WARSHIPS AFTER LONDON The End of the Treaty Era in the Five Major Fleets, 1930-1936

This is an excellent book on the post – 1930 London Treaty warship designs. It also provides much detail on the political consequences regarding numbers and types of ships that were allowed to the major Contracting Powers: US, Britain, Japan, France, and Italy. This provides excellent comparisons of the cruiser, destroyer, aircraft carrier, and submarine designs developed by the various navies. Each navy staff had its own ideas on what characteristics were needed. There was a wide variety of speeds, armaments, armor thickness arrangements, and so forth even within the permitted numbers and displacements.This book, and John Jordan’s earlier (2001) book Warships After Washington are fascinating insights into the technology, domestic, international circumstances of the Inter War Period that gave us the Navies that fought WW2.