Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design of the Fleet that Defeated the Japanese Navy

The author examines the influence of the General Board of the U.S. Navy as an agent of innovation in the years between the world wars. A formal body established by the secretary of the Navy, the General Board served as the organizational nexus for the interaction between fleet design and the naval limitations imposed on the Navy by treaty. Particularly important, Kuehn argues, was the Board's role in implementing the Washington Naval Treaty, which limited naval armaments after 1922. Kuehn explains that the leadership of the Navy at large and the General Board in particular felt themselves especially constrained by Article XIX of the Washington Naval Treaty, which implemented a status quo on naval fortifications in the western Pacific.