South American dreadnought race

The gun trials of the Brazilian dreadnought Minas Geraes; when this photo was taken, all guns capable of training to the port side were fired, forming what was at that time the heaviest broadside ever fired.

A South American dreadnought race between the countries of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile was kindled in 1907 when the Brazilian government announced their intention to purchase three dreadnought battleships from the British company Armstrong Whitworth. Previous Argentine–Chilean naval arms races, combined with a Brazilian coup d'état and subsequent civil war, left the Brazilian Navy well behind the other two major South American navies in terms of quality and total tonnage. Brazilian politicians moved to address this deficiency in 1904, as part of an overarching goal of becoming an international power. Three small battleships were ordered in 1906, but after the appearance of Britain's revolutionary HMS Dreadnought in 1906, the Brazilian government canceled all three in favor of the new "dreadnought" type. Two ships of the Minas Geraes class were laid down immediately with a third to follow.

The Argentine and Chilean governments immediately canceled a naval-limiting pact between them, and both ordered two dreadnoughts (the Rivadavia and Almirante Latorre classes, respectively), with Argentina's contract going to the American Fore River Shipbuilding Company and Chile's going to Armstrong. Meanwhile, Brazil's third dreadnought was canceled in favor of an even larger ship, but the ship was laid down and ripped up several times after repeated major alterations to the design. When the Brazilian government finally settled on a design, they realized it would be outclassed by the Chilean dreadnoughts' larger armament, so they sold the ship to the Ottoman Empire and attempted to acquire a more powerful ship.

By this time, however, the First World War had broken out in Europe, and many shipbuilders suspended work on dreadnoughts for foreign countries. Argentina's two dreadnoughts were delivered, as the United States was neutral in the opening years of the war, but Chile's two dreadnoughts were purchased by the United Kingdom. In the interwar years, many naval expansion plans, some involving dreadnought purchases, were proposed. While most never came to fruition, in April 1920 the Chilean government reacquired one of the dreadnoughts taken over by the United Kingdom. No other dreadnoughts were purchased by a South American nation, and all were sold for scrap in the 1950s.

Background

Argentine–Chilean boundary dispute

See also: Beagle conflict

Conflicting Argentine and Chilean claims to the region of Patagonia in southernmost South America went back to the 1840s. In 1872 and again in 1878, Chilean warships seized merchant ships which had been licensed to operate in the disputed area by Argentina. An Argentine warship did the same to an American ship in 1877. These actions nearly led to war in November 1878, when Argentina dispatched a squadron of warships to the Santa Cruz River. Chile responded with the same, and war was only avoided by a hastily signed treaty. Both countries were distracted in the next few years by Argentina's internal military operations against the indigenous population and Chile's War of the Pacific (Guerra del Pacífico) against Bolivia and Peru, but by 1890 a full-fledged naval arms race was underway between the two.

Libertad (pictured) was laid down in 1890 as part of the developing naval arms race between Argentina and Chile.

Both sides began ordering warships from the United Kingdom. Chile added £3,129,500 in 1887 to the budget for its fleet, which was centered around two 1870s central battery ironclads, Almirante Cochrane and Blanco Encalada, and a protected cruiser. The battleship Capitán Prat, two protected cruisers, and two torpedo boats were ordered, and their keels were laid in 1890. Argentina responded soon after with an order for two battleships, Independencia and Libertad. The race continued through the 1890s, even after Chile's civil war in 1891. The two countries alternated cruiser orders between 1890 and 1895, each ship marking a small increase in capabilities from the ship previous. The Argentines upped the ante in July 1895 by buying an armored cruiser, Garibaldi, from Italy. Chile responded by ordering its own armored cruiser, O'Higgins, and six torpedo boats; Argentina quickly ordered another cruiser from Italy and later bought two more.

The race abated somewhat after a boundary dispute in the Puna de Atacama region was successfully mediated by the American ambassador to Argentina, William Paine Lord, in 1899, but more ships were ordered by Argentina and Chile in 1901. Argentina ordered two Rivadavia-class armored cruisers from Italy, and Chile replied with orders for two Constitución-class pre-dreadnought battleships. Argentina continued by signing letters of intent with Italian engineering company Ansaldo in May 1901 to buy two larger battleships. The growing dispute disturbed the British government, as it had the potential to disrupt the extensive British commercial interests in the area. Through their minister to Chile, they mediated negotiations between the two countries. These were successfully concluded on 28 May 1902 with three pacts. The third limited the naval armaments of both countries; both were barred from acquiring any further warships for five years without giving the other eighteen months of advance notice. The United Kingdom purchased the two Chilean battleships, while Japan took over the order for the two Argentine armored cruisers; the two Argentine battleships were never ordered. Two Argentine cruisers and Chile's Capitán Prat were demilitarized.

Brazil's fading and reemergence

Brazil's navy fell into obsolescence after an 1889 revolution, which deposed Emperor Dom Pedro II, and an 1893 civil war. Although the navies of Argentina and Chile were now limited by their agreement, they still retained the numerous vessels built in the interim, and so by the turn of the 20th century the Brazilian Navy lagged far behind its Argentine and Chilean counterparts in quality and total tonnage, despite Brazil having nearly three times the population of Argentina and almost five times the population of Chile.

José Paranhos, the Baron of Rio Branco, c. 1898

Rising demand for coffee and rubber brought Brazil an influx of revenue in the early 1900s. Simultaneously, there was a drive on the part of prominent Brazilians, most notably the Baron of Rio Branco, to have the country recognized as an international power. A large naval acquisition program was drawn up and passed by the National Congress of Brazil in October 1904 in accordance with their belief that a powerful navy would be crucial to the achievement of this goal, but it was two years before any ships were ordered.

Two factions argued over the types of ships to be ordered. One favored a navy centered around a small number of large warships, while the other preferred a larger navy of smaller warships. The latter originally prevailed with a bill authorizing the construction of three small battleships, three armored cruisers, six destroyers, twelve torpedo boats, three submarines, and two river monitors. Though the Brazilian government later eliminated the armored cruisers for monetary reasons, the Minister of the Navy, Admiral Júlio César de Noronha, signed a contract with Armstrong Whitworth for three small battleships on 23 July 1906.

Alarmed, the American ambassador to Brazil sent a cablegram to his Department of State in September 1906, warning them of the destabilization that would occur if the situation devolved into a full naval arms race. At the same time, the American government under Theodore Roosevelt tried using diplomatic means to coerce the Brazilians into canceling their ships, but the attempts were dismissed, with the Baron of Rio Branco remarking that caving to the American demands would render Brazil as powerless as Cuba, whose new constitution allowed the American government to intervene in Cuban affairs. The President of Brazil, Afonso Pena, supported the naval acquisitions in an address to the National Congress of Brazil in November 1906, as in his opinion the ships were necessary to replace the antiquated and obsolete vessels of the current navy.

Catalyst: Brazil's dreadnoughts

Main article: International reaction to the Minas Geraes-class battleships

The keels of the three Brazilian battleships were laid, but Britain's new dreadnought concept, represented by the commissioning of the ship of the same name in December 1906, rendered the Brazilian ships obsolete before they were built. A transition to a few large warships was finalized with the selection of a supporter, Rear Admiral Alexandrino Fario de Alencar, for the powerful post of minister of the navy. The money authorized for naval expansion was redirected by de Alencar to building two dreadnoughts, with plans for a third dreadnought after the first was completed, two scout cruisers (which became the Bahia class), ten destroyers (the Pará class), and three submarines. The three battleships on which construction had just begun were demolished beginning on 7 January 1907. The design for the new dreadnoughts was approved on 20 February 1907.

Minas Geraes steaming during her sea trials, c. 1909

The order for powerful dreadnoughts, at a time when few countries in the world had contracted for such armament, caused a major stir in the international politics of the time. In the midst of the early 1900s naval arms race between the United Kingdom and Germany, members of the British House of Commons debated purchasing the ships in March, July, and September 1908 to bolster the Royal Navy while ensuring they would not be sold to a foreign rival. Newspapers and journals around the world speculated that Brazil had only ordered the ships as a cover for a major power, who would take official control of the ships when completed. Newspapers, in particular, opined that the ships could be sold to anyone but the country they were based in; British papers variously accused the Germans, Japanese, and Americans as being the real buyers, while mainland European papers looked at the United Kingdom with suspicion, and American papers accused the British, Germans, and Japanese of being the hidden buyer. Despite the speculation, the United States began courting Brazil as a potentially powerful ally in the Western Hemisphere.

