The rest of the Japanese force retired shortly afterward. Washington suffered no damage.The London Naval Treaty of 1936 was intended to preserve the battleship size limitation at thirty-five thousand tons and to restrict the size of battleship guns to fourteen inches. With memory of the Anglo-German and the Anglo-American-Japanese naval races fresh in their minds, the architects of the treaty wanted to limit the most obvious source of escalation. The United States designed its first generation of London Treaty battleships to carry twelve fourteen-inch guns in three quadruple turrets, a formidable armament equal to that of the “Big Five,” the last five American battleships built before the treaty.(This first appeared several years ago.)However, the London Naval Treaty had an escape clause. If any one of the original three signatories failed to ratify, the gun limitation rose to sixteen inches. Japan did not sign the treaty (its representatives would have been assassinated if it had), so the fourteen-inch limitation did not apply. The Royal Navy, in a fit of irrational exuberance, had already begun construction of the fourteen-inch weapons for its King George V class, and could not alter their structure. The design of North Carolina and Washington, however, allowed for the substitution of triple sixteen-inch turrets for the quadruple fourteen-inch mounts. Accordingly, the Americans quickly adapted to the heavier guns.
