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- #461
Shortround6
Major General
I know that the old battleships were allowed 3000 tons. The US argued that since the Lexington and Saratoga were converted battlecruisers they should get the 3000 ton "allowance".
Many (all ?) of the rebuilt pre-treaty BBs that got new machinery saved hundreds of tons in weight, sometimes well in excess of 1000tons
Improving post treaty 10,000 ton cruisers by 3,000 tons does not sound like complying with the treaties.
I don't think anybody changed out the engines and in any case the improvement would have been minor, real but minor.
The US was about 900 tons under on the first two classes. French and Italian cruisers were also light. However both those countries were making cruisers for the Med. Smaller fuel tanks meant smaller hulls and thus lighter. That was part of the problem with designing to "standard" displacement that did not include fuel and a few other things. You still had to design the bigger hull that would hold the fuel and "extra" stuff. And the hull had to stand up to sea conditions and not just battle damage. Some the big British 6in Cruisers had problems with hull cracks right at the end of the Forecastle deck due to the change in stress load.
The US did design some of the later Cruisers to not only standards of empty fuel but they (and others) played games with ammo capacity and even AA guns, with war and peace time loadings (like 80% or lower ammo, you still needed build the larger armored box around the magazines)
The Wichita was designed for eight 5in AA guns. She only mounted 4 until the war situation got closer. This is different from the cruisers that were built in mid 1920s that only had 4 large AA guns, that was the world in the mid 20s, it was not the world standard in the mid/late 30s. The Wichita needed 200 tons of pig iron for ballast to actually balance all the "stuff" that was left off to get her "under" the treaty limit.
The Japanese may have built to the treaty limit in the 20s. By the time the Wichita was being built (com. Feb 1939) the Mogami & Mikuma had gone from nominal (advertised) 8500ton ships to 11,200 ships to correct defects and the other 2 ships were completed to this standard. All four were rebuilt in 1939-40 to get the 8in guns and other changes to AA and would up at 12,400 tons "standard" and 13,668 "trial" which is not full load.
You can't run anybody's ships on trial at "standard" displacement because you don't have enough fuel to run the boilers for the number of hours for speed trial or the trip out and back.
It was the Mogami that prompted a British Naval Engineer to respond to comment about why British designers could not do what the Japanese designers could with " The Japanese are either lying or building their ships out of cardboard."
Granted by the mid to late 1930s the Japanese had pulled out of all the naval treaties and were not bound by them except as polite fiction/disinformation.