Cheatimus Maximus Washington Naval Treaty: What happens if all the powers do all the cheats?

The counterfactual starts with selective treaty evasion and asks what changes when every naval power uses every available loophole.

HMS Tiger, Renown and Repulse, Hood, and the Queen Elizabeth class show why protection and design ancestry matter when classifying battlecruisers.

Excluding fuel and reserve feed water creates one opening, while declared wartime ammunition and manning create others.

A lightly armoured peacetime ship could retain the subdivision and weight capacity needed for a much heavier wartime belt.

The carrier rules invite disputes over peacetime weapons, removable armour, aircraft stores, and the personnel supporting the air group.

Without a treaty court, reciprocal knowledge of undeclared weight made public enforcement politically dangerous for every signatory.

A nominal minelayer or auxiliary could be laid out so that a dockyard could turn it into an aircraft carrier soon after mobilization.

Longitudinal wires and crews grabbing strengthened wings illustrate how limited early carrier recovery equipment could be.

A creatively measured Hermes-sized carrier could fall below the threshold and escape the cumulative carrier-tonnage allowance.

The historical baseline was selective evasion: Britain, the United States, Italy, France, and Japan each concentrated on different ship types or measurements.

A cruiser could carry 8-inch guns in peace while using barbettes and magazines prepared for replacement 9.2-inch turrets.

Training use and slow scrapping could preserve old hulls even after a treaty designated them for disposal.

Common turret spaces, shore-held anti-aircraft guns, and transferred scouting aircraft could support a heavier wartime cruiser.

A thick liner could make a 16.5-inch barrel fire a treaty-compliant 16-inch shell while preserving a later conversion option.

Reserved machinery space is easier to exploit when turbo-electric propulsion separates turbines from the propeller shafts.

The navies accepted treaty restraint and a ten-year planning rule while declining preparations that only made sense if they believed peace would last.

Two declared 33,000-ton G3 conversions and three roughly 23,000-ton ships could form a five-carrier striking force.

Declaring every large carrier at 27,000 tons would fit five ships within 135,000 tons, with small carriers providing additional flight decks.

Diplomatic language can preserve peace by leaving governments room to overlook dual-use machinery, weapons, and performance.

A practical small carrier would support four to six cruisers with fighters and multipurpose scouts rather than imitate an overloaded fleet carrier.

HMS Argus, First World War merchant conversions, and later Royal Navy studies place the escort-carrier idea well before its wartime mass use.

Once small carriers enter service, counting their combined tonnage in a successor treaty becomes harder for their owners to accept.

The economic argument distinguishes Britain's immediate postwar debt burden from the cumulative shocks and investment cuts that followed.

Repeated cruiser-carrier construction would provide experimental flight decks and reduce the need to choose between carrier armour and air-group size.

New hulls offer more freedom to understate ammunition, while reserve feed-water tanks could add protection and adjustable weight.

Stored weapons and armour become useful only when suitable cranes, stores, and docks can support refits where they are needed.

If every signatory feels less constrained, the treaty conference may create a period for wider negotiation even without producing a durable successor agreement.

The American decision to stay outside the League introduces an argument about the influence gained by sustained diplomatic and naval participation.

The British proposal combines 28 knots and 16-inch guns with a longer hull and protection designed to grow in war.

The preference for F3's proportions concerns how a capital ship looks during overseas presence missions.

The proposed sacrifice of Tiger uses claimed war damage and replacement needs to seek a third new capital ship.

Removing Lexington's heavy side-mounted batteries would reduce topweight, ballast, magazines, and crew demands when cruiser construction was still unlimited.

The proposed Japanese response is a faster hull, justified by contemporary trials linking ship speed to aircraft launch performance.

Akagi and Kaga illustrate how a few knots affect aircraft operations, long passages, and attrition before Japan's planned decisive battle.

An arranged accident is proposed as a cynical pretext for replacing an obsolete capital ship.

A Hermes-derived small carrier was considered, but fear that rivals would copy it weighed against the concept.

The objection to another naval race forms part of an interpretation of British postwar spending as dominated by debt repayment.

The estimated British programme adds four or five Hermes-like ships, with the United States following at a comparable scale.

The Ryujo example links excessive air-group ambition to weight growth, then proposes small scout carriers to relieve cruiser aviation duties.

France, Sweden, and possibly the Netherlands could adopt small flight decks, while Italy might imitate them for prestige.

Three hypothetical 28-knot ships with nine 16-inch guns and replaceable armour would alter American comparisons with the British fleet.

Continued 1920s construction could preserve infrastructure and leave more ships available before depression-era governments expand naval orders.

The argument links late-1930s appeasement to perceived British weakness, while treating the accompanying remembered quotation cautiously.

Separate European and Asia-Pacific conflicts could reduce overstretch and allow larger, better-balanced formations to operate.

Rival cheating could offset the apparent advantage of each navy's expansion while leaving it more secure.

Japan's confidence might change its decisions, while a German fleet still governed by Versailles would probably fall farther behind.

The argument treats France's split commitments as a source of dependence on Britain that wider treaty evasion could ease.

Sweden and the Netherlands introduce the possibility that small flight decks could help overcome limited base infrastructure.