourt) and two battlecruisers (the Indomitable and Inflexible) had been reduced to training or other secondary-tertiary duties; with the exception of the Colossus, which remained in service until 1923 as a training ship, all were stricken and sold in 1922.⁸ In real terms the scrapping of these ships represented no real loss, and much the same can be said about the 13.5-in. gunned battleships and battlecruisers, which had been laid down between 1909 and 1911, that were either stricken, sold and scrapped, or paid off and passed into the reserve pending disposal prior to the London conference of 21 January–22 April 1930. Five dreadnoughts—the Conqueror, Orion, and Thunderer and the Ajax and King George V—and the battlecruisers Lion and Princess Royal had disappeared from the lists by December 1926, while the battleship Monarch had been sunk as a target ship in January 1925: the Centurion remained in service as a target ship and after a somewhat checkered career was expended as a breakwater off the Normandy beachhead in June 1944. The remaining 13.5-in. gunned battleships, the four members of the Iron Duke class, served with the Atlantic Fleet until 1929 and the battlecruiser Tiger served until 1931, when they were paid off; the Iron Duke alone remained in service first as a training ship and then as a depot ship. The passing of these units from the scene had been foreshadowed under the terms of the Washington treaty and on account of their advancing years, but the scrapping was ordered under the terms of the subsequent London treaty.⁹ Kato commented that the Washington treaty was the gift of the gods in terms of Japan being extricated from the self-imposed impossibilities presented by the Eight-Eight program,¹⁰ but the comment applied, mutatis mutandis, equally to Britain. Scrapping the capital ships was the price exacted for avoiding a naval race with the United States that Britain could only lose, and the British warships that were scrapped simply did not begin to compare with the 34,500-ton Washington, six 43,900-ton South Dakota-class battleships, and four 44,200-ton Lexington-class battlecruisers that were abandoned on the slips. But, of course, Kato’s comment could also be applied to the United States.

The Washington naval limitation treaty was not comprehensive, but as the first of its kind it represented a remarkable achievement in terms of leading powers deliberately and voluntarily accepting measures of moderation and control as the means of avoiding future confrontation and conflict. Of course, the treaty and the others concluded at Washington at this time were necessarily flawed in one obvious and vital respect. There was no means of compulsory consultation and arbitration about the position of the powers, individually and collectively, relative to China, and there was no means whereby Japan was tied into some form of economic system that made for long-term cooperation with the other powers, and specifically the United States. In effect, Japan was left to fend for itself without recourse to the wider international community, and if this presented no real problem at this time, within ten years the situation would change massively, and to the detriment of peace and restraint. But such measures and such cooperation were not how things were done at that time.

Washington could not settle everything, and arrangements for cruisers, destroyers, and submarines were left for future deliberation, but it made two provisions not noted thus far. In terms of preparing naval bases, Britain, Japan, and the United States undertook measures of restraint: the British undertook not to fortify any base north of Singapore, the Americans west of Pearl Harbor and Dutch Harbor, and the Japanese outside the home islands, that is, in the mandated islands that had come their way via the League of Nations. Japan was thus left in the position of marked potential advantage in the western Pacific that had aroused American concerns before the conference, and this position became very real in the inter-war period, specifically regarding developments affecting the range and operational capacity of submarines and shore-based aircraft. The arrangement even at this time left Japan as the power in the western Pacific, but the Sino-Japanese treaty did something more. The treaty with China provided Japan with the basis for forging a new arrangement with that country. Japan retained many rights and concessions inside China, most obviously in southern Manchuria, but the treaty of February 1922 nonetheless represented something different. There was a basic equality between China and Japan in its spirit, and there was a return to China of what was properly China’s; if Japan was obliged to be the first country to make such an arrangement, then it was genuinely the case of its being the first, not the only, country to make such concessions. There was, for the first time since 1894, a basis for China and Japan to go forward together in certain areas and on a new footing. In this respect the episode of March 1927, in which Britain and the United States sought to involve Japan in mounting punitive operations against Kuomintang forces at Nanking, was significant: Japan refused to join the other two powers, and was not involved in any military operations against Chinese forces, whether Kuomintang or otherwise, at this time. But things were to change very quickly thereafter.

