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During and immediately after the First World War the major naval powers each came up with designs for new battleships that would have been larger, faster, better armed and better armoured than the best of the existing ships. This book looks at the plans developed in the United Kingdom, United States and Japan, and traces what happened to those designs after the Washington Naval Treaty ended new battleship construction.
Some of the wartime designs were actually completed. For the Japanese this was the battleships Nagato and Mutsu, completed as designed, and the aircraft carriers Akagi and Kaga. For the British it was the battle cruiser HMS Hood. For the Americans the three completed ships of the Colorado class had the more powerful guns common to these projects. The battle cruisers Lexington and Saratoga were completed as aircraft carriers.
The book is split into four parts. We start with a narrative history of each countries battleship designs explains how the eventual designs were reached. There is a look at the Washington Naval Treaty, explaining what each side got out of it. Next is a more technical class by class look at these abandoned designs. Finally there is a partly speculative chapter looking at how the few examples that were completed were modified later in their careers and suggesting how the other ships might have been modified if they had been built.
Some of these vessels would have been very impressive. The British N3 class battleships would have been the largest and most heavily armed ever built for the Royal Navy. The cancelled American designs were fairly similar in power to the first designs build in the 1930s. Only in Japan were the cancelled designs totally outclassed by later work, and that only because the next Japanese battleships were the massive Yamato class!
This is an interesting look at a generation of battleships that were never built, in the process ending a possible post First World War 1 arms race that nobody really wanted.
Chapters
World War I Battleship Development
The Washington Naval Treaty
Super-Battleship Construction
The Adaptability of the Super-Battleships
Author: Angus Konstam
Edition: Paperbacl
Pages: 48
Publisher: Osprey
Year: