ABSTRACT
The US Navy steamed into the interwar period with its course set to rehabilitate the battleship. The leaders of the US Navy may have been headed in the wrong direction, but bureaucratically they proved steadfast and resourceful in their campaign to restore the battleships good name. Tactically, offensive modernization focused on the dreadnoughts' great guns. In addition, the Americans, British, and Japanese agreed to scrap enough old dreadnoughts to leave them with fifteen, fifteen, and nine capital ships respectively. Dreadnought procreation had been curbed again, and at least among the three navies that truly counted, relatively equitable and realistic tonnage ratios had been established in all major warship categories. Despite the farsighted American experiments with carrier task forces undertaken during the late 1920s and early 1930s, the mainstream of the naval world remained preoccupied with dreadnought Armageddon. In April 1938 the Navy Department projected a construction program lasting nine years and leading to the replacement of all the dreadnoughts.
