Battleship number 52 was to be called NORTH CAROLINA, but she
was never completed.
Between 1919 and
1925, the United States Congress approved the construction of
six battleships, one of which would be christened NORTH CAROLINA.
She and her five sister ships, IOWA, INDIANA, SOUTH DAKOTA,
MASSACHUSETTS, and MONTANA were monster ships. They would have
been the most heavily armed capital ship in the world at that
time.
While the construction
of new ships was exciting, most people did not want a repeat
of the arms race that contributed to the tensions leading to
World War I. Therefore, President Warren G. Harding invited
Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and China to attend an international
conference on the limitation of naval armaments. The group convened
in Washington in November 1919 and the meeting became known
as the famous Washington Conference producing the Five Power
Treaty (included all attendees except China). The signing nations
agreed to reduce the size of their navy and to cease building
warships beyond an allotted number. In fact, there was a ten-year
"holiday" declared on building battleships.
The keel for NORTH
CAROLINA had been laid in Norfolk in 1919, but the signed treaty
spelled her doom. She was sold for scrap in 1923 along with
her five sister ships and WASHINGTON.
