FREE WARSHIPS AFTER WASHINGTON: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIVE MAJOR FLEETS 1922-1930 PDF John Jordon | 288 pages | 17 Nov 2011 | Pen & Sword Books Ltd | 9781848321175 | English | Barnsley, United Kingdom Washington Naval Conference - Wikipedia Warships After Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets tells the story of the impact of the Washington Naval Treaty of on warship construction as the victorious nations tried to modernize their navies while facing financial strain, national exhaustion, strategic necessity and strategic ambition. Jordan is a teacher of European languages who began writing in the s about the Soviet navy. He is the author and co-author of many works on naval warfare including French Cruisers, and French Battleships,among others. Presently, he edits the annual publication, Warship. A technical subject requires careful and consistent treatment. Jordan Warships After Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets 1922-1930 succeeds, but, though the writing is generally uncomplicated, this is not a book for the nautical novice. For example, the benefits of superheated steam and the problem of dispersion in rounds fired from triple-mount turrets appear without annotation 16,so some familiarity with the subject will be helpful. Warships After Washington will likely be best appreciated by naval enthusiasts. For the knowledgeable reader this work will be a helpful reference to the evolution of naval technology during the heyday of disarmament diplomacy. Jordan draws together summaries of the basic characteristics of the warship classes most affected by the Washington Treaty. Otherwise, the necessarily multilingual reader would be forced to scout widely in the literature for the same information. The first four chapters of Warships After Washington provide the background to the later discussion of s naval developments. The first chapter sketches a history of the naval status of each of the victorious powers, in most cases from the s to The second chapter examines a few important postwar developments relative to established warship classes, and the third lays out the conference program. A short fourth chapter assesses the winners and losers. The discussion of the disarmament conference itself is cursory, and a serious study should begin elsewhere e. However, the latter have often been dismissive of the constraints of the treaty, and have generally had a narrow focus on a particular navy. Trying to describe all the major warships built by five nations during the s in a single volume is a challenge. Jordan generally limits his descriptions to the major weapons carried, general engineering layouts, and armor installations with the level of detail restricted to bore size and caliber of weapons and similar details. He does not discuss emerging technologies such as communications, antisubmarine sensors, or the composition of air wings. As Jordan notes, many studies in this field focus narrowly on a single warship type from a single navy. In contrast, Warships After Washington compares the development warships of the same type, not only within a single navy, but between navies. Comparisons are aided by abundant use of tables, photographs, and some sixty Warships After Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets 1922-1930 drawings that show the general layout of major weapons and engineering spaces for battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, and a similar level of detail for aircraft carriers and submarines. One minor aggravation is the unit conversion table. So, the English and U. French and Italians measurements are given in millimeters and the Japanese in centimeters. Two classes are shown with dimensions in feet followed, parenthetically, by their metric equivalents. The other two classes in the table have dimensions given in millimeters without the parenthetical annotation. Displacement is given in tons tW in all cases without indicating whether these are English or metric tons. Appendices contain the texts of the Washington Treaty and the London Treaty. Jordan has carefully mined the secondary literature, and a bibliography is also included. Probably the least developed part of the book is the index. This is little more than a list of warship names sorted by type. No effort is made to sort by nation or characteristics or by other key words. Jordan has performed a very helpful service in compiling Warships After Washington. It will be a useful reference and an accessible entry point to anyone interested in warship development during the s. Larry A. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, Warships After Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets 1922- 1930, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Reviewed by Larry A. Grant Warships After Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets tells the story of the impact of the Washington Naval Treaty of on warship construction as the victorious nations tried to modernize their navies while facing financial strain, national exhaustion, strategic necessity and strategic ambition. Leave Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Washington Naval Treaty - Wikipedia The Washington Naval Treatyalso known as the Five-Power Treatywas a treaty signed during among the major nations that had won World War Iwhich agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It limited the construction of battleshipsbattlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisersdestroyers and submarineswere not limited by the treaty, but those ships were limited to 10, tons displacement each. The treaty was concluded on February 6, Ratifications of that treaty were exchanged in Washington on August 17,and it was registered in the League of Nations Treaty Series on April 16, Later naval arms limitation conferences sought additional limitations of Warships After Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets 1922-1930 building. By the mids, Japan and Italy renounced the treaties, while Germany renounced the Treaty of Versailles which had limited its navy. Naval arms limitation became increasingly difficult for the other signatories. Immediately after World War I, Britain still had the world's largest and most powerful navy, followed by the United States and more distantly by Japan, France and Italy. The allies had differing opinions concerning the final disposition of the German fleet, with the French and Italians wanting the German fleet divided between the victorious powers and the Americans and British wanting the ships destroyed. These negotiations became mostly moot when the German crews scuttled most of their ships. News of the scuttling angered the French and Italians, with the French particularly unimpressed with British explanations that their fleet guarding the Germans had been away on exercises at the time. Nevertheless, the British joined their allies in condemning the German actions and no credible evidence emerged to suggest that the British had collaborated actively with the Germans with respect to the scuttling. The Treaty of Versaillessigned soon after the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet, imposed strict limits on the size and number of warships that the newly-installed German government was allowed to build and maintain. The US, UK, France, Italy, and Japan had been allied for World War I; but with the German threat seemingly finished, a naval arms race between the erstwhile allies seemed likely for the next few years. In response, the Japanese parliament finally authorized construction of warships to enable the Japanese Navy to attain its goal of an "eight-eight" fleet programmewith eight modern battleships and eight battlecruisers. The Japanese started work on four battleships and four battlecruisers, all much larger and more powerful than those of the classes preceding. The British Naval Estimates planned four battleships and four battlecruisers, with another four battleships to follow the subsequent year. The new arms race was unwelcome to the U. The United States Congress disapproved of Wilson's naval expansion plan, and during the presidential election campaign, politics resumed the non-interventionalism of the prewar era, with little enthusiasm for continued naval expansion. During lateWashington became aware that Britain was planning a conference to discuss the strategic situation Warships After Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets 1922-1930 the Pacific and Far East regions. To forestall the conference and satisfy domestic demands for a global disarmament conference, the Harding administration called the Washington Naval Conference during November Hughes provided a dramatic beginning for the conference by stating with resolve: "The way to disarm is to disarm". He subsequently proposed the following:. The proposals for capital ships were largely accepted by the UK delegation, but they were controversial with the British public. It would no longer be possible for Britain to have adequate fleets in the North Seathe Mediterraneanand the Far East simultaneously. That provoked outrage from parts of the Royal Navy. Nevertheless, there was huge demand for the UK to agree. The risk of war with the United Warships After Washington: The Development of the Five Major Fleets 1922-1930 was increasingly regarded as merely theoretical, as there were very few policy differences between the two Anglophone powers. Naval spending was also unpopular in both the UK and its dominions. Furthermore, Britain