Response: Argentina and Chile's dreadnought orders

Argentina and Chile were alarmed by the Brazilian move, and they quickly moved to nullify the 1902 agreement which restricted their navies. Argentina's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manuel Augusto Montes de Orca, remarked that either Minas Geraes or São Paulo could destroy the entire Argentine and Chilean fleets. While this may have been hyperbole, either battleship was much more powerful than any single vessel in the Argentinian fleet. Both countries, however, faced difficulty in financing their own dreadnoughts. Although the ruling National Autonomist Party supported the purchases, they initially faced public resistance for such expensive acquisitions. However, after renewed border disputes with Brazil, particularly in the Río de la Plata region, and an influx of inflammatory newspaper editorials supporting new dreadnoughts, public opinion was swayed to support the purchases. The Argentine government did offer to purchase one of the two dreadnoughts from Brazil, which would leave the two navies on an equal footing and satisfy the naval needs of both countries without an expensive arms race. However, the Brazilian government declined to sell, so an Argentine naval delegation was sent to Europe to solicit and evaluate armament companies' offers to build warships for Argentina. Chile, on the other hand, had wanted to respond to Brazil's purchase as early as February 1906, but the naval plans were delayed by a financial depression in 1907 brought on by a drastic fall in the nitrate market and by a major earthquake in 1908. Money for a naval building program was only allocated in 1910.

Argentina received tenders from fifteen shipyards in five countries (the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy), and conducted a drawn-out bidding process. The Argentine commission sent to Europe rejected all of the bids twice, each time recycling the best technical aspects of the tendered designs when crafting new bidding requirements. The shipbuilders were furious and claimed that the process revealed their individual trade secrets. A British naval architect published a scathing condemnation of the Argentine tactics, albeit only after the contracts were not awarded to a British company:

The United States' Delaware, seen here in 1909, was sent on a ten-week South American voyage in 1911 with the goal of obtaining armament contracts for American companies.

We may assume that the British battleships embody good ideas and good practice—in all probability the very best. These cannot fail, in a greater or less degree, to become part of the design which the British shipbuilder first submits to the Argentine Government. In the second inquiry it may be presumed that everything that was good in the first proposals had been seized upon by the Argentine authorities and asked for in the new design. This second request went not only to British builders but to all the builders of the world, and in this way it is exceedingly probable that a serious leakage of ideas and practice of our ships was disseminated through the world by the Argentine government. ... The third inquiry that was issued showed to all the builders of the world what has been eliminated or modified in the second inquiry; and so the process of leakage went merrily on, and with it that of the education of foreign builders and the Argentine government (John H. Biles, "Argentina," Navy (Washington) 4, no. 7 (1910): 30, quoted in Scheina, Naval History, 84).

The United States' Fore River Shipbuilding Company tendered the lowest bid—in part due to the availability of cheap steel—and was awarded the contract. This aroused further suspicion in the European bidders, who had believed that the United States was not a real contender, although Argentina did order twelve destroyers from British, French, and German shipyards. The British Times editorialized that the American government had heavily misused their diplomatic influence in directing the contracts to Fore River, and accused the company of obscenely lowering their price.

The Argentine contract included an option for a third dreadnought in case the Brazilian government adhered to its contractual obligations to order a third dreadnought. Two newspapers, La Prensa and La Argentina, heavily advocated a third ship; the latter even started a petition to raise money for a new battleship. The American minister to Argentina, Charles H. Sherrill, cabled back to the United States that "this newspaper rivalry promises the early conclusion of a movement which means a third battleship whether by public subscription or by Government funds." However, the Argentine government decided on 31 December to not construct the ship, after Brazil canceled its third dreadnought in May, and the election of Roque Sáenz Peña, who was making entreaties to Brazil to end the expensive naval race, to the Presidency.

