Simplifying cruiser ratios and fleet composition

The historical London allocations gave Britain, the United States and Japan different proportions of heavy- and light-cruiser tonnage, with heavy-cruiser maximums of fifteen, eighteen and twelve respectively. The replacement rules distinguished ships laid down before 1920, replaceable at sixteen years, from later ships with a twenty-year threshold. The alternative keeps the 10,000-ton individual ceiling, an 8-inch maximum gun and the category division at 6.1 inches. It assigns 200,000 tons in each category to Britain and the United States, 140,000 to Japan and 80,000 each to France and Italy. Those totals permit twenty maximum-sized heavy cruisers for each Anglo-American navy, fourteen for Japan and eight each for France and Italy. A British light-cruiser pool of 200,000 tons could provide about thirty-three 6,000-ton ships, but the preferred example uses twenty-five 8,000-ton developments of the Leander design. With twenty heavy cruisers, those ships provide forty-five of the roughly seventy cruisers Britain needs. Retaining twenty-five older C- and D-class cruisers after they leave the under-age tonnage pool completes the proposed worldwide force.