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washington naval treaties | After world war i, a naval arms race threatened to get out of hand, britain still had the world’s largest navy, closely followed by the united states, and more distantly by japan. france and italy had much smaller but growing navies, while the german fleet had been scuttled at scapa flow and new naval construction was tightly controlled by the treaty of versailles. in november 1921, u.s. president harding convened a international conference on naval arms limitation, commonly known as the washington conference. at its conclusion in february 1922 nine treaties were executed, two of which directly controlled naval armament. the first was a five-power agreement between britain, france, italy, japan, and the united states, that restricted the use of submarines in naval warfare and outlawed asphyxiating gases. a second agreement between the same powers specified that no battleship could exceed 35,000 tons or carry a gun greater than 16-inch (406 mm), while aircraft carriers were limited to 27,000 tons (except that each signatory could have two of up to 33,000 tons each). the treaty also required the united states to scrap 845,000 tons of existing warships, britain 583,000 tons, and japan 480,000 tons, and it set the following limits on each signatory’s total tonnage of major warships: 351 washington rate guns decks complement 1st 100+ 3 850+ 2nd 90–98 3 700–750 3rd 64–80 2 500–650 4th 50–60 2 320–450 5th 32–40 1 200–300 6th 20–28 1 100–140 vessels rated 1 to 3 were ships of the line, while 4 to 6 were frigates. unrated single-decker vessels included sloops of war with 16 to 18 guns and crews of 90 to 130, gun brigs carrying 1 to 18 guns and 30 to 50 men, and cutters with 6 or more small guns and crews of up to 25 men. the terms of the washington treaty were modified by the london naval treaties of 1930 and 1936. italy secretly exceeded the restrictions, and in 1936 japan officially renounced them. finally world war ii made the whole concept of arms control obsolete. washington’s tomb: see mount vernon. |
