On 02Oct2020 1003, Thomas RUX wrote:
> Hi Phil,
>> On 10/01/2020 1:44 PM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via
>> tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> My experience is that a 'common sense' approach to military budgets &
>> spending doesn't work so well.
>> After all, wasn't that attempted with the various Naval Treaties of
>> the 20's & 30's?
>> Didn't really work so well.
> My recollection from my world history college course was that the
> treaties were to ensure that major naval powers stayed the top dogs
> and to keep the smaller and or WW I losers from being able to
> challenge them in another war. Of course not having to build a lot of
> ships also reduced budgets, which unfortunately as you mentioned
> really did not work out.
>
> Tom Rux
Smaller navies were choked by a rule that said major naval powers
weren't allowed to build battleships for other people. It wasn't really
intended to stop minor navies expanding, as they'd never be able to
threaten a major navy without building up their own ship-building
industry anyway. It was mostly about ensuring that a major ship builder
couldn't use this as a way of having a couple of battleships sitting
round almost finished that they could add to their navy in no time flat
if a war started (as the UK did was several dreadnoughts in WWI).

It also meant that everyone was equally inexperienced and ill-equipped
at and for at building big ships, something that shows when you look at
battleship building and design in the late 30s when they start up again.
Lots of new technology (better guns, better powerplants, radar...), but
major choke-points in construction (armour for the Japanese, guns for
the UK), tech that turns out to not be as good as expected (engines for
Germany), SNAFUs in design (the guns and barbettes for the Iowas didn't
match and it was nearly an utter disaster), some things that just didn't
work (large Italian gun shells)...

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>