Washington Naval Conference - Results

Results

The Washington Naval Treaty led to an effective end to building new battleship fleets and those few ships that were built were limited in size and armament. Numbers of existing capital ships were scrapped. Some ships under construction were turned into aircraft carriers instead.

Even with the Washington Treaty, the major navies remained suspicious of each other, and for a brief while (1927–30) engaged in a race to build cruisers which had been limited to size (10,000 tons) but not numbers. That oversight was resolved on value of cruisers by the London Naval Treaty of 1930, which specified a 10:10:7 ratio for cruisers and destroyers. For the first time submarines were also limited, with Japan given parity with the US and Britain at 53,000 tons each. (Submarines typically displaced 1,000-2,000 tons each.) The U.S. Navy maintained an active building program that replaced obsolescent warships with technically more sophisticated new models in part because its construction yards were important sources of political patronage, and well protected by Congress. During the New Deal, furthermore, relief funds were used to build warships. "The naval program was wholly mine," President Roosevelt boasted.