M3 and N3 under a 50,000-ton treaty limit

Would a treaty allowing 50,000 tons standard displacement and 18-inch guns permit British M3 or N3 battleships?

The panel judges that M3 or N3 could broadly fit those imagined limits, though no detailed displacement calculation is made.

The proposed treaty allows 50,000 tons standard displacement and 18-inch guns after an earlier escalation in battleship size. Those limits are considered broad enough to accommodate M3 or N3 and potentially other large British designs from the same development work. This is a rough judgment about whether the designs could fit the imagined treaty, without a worked displacement calculation. The counterfactual would therefore leave Britain more room to build from its large interwar proposals.