Q&A · 3:01:18-3:01:38

How French super-dreadnoughts could alter the Washington Treaty

A larger French battle fleet would retire obsolete ships and force treaty negotiations to address French-Italian parity at a higher level.

Question

How would completed French super-dreadnoughts affect the Washington Treaty and France's older battleships?

Short answer

The older semi-dreadnoughts and pre-dreadnoughts would go, while parity with Italy could bring the Francesco Caracciolo class into the treaty settlement.

Notes

Completing France's Lyon, Normandie, and Bretagne programs would make the older surviving French semi-dreadnoughts and pre-dreadnoughts expendable. The treaty settlement would also have to address parity between France and Italy. If Italy retained or completed the Francesco Caracciolo class, both navies would enter negotiations with larger capital-ship forces. The counterfactual shifts attention from individual ships to the bargaining baseline behind interwar limitation.