Although Chile solicited bids from several armament companies, nearly all believed that a British company would win the contract; the American naval attaché opined that without anything short of a revolution, the contracts were destined for the United Kingdom. The Chilean Navy had cultivated extensive ties with the United Kingdom's Royal Navy since the 1830s, when Chilean naval officers were given places on British ships to receive training and experience they could bring back to their country. This relationship had recently been cemented when a British naval mission was requested by Chile and sent in 1911. Still, the American and German governments attempted to swing sentiment to their side, and dispatched naval vessels to Chilean ports. Their efforts were futile, however, as the design tendered by the British company Armstrong Whitworth was chosen and awarded on 25 July 1911.

Construction and trials of the new warships

Argentina's Rivadavia under construction in the United States in 1912

Brazil's Minas Geraes, the lead ship, was laid down by Armstrong on 17 April 1907, while her sister ship São Paulo followed thirteen days later at Vickers. Construction of the partial hull needed to launch Minas Geraes was delayed by a four-month strike to 10 September 1908, and São Paulo followed on 19 April 1909. Both were christened in front of large crowds by the wife of Francisco Régis de Oliveira, the Brazilian ambassador to the United Kingdom. After multiple trials of the speed, endurance, efficiency, and weaponry of the ship, Minas Geraes was completed and handed over to Brazil on 5 January 1910. São Paulo followed in July, after her own trials.

Rivadavia was built by Fore River at its shipyard in Massachusetts, and as called for in the final contract, Moreno was subcontracted out to the New York Shipbuilding Corporation of New Jersey. The steel for the ships was largely supplied by the Bethlehem Steel Company of Pennsylvania. Rivadavia was laid down on 25 May 1910 and launched on 26 August 1911. Moreno was laid down on 10 July 1910 and launched on 23 September 1911. Construction on both ships took longer than usual, and there were further delays during their sea trials when one of Rivadavia's turbines was damaged and one of Moreno's turbines failed. The two were only officially completed in December 1914 and February 1915.

Chile's Almirante Latorre was launched on 27 November 1913. After the First World War broke out in Europe, work on Almirante Latorre was halted in August 1914, and she was formally purchased on 9 September after the British Cabinet recommended it four days earlier. Almirante Latorre was not forcibly seized like the Ottoman Reshadieh and Sultan Osman I (ex-Rio de Janeiro), two other ships being built for a foreign navy, because of Chile's "friendly neutral" status with the United Kingdom. The former Chilean ship was completed on 30 September 1915, and commissioned into the Royal Navy on 15 October, and she served in that navy through the First World War. Work on the other battleship, Almirante Cochrane, was halted after the outbreak of war. The British purchased her on 28 February 1918 to be converted to an aircraft carrier, as the partially completed ship was the only available large and fast hull capable of being modified into a full flush-deck carrier. Low priority and quarrels with shipyard workers slowed completion of the ship, but she was eventually commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS Eagle.

Third stage: another Brazilian dreadnought

When Brazil canceled construction on the third Minas Geraes class ship, they asked for new designs from Armstrong that took in the more recent advances in naval technology, such as the advent of super-dreadnoughts. Eustace Tennyson-d'Eyncourt served as Armstrong's liaison to Brazil. Originally, the dreadnought was going to mount twelve 14-inch guns, but the many requests made by the Brazilian Navy for minor changes delayed the contract signing until 10 October 1910. The battleship's keel laying was delayed further by a shipwright strike. During these delays, a new Minister of the Navy, Admiral Margues Leao, was appointed to replace de Alencar. He had been greatly influenced by German naval practices while touring Europe in early 1910, and as he saw it, Brazil's new battleship should "not be built on exaggerated lines such as have not yet stood the test of experience." He and others in the navy favored a reversion to the 12-inch gun, but others, including the outgoing Minister of the Navy (de Alencar) and the head of the Brazilian naval commission in the United Kingdom (Rear Admiral Duarte Huet de Bacellar Pinto Guedes), were in favor of obtaining the ship with the largest armament—in this case, a design thought up by Bacellar, carrying eight 16-inch guns, six 9.4-inch guns, and fourteen 6-inch guns.

