A treaty normally measures new construction against the major ships that signatories are allowed to retain. Surviving G3s could therefore have pushed the capital-ship ceiling toward 48,000 tons. Legal ships would become larger, while a navy willing to understate displacement would gain an even wider margin for cheating. In this counterfactual, one retained class reshapes the scale and cost of the entire interwar battleship competition.
Notable Point · 1:49:28-1:50:05
Surviving G3s could have raised the treaty battleship ceiling
Keeping 48,000-ton G3s in service might have made their size the legal baseline for interwar capital ships and enlarged every navy's design margin.