The Geneva Naval Conference was a conference held to discuss naval arms limitation, held in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1927. The aim of the conference was to extend the existing limits on naval construction which had been agreed in the Washington Naval Treaty. The Washington Treaty had limited the construction of battleships and aircraft carriers, but had not limited the construction of cruisers, destroyers or submarines.
In February 1927, President Calvin Coolidge issued a call to the Big Five Powers to meet in Geneva to confront the issue of naval rivalries, as a result of discussions about naval arms limitations at League of Nations disarmament meetings. [1] Britain and Japan accepted the invitation, but France and Italy (the other nations which had signed the Washington Treaty) declined. [2]
The Washington Treaty had defined a ratio of 5:5:3:1.75:1.75 in the strength of capital ships (battleships and battlecruisers) between Britain, the United States, Japan, France, and Italy respectively. The USA sought to use the Geneva conference to extend this ratio to smaller craft, allowing both Britain and themselves cruisers with a total displacement of 300,000 tons, with the Japanese allowed 180,000 tons. At the same time, the USA wanted to avoid further restrictions on the sizes of individual ships. [3]
Under the Washington Treaty, each nation was allowed to build cruisers of up to 10,000 tons displacement carrying 8-inch guns. In practice this had also become a minimum figure, with navies competing to design cruisers of exactly 10,000 tons displacement. The US's negotiating position, on which it was unwilling to compromise, was a plan to build 25 heavy cruisers of 10,000 tons displacement (250,000 tons total). [4]
Britain, by contrast, was prepared to accept parity with the US in its cruiser fleet, so long as the Royal Navy was able to maintain the very large cruiser force, if necessary of smaller and cheaper ships, which it felt was necessary to protect the long trade routes and imperial commitments of the British Empire. Britain proposed the reduction of the 10,000-ton and 8-inch limit for newly constructed cruisers. The British estimated they needed 70 cruisers totalling 560,000 tons displacement (i.e. averaging 8,000 tons each), almost twice the total tonnage of the American proposal. [5]
The principal Japanese concern was to avoid a repetition of the 5:5:3 ratio. The Japanese naval staff felt that a fleet 70% the size of that of the US was the minimum required to win a war against the US. Since the 70% ratio had not been achieved with battleships, it was particularly important to retain it for cruisers. [6] However, since the British and American delegations were unable to reach agreement, Japanese objections were not crucial to the failure of the summit.
In the end, the participants at the conference failed to reach a binding agreement regarding the distribution of naval tonnage.
The question of limitations on cruiser tonnage was raised again at the London Naval Conference of 1930, resulting in the London Naval Treaty. The London Conference succeeded where Geneva failed, with the US being permitted a larger number of heavy cruisers than Britain, but Britain being permitted a larger number of light cruisers. Agreement was reached in part because the British and US delegations recognized a greater shared interest [7] and the need to cut government expenditure as a result of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. These events focused minds on the need to reach an agreement. [8]
The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference in Washington, D.C. from November 1921 to February 1922 and signed by the governments of the British Empire, United States, France, Italy, and Japan. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, were not limited by the treaty, but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement each.
The heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203 mm (8 inches) in calibre, whose design parameters were dictated by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. The heavy cruiser is part of a lineage of ship design from 1915 through the early 1950s, although the term "heavy cruiser" only came into formal use in 1930. The heavy cruiser's immediate precursors were the light cruiser designs of the 1900s and 1910s, rather than the armoured cruisers of the years before 1905. When the armoured cruiser was supplanted by the battlecruiser, an intermediate ship type between this and the light cruiser was found to be needed—one larger and more powerful than the light cruisers of a potential enemy but not as large and expensive as the battlecruiser so as to be built in sufficient numbers to protect merchant ships and serve in a number of combat theatres.
The armored cruiser was a type of warship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was designed like other types of cruisers to operate as a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a battleship and fast enough to outrun any battleship it encountered.
The London Naval Treaty, officially the Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament, was an agreement between the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy, and the United States that was signed on 22 April 1930. Seeking to address issues not covered in the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which had created tonnage limits for each nation's surface warships, the new agreement regulated submarine warfare, further controlled cruisers and destroyers, and limited naval shipbuilding.
The Second London Naval Treaty was an international treaty signed as a result of the Second London Naval Disarmament Conference held in London, the United Kingdom. The conference started on 9 December 1935 and the treaty was signed by the participating nations on 25 March 1936.
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender in World War II. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) was formed between 1952 and 1954 after the dissolution of the IJN.
The Washington Naval Conference was a disarmament conference called by the United States and held in Washington, D.C., from November 12, 1921, to February 6, 1922. It was conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations. It was attended by nine nations regarding interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. Germany was not invited to the conference, as restrictions on its navy had already been set in the Versailles Treaty. Soviet Russia was also not invited to the conference. It was the first arms control conference in history, and is still studied by political scientists as a model for a successful disarmament movement.
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) of 18 June 1935 was a naval agreement between the United Kingdom and Germany regulating the size of the Kriegsmarine in relation to the Royal Navy.
The Treaties for the Limitation of Naval Armament were numerous accords in the 1920s signed variously by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Italy and France. The treaties were an outgrowth of the Washington Naval Conference, held by the US in 1921–22.
The Fleet Faction was an informal political faction within the Imperial Japanese Navy active in the 1920s and 1930s. The kantai-ha sought to drastically increase the size of the Imperial Japanese Navy in order to reach force parity with the fleets of the United States Navy and Royal Navy in the Western Pacific Ocean. The group advocated for the kantai kessen, a doctrine specifying a need for larger warships and larger-caliber guns.
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The Kii-class battleship was a planned class of four fast battleships to be built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the 1920s. Only two of the ships received names. They were intended to reinforce Japan's "eight-eight fleet" of eight battleships and eight battlecruisers after the United States announced a major naval construction program in 1919. However, after the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, work on the ships was suspended; one pair was cancelled in November 1923 and the other in April 1924.
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The Number 13-class battleship was a planned class of four fast battleships to be built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the 1920s. The ships never received any names, being known only as Numbers 13–16. They were intended to reinforce Japan's "eight-eight fleet" of eight battleships and eight battlecruisers after the United States announced a major naval construction program in 1919. The Number 13 class was designed to be superior to all other existing battleships, planned or building. After the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, they were cancelled in November 1923 before construction could begin.
The Satsuma class was a pair of semi-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the first decade of the 20th century. They were the first battleships to be built in Japan and marked a transitional stage between the pre-dreadnought and true dreadnought designs. They saw no combat during World War I, although Satsuma led a squadron that occupied several German colonies in the Pacific Ocean in 1914. Both ships were disarmed and expended as targets in 1922–1924 in accordance with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.
A treaty battleship was a battleship built in the 1920s or 1930s under the terms of one of a number of international treaties governing warship construction. Many of these ships played an active role in the Second World War, but few survived long after it.
The Eight-Eight Fleet Program was a Japanese naval strategy formulated for the development of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the first quarter of the 20th century, which stipulated that the navy should include eight first-class battleships and eight armoured cruisers or battlecruisers.
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