What if the Washington Naval Treaty was abandoned sooner?

Background: After WWI, in order to prevent a naval arms race Great Britain, the United States, Japan, France and Italy entered into an agreement to limit new naval shipbuilding. It limited total tonnage per power, the size of naval guns, a tonnage limit on individual ship classes, etc. This was to include most ships then under construction. This treaty, the Washington Naval Treaty was signed on 6 Feb 1922. Two follow on treaties were negotiated, the London Naval Treaty of 1930 and the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. Japan declared that it would no longer abide by the terms and did not sign onto the 1936 treaty. Japan's withdrawl led to the invocation of escalator clauses and design work began on ships not restricted by the treaty.
The US and Great Britain had bickered prior to the adoption of the First London Naval Treaty during negotiations at the Geneva Naval Conference in 1927. Apparently this led to some bad feeling between these two powers.

What if the United States and/or Japan had decided not to ratify the London treaty of 1930? Given the perceived threats and the economic situations of the different powers, with an extra 6 to 8 years to build, and freed from treaty restrictions, how would it have effected ship designs, numbers and the overall balance of naval power when war broke out? Germany was limited by the treaty of Versailles, would a renewed naval arms race cause her to be more aggressive in her naval building program? If so, would her ignoring the restrictions have led to an earlier confrontation with the allied powers?

An example: The North Carolina was the first US battleship laid down in 20 years. She was laid down in October 1937. Because of the restrictions of the treaty she was limited to a displacement of 35,000 tons and was designed to mount 14" guns and her protection was scaled for the same gun size. Through shrewd planning and design she was able to mount 16" guns once the escalator clause was invoked, but she was still a compromise. Freed from restrictions would the US have built the fast battleships or have built along the lines of the Montanas. Would having ships with this greatly differing capability have led to a different overall naval strategy?
It is doubtful that the Nelson and Richelieu would have been built because their designs were heavily influenced by treaty limitations. The Wasp most certainly would not have been built because she was built to take advantage of remaining carrier tonnage freed up when Langley was converted to a seaplane tender. Several nations took advantage of a the classification of CA and CL. CA's had a maximum gun size of 8" and CL's 6.1. each. The three main powers took advantage of this, to augment their heavy cruiser tonnage, by building light cruisers with the displacement of a heavy cruiser but with a large number of the lighter guns so that effective broadside weight was similar to the heavy cruisers. Would the Town, Mogami and Brooklyn classes have even been built if the treaty had lapsed?
Finally, a number of sources state that the 5:5:3 ratio for Britain, the US and Japan in naval displacement, was a major sore point with the Japanese. They felt the two western powers were treating them unfairly and as a second rate power. How would removing this point of contention have effected US/Japanese relations in the long term? I'm not really convinced that it would have made much if any difference. However, a Japanese Navy of comparable size and strength to the US Navy may have influenced the two sides political positions.

 

This is touched on to some extent in Shattered Sword. The realists in the IJN realized they couldn't win and indeed would fall way behind the US in case of a naval arms race. The British did have a nice gun that they were planning on mounting on their next generation of curisers I think it was 9.2". In this case the US and Japan may have replied with even bigger gunned cruisers such as the Alaska. I think there's a good chance the Brooklyn and/or Cleveland class or something like them would have been built as well. Certainly the KGV's would have looked a lot different. The Germans also had a very nice 16.5" gun but I'm not sure when it was developed or when a ship mounting it could have been built.

I think this has been discussed to some extent over on: - Naval History Forums
you might want to look over there and consider starting a thread if you don't find one that's a close match.

 

Small point, the Nelson class were built prior to the London Conference. At the time of Washington, all three navies which were building capital ships had gone beyond 40,000 tons for both battleships and battle cruisers, so presumably they would pick up there. The British had the most innovative designs; US and Japanese ships were mainly bigger and better versions of the preceding classes. Japan was probably the most eager to start building again; they were designing replacements for the Kongo and Fuso classes around 1930, and their other programs had shown a desire to get as much combat power as they could under the treaty restrictions (not always under.....). They were also more able than the democracies to direct resources to naval programs. All the powers were affected by the ongoing depression, though the US for one used warship construction as part of our recovery program. The bottom line of the Washington Conference had been that we could outbuild everyone else if we committed to. Half of the IJN's 8-8 Program was never started, while all sixteen of our corresponding ships were under construction. We also had a strong navalist president in FDR.

The British ironically may have been the least enthusiastic about a new naval race, but they would probably reluctantly accept the necessity. France and Italy were more willing, primarily with regard to each other. Germany was so far behind that the absence of treaty limits between the big powers would have little immediate impact; her progress was determined more by Hitler's willingness to discard the Versailles limitations. When she did start building capital ships, their size would probably correspond with other European types. Even while paying lip service to the 35,000-ton limit, most European ships were over 40,000; and they produced some well-balanced designs like Richelieu. They were willing to build the size they needed to get the capabilities they wanted.

Speed was a major factor in design and cost about 2000 tons per knot; but there are relatively few situations in which capital ship speed is critical. The USN preferred combat power over speed, correctly IMO, and I expect we would have done essentially what we did, a 28-knot battle line and a few faster ships to counter foreign types like the Kongos or work with aircraft carriers (in the 1930s carriers were envisoned as supporting battleships rather than the other way round).

Cruisers are an intriguing topic. Both the 8" gun cruiser and the large 6" type were products of the treaty regime; ironically each new "limit" became the new standard. Otherwise navies had little interest in either type. Neither evolved naturally; in the dreadnought era there was nothing between the ~5000-ton light cruiser and the battle cruiser, which as we've seen grew beyond 40,000 tons by the 1920s. The only exception was the British Hawkins class, 9000 tons, 7.5" guns, built in response to a rumored but nonexistent German design* and not repeated; the RN reverted to a conventional 6" type for its next cruiser class. To the extent that they were responsible for the 10,000-ton 8" gun treaty limits, the otherwise unremarkable Hawkinses were one of history's most influential designs.

Most cruiser missions could be accomplished by ships of around 7000 tons with 6" guns. Such ships could outgun two things that cruisers needed to be able to deal with, destroyers and any form of armed merchant ship. The high rate of fire of 6" guns proved useful in night surface actions and shore bombardment. The only real reason for larger cruisers was - that other navies had larger cruisers.

Stranger still, it turned out one couldn't really build an effective 8" cruiser on 10,000 tons. Most of the "treaty cruisers" were deficient, especially in protection. Nonetheless, if the treaty system lapsed in 1930, there would be a numbers in service or under construction in the major navies. Further construction would likely be curtailed, and existing ships might come to be considered white elephants.

Although there was little rational need for anything in between the 6" gun light cruiser and the battle cruiser, someone would probably try to exploit the gap, especially in view of the existence of even a few 8" gun ships. One option would be a well-balanced 8" cruiser, which needed to be around 14,000 tons. More likely in my view would be something like the Alaska, which has been described both as a "cruiser killer" and a heavy cruiser unfettered by treaty limits.

The main ship type that was evolving in the 1930s was the aircraft carrier. There were various ideas about the ideal size and configuration, including such oddities as cruiser-carrier hybrids. In the absence of treaty limitations, there would be more scope for experimentation - who knows what we might have seen?

* it may seem a bit odd, but the RN, considered the world's leading navy, often built ships in response to specific foreign types.