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Simply “No” to your first question, “maybe-depends” to your second.

Before we start its worth bearing in mind that in my opinion the disarmament treaties, their merits and the debates around them are still generally contested in the historiography. Naval historians often draw very different conclusion from historians of international relations for example. Even amongst naval historians I don’t think there really is a clear consensus as to the success and failure of the whole treaty system, and perhaps there never will. I personally believe that even the best historians still tend to show their true colours regarding their own sense of nationalism, naval enthusiasm, and party politics when discussing the treaty system and its legacy. As someone like David Edgerton has put it, military and naval historians tend to want more stuff, better stuff, and its rare to find many in favour of disarmament. This might be a disservice and a caricature, but I think he does have a point. In my opinion the treaty system pulls together all the strands that tend to lend itself to the most emotional analysis. Scrapping ships upsets people, the links to future appeasement gets people in a twist, national pride makes an appearance, strategic hindsight blinds people, the involvement of “socialist” steering of defence policy yanks peoples chains, pacifism in hindsight upsets many. It also attracts a massive amount of enthusiasts whose huge knowledge of technical elements and historical what-iffs can lead them to a place where their judgement is clouded. You only have to flick over to other subreddits to see the nostalgia and enthusiasm for battleships. I think even the best naval historians can be affected by their own enthusiasm for their subject matter. Basically interwar naval disarmament historiography is a minefield. Just be aware..

If there is a caricature of the historical consensus I would simplify it as: Washington was ambitious and broadly successful, however it left a number of naïve ramifications and in many cases dispersed competition to new areas. If the analysis of Washington is just about positive with caveats, London is broadly negative. It was a bad treaty pushed by naïve politicians and fundamentally weakened the Western powers and helped pave the way the problems of militarism and rearmament of the 1930s. And the less said about 2nd London the better apart from it illustrating the futility and naivety of the Western powers. Everyone seems to forget about Geneva, despite the fact its hard to understand a simple narrative from Washington to London without it. For full disclosure I disagree with much of the standard narrative and I am probably doing it a disservice.

I don’t think im going to go through all the ways in which the treaties were breached, A) because there are so many, B I don’t think I know enough to go through them all. But I suspect we can group them into 1) “Creative interpretations” of the rules. 2) Acceptable breaches. 3) Purposeful breaches.

I think its worth considering that all the treaties were heavily debated and negotiated by all participants. All had substantial input from naval advisors in differing degrees. In most cases naval advisors were successful in seeking the best compromise for their navies. No one was universally happy, but everyone could take something away. This is essential to the compliance by participants. All participants, until arguably after London, had something to lose from withdrawal from the system. Clear demonstrable cheating was to be avoided simply because it would collapse the system, that despite all the moaning, no one was risk ending. Its also worth bearing in mind that fidelity to the conditions were part of the negotiations and the ease of interpretation was again part of discussions. For example, at Washington, Admiral Chatfield (he wasn’t an Admiral at the time) constantly argued for limitations based on numbers rather than tonnage allowance simply because compliance was easier to assess. Tonnage allowance would provide more opportunity for shenanigans.

So why did navies break the agreements? Linked to the types of breaches summarised above I think navies purposefully or incidentally broke them because the limitations placed small margins of error on fundamental elements of national naval strategy. And because in some cases achieving what they wanted to achieve within the limitations was often just too hard technically, so they bent them and hoped for the best. When treaty restrictions butted against core components of national naval strategy, the treaties were often bent.

Some of the earliest examples of “creative interpretations” were from the US navy’s plans to alter the elevation of their older battleships main guns. This was a fundamental part of US interwar planning. The way the US wished to fight in the early 20s relied on long range gunnery. The Washington treaty made them continue to use ships they had hoped to eventually replace, these ships had a lesser range than the British equivalents. Therefore the altering of their armaments was deemed essential to national naval strategy. The British protested, in their interpretation the treaty expressly forbid the rearming and re-armouring of old ships. The US politely disagreed ad eventually protests were forgotten.

The carrier conversions were good examples of discrepancies in tonnage allowance being overlooked. Saratoga and Lexington were overweight and for along time were listed as being lighter than they were. Even if it was public knowledge I suspect that everyone would have turned a blind eye due to the circumstances in which the US had accepted to convert their large battlecruisers. No navy wished to cast to many stones at others as they all had their own examples of being overweight.

Purposeful cheating is I think rarer. But Japanese cruiser building is example of limitations being broken when they collide with core elements of strategy. Japan desired ships close to “super cruisers” built in smaller numbers specifically to defeat more numerous British trade protection/raiding cruisers and US fleet cruisers. To do this on 10,000 tons was just too difficult. So they flat out cheated. But they were not the only ones. Italy built ships knowingly over 10k and all navies played fast and loose with the various tonnage limits. Although it is definitely fair to say that Japan and Italy were more systematic and purposeful in their breaches. In part I think this is because “super cruisers” to supplement the battle line were more specifically a part of their assessed naval needs than Britain and the US. Hence countries broke the rules only when it was deemed essential.