The final aspect of the 1921 naval arrangements relates to a matter that over the years seems to have been largely forgotten, if indeed it was ever much known in the first place. The naval treaty’s provisions whereby France and Italy, in light of their lack of building in recent years given their military commitments in the First World War, were afforded certain dispensations in terms of new construction is well known: France, for example, was allowed to lay down two battleships in 1927 and 1929 as replacement for the aging Danton-class units and was also allowed to build a third battleship as replacement for the France, which was lost in Quiberon Bay on 26 August 1922. Neither country availed itself of that provision. The main reason for this was that in the straitened circumstances of the twenties both France and Italy, given their vying with one another for primacy in the Mediterranean, hesitated to undertake major capital ship building programs; the focus of their immediate attention—and for that matter that of the other three powers as well—was upon cruisers. But in May 1925 the French government placed before the national assembly a program that would have included two croiseurs de combat with standard displacement of 17,500 tons—deliberately calculated to provide for two that would total 35,000 tons—with a main armament of eight 12-in./305-mm guns in two offset quadruple turrets and a top speed of 35 knots: designed primarily to defend shipping against attack by Washington heavy cruisers, the armor to be afforded these battlecruisers was to be sufficient to counter 8-in. shells¹¹ The bill was lost, but these two ships, never built but clearly the forerunners of the Dunkerque and Strasbourg, do provide a neat juxtaposition to both the 15,900/16,200-ton panzerschiffe Lützow, Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee of 1929–1931, with their six 11-in./280-mm guns and 27 knots, and the 18,200-ton heavy cruisers Admiral Hipper, Blücher, and Prinz Eugen, with their eight 8-in./203-mm main armament and 32 knots.

The subsequent Geneva naval limitation conference, involving just Britain, Japan, and the United States after France and Italy declined to attend, met between 20 June and 4 August 1927, and its course and outcome are sufficiently well known to permit reference to only three matters. First, the origins of this conference lay in the failure of the Washington agreements to complete the process of limitation and the resultant concentration by the powers upon cruisers—tonnage, armament, numbers, and aggregate tonnage—with the result that by 1926–1927 there appeared a very real danger of a naval race, regarding not capital ships and carriers but cruisers, a race that would be politically and financially costly to all involved. Second, the conference failed to come to any agreement on the crucial question of cruisers, and for one reason. The United States was primarily concerned with battle and sought to standardize cruisers in terms of 10,000-ton units armed with 8-in./203-mm guns, and it sought to curb numbers—specifically British numbers—as the means of ensuring itself against major building obligations. The British were primarily concerned with the security of overseas territories and trade defense, and the focus of their attention was the 7,000-ton light cruiser complete with a 6-in./152-mm main armament, and on numbers. The American insistence on aggregate limitation of between 250,000 and 300,000 tons for Britain and the United States ran directly counter to the British calculation that what was needed to ensure imperial security was twenty-five cruisers for the fleet (i.e., 10,000-ton heavy cruisers) and forty-five for trade defense (i.e., 7,000-ton light cruisers). There was no basis of agreement between the two positions: the Americans from the outset made clear a point-blank refusal even to consider a 400,000-ton limitation, whereas the initial British position embraced 562,000 tons more or less as the sine qua non. There were British proposals to expressly limit the numbers of heavy cruisers that could be acquired, but with the Americans’ display of reluctance even to consider the light cruiser per se, and specifically a 6,000-ton light cruiser, even Japanese attempts to fashion some form of compromise proved unavailing, and the conference ended with no agreement. Indeed, there never was any basis of agreement: the British sought to ensure that all three powers spread their attention across both heavy and light cruisers, whereas the Americans were simply not interested in anything but heavy cruisers, and the Americans again were simply not interested in a diversity that would confirm Britain in its existing position of a massive advantage of numbers that would entail major U.S. construction programs merely to register parity. The whole process of negotiation was, naturally, somewhat acerbic.

Third, one of the lesser known aspects of the Geneva impasse was the fact that over the next two years