Equitable London Treaties: Submarines & Fortifications (Long Patrol)

The opening frames interwar submarines as defensive sea-denial assets and questions whether controlled ASDIC exercises proved enough for open-ocean convoy warfare.

The Washington Treaty made Pacific fortifications a major bargaining issue, but the later London treaties largely left that settlement unchanged.

Britain repeatedly sought to ban submarines while underinvesting in the numerous specialist sloops that performed well in anti-submarine exercises.

A methodological aside warns against projecting the naval world of the 1960s and 1970s backward onto the interwar treaties or treating one nation's success as proof that every rival was incompetent.

A close reading of the 1930 London treaty explains its 2,000-ton submarine ceiling, gun restrictions, limited exceptions, and equal national tonnage allowance.

The same 52,700-ton allowance produces very different fleet value for Britain, the United States, and Japan because their operating areas and boat designs differ.

British submarine operations in European and Indian Ocean theaters let American boats concentrate in the Pacific, illustrating alliance-wide division of effort.

The T class is presented as a short-range ambush predator and the Gato class as a long-range Pacific hunter, showing why allied designs need not be identical.

Equal submarine tonnage is divided among Japan's one-ocean focus, America's two-ocean obligations, and Britain's three-ocean fleet, undermining simple treaty equality.

The Pacific fortification freeze constrained new bases, defenses, and infrastructure while shaping British, American, and Japanese operational routes differently.

Gato's roughly 1,526-ton displacement reflects trans-Pacific range, while a British minelayer is optimized to hide among island passages and deny them to Japanese forces.

Raising the submarine allowance from 52,700 to 60,000 tons is offered as a modest cushion that could reduce insecurity and permit fleet renewal.

The proposed revision allows disclosed modernization within existing base footprints and limits defenses to weapons capable of stopping cruisers rather than battleships.

The conclusion criticizes the arbitrary fleet total and weak ASW counterforce, then closes by noting how little action capable Dutch submarines received.