D'Eyncourt, who had departed Brazil in October immediately after the contract was signed, returned in March 1911 to display the various design options available to the Brazilian Navy. Armstrong evidently thought the second faction would prevail, so he also took with him everything needed to close a deal on Bacellar's design. However, by mid-March, Armstrong's contacts in Brazil reported that Leao had convinced the President to cancel the design with twelve 14-inch guns in favor of a smaller ship. D'Eyncourt probably avoided proposing 16-inch guns when he realized the political situation. In meetings with Leao, designs of only ten 12-inch guns mounted on the centerline were quickly rejected, even though their broadside was as strong as that of the Minas Geraes class, but a design with fourteen 12-inch guns emerged as the frontrunner. Author David Topliss attributes this to political necessity:

The reasons for the Minister's interest in the [fourteen] gun ship are not hard to fathom. In his book The Big Battleship, [Richard] Hough says that D'Eyncourt appealed to the Brazilian's megalomania, but this is unlikely to be true. In reality it is much more probable that the choice was dictated by political considerations. It has been seen that the Minister would find it difficult to justify paying more for a ship that was on paper less powerful than the Minas Geraes. The same would apply to a ship that (on paper) was only the equal of the Minas Geraes; somehow he had to have a ship that was more powerful. Having rejected the possibility of larger caliber guns, the only option was to have more guns of the same caliber (Topliss, "The Brazilian Dreadnoughts," 280).

After numerous requests for design alterations from the Brazilian Navy were accommodated or rejected, a contract was signed for a ship with fourteen 12-inch guns on 3 June 1911 for £2,675,000, and Rio de Janeiro's keel was laid for the fourth time on 14 September. It did not take long for the Brazilian government to reconsider their decision again; by mid-1912, Chile's battleships with ten 14-inch guns were under construction, and suddenly it appeared that Rio de Janeiro would be quickly outclassed. Armstrong studied whether replacing the 12-inch guns with seven 15-inch guns would be feasible, but Brazil was probably already attempting to sell the ship. In the tension building up to the First World War, plenty of countries, including Russia, Italy, France, Greek, and the Ottoman Empire, were willing to purchase the ship. Russia and Italy dropped out, and Greece made an offer for the original purchase price plus an additional £50,000. As they worked to obtain the money, the Ottomans, with a loan from a French banker independent of his government, were able to secure the ship as-is for £1,200,000 on 29 December 1913. As part of the purchase contract, the remainder of the ship was constructed with Ottoman money. Renamed Sultan Osman I, she was eventually taken over by the British shortly after the beginning of the First World War, serving with the Royal Navy as HMS Agincourt.

The Argentine government authorized a third dreadnought in October 1912 in case Rio de Janeiro was completed and delivered, but the ship was never named or built.

Decline and end of the arms race

Riachuelo

After selling Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian government asked Armstrong and Vickers to prepare more designs for a new battleship. They replied with a total of fourteen designs, six from Vickers (December 1913 through March 1914) and eight from Armstrong (February 1914). Vickers' designs varied between eight and ten 15-inch and eight 16-inch guns, with speeds between 22 and 25 knots (the lower-end ships having mixed firing, higher using oil), and displacements between 26,000 tonnes (26,000 long tons) and 30,500 tonnes (30,000 long tons). Armstrong took two basic designs, one with eight and the other with ten 15-inch guns, and varied their speed and firing. The Brazilian government chose what was labeled as Design 781, the first of the eight 15-inch designs tendered by Armstrong, which also shared characteristics with the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes then being built for the United Kingdom.

The Brazilian government placed an order for one ship of this design, to be named Riachuelo, at the Armstrong Whitworth shipyard in Elswick in May 1914. Some preliminary work was completed for Riachuelo, but the ship's keel had not been laid by the time the United Kingdom declared war on the Central Powers in August 1914, and Riachuelo was never constructed.

Attempted sales

After Rio de Janeiro was sold to the Ottoman Empire, the Argentine government bowed to popular demand and began to seek a buyer for their two dreadnoughts. The money received in return would be devoted to internal improvements. Three bills directing that the battleships be sold were introduced into the Argentine National Congress in the summer of 1914, but all were defeated. Still, Germany and the United Kingdom expressed worries that the ships could be sold to a belligerent nation, while Italy, the Ottomans, and Greece were all reportedly interested in buying both ships, the latter as a counter to the Ottoman purchase of Rio de Janeiro. The United States, worried that its neutrality would not be respected and its technology would be released for study to a foreign country, put diplomatic pressure on the Argentine government to keep the ships, which it eventually did.

