[Modified to take the San Francisco meeting into account.]
April 14th, 1934 - Berlin
In the Kriegsmarine headquarters, Grand Admiral Raeder was holding another staff meeting.
"The Chancellor has assured me that, barring working out the problems with Cleito or replacing it, next year the Kriegsmarine will not need to continue to operate under it's restrictions. The Foreign Minister has told me that while there is the San Francisco conference this fall, his hopes for it reaching a satisfactory conclusion are not high. India has said that it would not be involved in any more naval limitation treaties until more progress was made on de-colonizing Asia. Japan has laid down new battleships after declaring itself clear of the Cleito Treaty. If there IS a new Treaty that comes from the San Francisco meeting, there's no way to predict yet what it will look like as far as we're concerned. So, gentlemen, I think we can fairly safely assume that next year the fleet construction program will not be restricted by Cleito. So what are our plans for a non-Treaty limited future?"
Admiral Lentz replied, "Current plans for that eventuality in 1935 involve two battleships of the L-35 design, two large cruisers very similar to Blucher, and two aircraft carriers. The plans for destroyers of the Maas and Z-214 types, U-boats, R-boats, etc, would not change. There is a problem, though, in that there are insufficient slips in Germany for the new battleships, large cruisers, AND the carriers to all be built at once."
"That has been worked out. Arrangements have been made to make use of some foreign slips."
"Oh? In that case, the plan should work."
"What about the decimetric telegraphy? Is it continuing to show promise?"
"Yes, we're hoping to get a prototype system to sea on Prinz Eugen and a different system on Graf Spee next year. We'll have a better idea of how well they work at sea after they've spent some time on real warships, rather than a training vessel that doesn't exceed 20 knots and comes back to port every night."
"Good. What about the dual-purpose proposals from Krupp and Rheinmetall?"
"We're hoping to get a destroyer test-bed for the Krupp proposal to sea by mid next year. Rheinmetall's proposal is not as advanced, though they claim that with more funding they'd be ready by the end of the year for the smaller one and could have the space claim and the dimensions for the larger proposal by that time if it were fully funded."
"Too risky, especially for the larger one, which is the one we really want. Keep them funded, but aim to have them ready by the end of 1935. If they're ready then, maybe we can get them on a ship."
Admiral Raeder pondered a moment, then asked, "What's the status of Walter's research?"
"The land-based testing has been very promising, if occasionally hazardous but that was something we knew ahead of time. The first vessel is fitting out now for tests."
"Ah, good. We'll see if it works in practice, as well as in a laboratory. Heinkel is going to be testing the prototypes of the He-51Ts within the month, so by the time Otto Lillienthal is finished with her shakedown cruise we should be able to begin flight testing off her deck."
There was another pause, then Raeder asked, "Given that we will be attending the San Francisco talks, what should we hold out for?"
"First, even though we don't really need them right now, we should hold out for a normal allocation of larger U-boats. If tensions rise between NAT and other groups such as AANM or SATSUMA, we may need some longer-ranged boats and it would be much better to have a proven design we're used to to start with.'
"Second, given that we, unlike most countries, have actually been invaded by sea within the last century, we ought to hold out for a larger allocation of tonnage. Granted, we were lucky to get the allocation at Copenhavn that we got, but this time we won't be there as a petitioner or an observer but as a full participant. If the 'rungs' are the same as for Cleito, try for the same allocation as Nordmark."
"Third, look to see if some flexibility can be put into the Treaty. Currently Cleito has little flexibility, the hull numbers for the capital ship bracket encourage the building of large ships, and there's little ability to transfer tonnage between categories. Some of the discussions at Cowes went a way towards allowing flexibility, and that seems like a wise choise."
Admiral Raeder nodded. "I'll keep those in mind."