The closing counterfactual considers a treaty system that treated sufficiently old battleships and battlecruisers as outside the main strength calculation, much as age categories applied to cruisers. A possible cutoff before January 1914 would have placed ships such as the King George V class in an overage category with little formal naval value. Such ships might then have survived in reserve until the Second World War if governments accepted their maintenance and reactivation costs. The question is what missions old capital ships could still perform, since survival alone would not make them useful. The real treaty system instead pursued major cost savings and a substantial reduction in battleship and battlecruiser numbers.
Notable Point · 35:34-37:30
Could an 'overage' category have preserved older capital ships?
A treaty counterfactual asks whether older pre-1914 capital ships might have been retained in reserve under an exempt overage category.