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From: dmc@otto.yerkes.uchicago.edu (Dave Cole)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Why the C in CV...
Message-ID: <1991May29.011038.6770@amd.com>
Date: 24 May 91 22:27:34 GMT
References: <1991May24.030148.8661@amd.com>
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From: dmc@otto.yerkes.uchicago.edu (Dave Cole)


>battlecruisers.  Namely, the original Yorktown and Lexington were
>designed to be battlecruisers.  Under that famous treaty signed in
>the 1920's (Washington Treaty? Burlington Treaty?), the signatory
>powers agreed to limit the number of large gun-toting warships in
>their arsenals.  At the time, the Lexington and the Yorktwon were
>partially completed; presumably the plan was to designate them CB or
>CH or something.  Due to the treaty, they could not be completed as
>battlecruisers.  Due to a (glaring in hindsight) loophole in the 
>treaty, they could be built as aircraft carriers and so they were 
>finished as such.

I'd just like to point out that the Saratoga (not Yorktown) and Lexington
would have been battlecruisers (that's BC, not CB, usually, although since
the USN has never had a BC, who knows?) but were converted to aircraft
carriers not under a loophole but specifically as allowed by the treaty.
Japan was allowed to keep Akagi and Amagi (replaced by Kaga when Amagi was
destroyed in an earthquake), the US Saratoga and Lexington, and the UK
Glorious and Furious, I believe.

Dave Cole
dmc@otto.yerkes.uchicago.edu