The 1928 Naval Building Program

Report Outline
The Development of the American Navy
Washington Conference on Limitation of Armaments
Geneva Naval Limitation Conference
Building Programs of Leading Naval Powers
Special Focus

The five-year naval building program submitted by the administration to Congress for enactment at the present session calls for the construction of 74 new vessel's, including three fleet submarines left over from the 1916 program, at a total estimated cost of $740,000,000. The program is the largest ever proposed to Congress in time of peace. It is exceeded in the number of vessels proposed to be authorized only by the program adopted by Congress in August, 1916, seven months before the United States entered the World War.

The new program calls for five aircraft carriers to cost $19,000,000 each, one to be laid down each year for five years; twenty five 10,000-ton cruisers to cost $17,000,000 each, five to be laid down each year for five years; nine destroyer leaders to cost $5,000,000 each, four to be laid down the first year, four the second year and one the third year; thirty five submarines to cost $5,000,000 each, seven to be laid down each year for five years. Under the building schedule submitted by the Secretary of the Navy for the information of the House Naval Affairs Committee, which he said carried the “full approval of the President”, the first vessels called for in the new program would be laid down during the fiscal year 1929; all would be laid down within five years, and all would be completed within eight years.

President Coolidge, in his address of January 29, 1928, before the Business Organization of the Government, said: