Forty-eight British and dominion County-class cruisers would create pressure for other navies to build comparable forces. The hypothetical later settlement allows about 500,000 tons each for heavy and light cruisers, approximated as fifty ships in each category for Britain and the United States. Carrying a 5:3 relationship into that scheme would allow Japan around thirty heavy and thirty light cruisers. Building sixty cruisers would occupy slipways and yard capacity that could otherwise produce carriers or battleships. The argument depends on navies choosing to pursue those allowances, so it describes a possible effect of a different procurement settlement.
Notable Point · 1:43:41-1:45:35
How a cruiser race could occupy Japanese shipyards
An expanded British cruiser programme becomes a counterfactual about treaty ceilings and the limited building capacity of rival navies.