In each of the countries involved in the South American dreadnought arms race, movements arose that advocated the sale of the dreadnoughts to devote the money toward more worthy pursuits. The costs for the ships were rightfully viewed as enormous. After the Minas Geraes class was ordered, a Brazilian newspaper equated the initial purchase cost for the three ships (given as £6,110,100 without accounting for ammunition, which was £605,520, or necessary upgrades to docks, costing £832,000) as equaling 3,125 miles of railroad tracks or 30,300 homesteads. Costs for maintenance and related issues, which in the first five years of Minas Geraes's and São Paulo's commissioned lives was about 60 percent of the initial cost, only added to the already staggering sum of money.

In addition, the nationalistic sentiments that exacerbated the naval arms race had given way to slowing economies and growing public opinion that supported investing inside the country. Commenting on this, the United States' Minister to Chile, Henry Prather Fletcher, wrote to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan: "Since the naval rivalry began in 1910, financial conditions, which were none too good then, have grown worse; and as time approaches for the final payment, feeling has been growing in these countries that perhaps they are much more in need of money than of battleships."

Post-war expansions

Almirante Cochrane, Chile's second battleship, was purchased by the United Kingdom, converted into an aircraft carrier, and renamed Eagle, seen here in 1942.

After the end of the First World War, the dreadnought race never began again, but many plans for post-war naval expansions and improvements were attempted by the Argentine, Brazilian, and Chilean governments. Argentina's Rivadavia and Moreno were modernized in the United States between 1924 and 1926, and under a large naval building program launched in 1926, three cruisers (the Italian-built Veinticinco de Mayo class and the British-built La Argentina), twelve destroyers (the Spanish-built Churruca class and the British-built Mendoza/Buenos Aires classes), and three submarines (the Italian-built Santa Fe class) were acquired.

The Brazilian government modernized Minas Geraes, São Paulo, and the two cruisers acquired under the 1904 plan, Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul between 1918 and 1925. They also made plans to acquire additional ships in the 1920s and 30s, but both were sharply reduced from the original proposals. In 1924, a proposal for the construction of a relatively modest number of warships (a heavy cruiser, and five destroyers) and five submarines was floated. In the same year, the newly-arrived American naval mission, led by Rear Admiral Carl Theodore Vogelgesang, tendered a naval expansion plan of 151,000 tons, divided between battleships (70,000), cruisers (60,000), destroyers (15,000), and submarines (6,000). The United States' State Department, led by Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, was fresh from negotiating the Washington Naval Treaty and not keen on seeing another dreadnought race, so Hughes quickly moved to stymie the efforts of the mission. Only one Italian-built submarine, Humaytá, was acquired under this plan. In the 1930s, the Brazilian government looked into purchasing cruisers from the United States Navy but ran into the restrictions of the Washington and London Naval Treaties, which prevented the sale of used warships to foreign countries. They also tried to purchase destroyers from the United States, but eventually contracted for six destroyers from the United Kingdom. In the interim, a plan to lease six destroyers from the United States Navy was abandoned after it was met with strong opposition from both international and American institutions. Three Marcilio Dias-class destroyers, based on the American Mahan class, were laid down in Brazil with six minelayers, all of which were launched in 1939–1941. Though both required foreign assistance to complete and were consequently delayed by the war, all were completed by 1944.

Chile began to seek additional ships to bolster its fleet in 1919, and the United Kingdom eagerly offered many of its surplus warships. This action worried the nations of South America, who feared that a Chilean attempt to regain the title of "the first naval power in South America" would destabilize the region and start another naval arms race. Chile asked for Canada and Almirante Cochrane, but the cost of converting the latter back to a battleship was too high. Planned replacements included the two remaining Invincible-class battlecruisers, but a leak to the press of the secret negotiations to acquire them caused an uproar within Chile itself over the value of such ships. In the end, Chile only bought Canada and four destroyers in April 1920. All five had been ordered from British yards by the Chilean government before 1914, but were purchased after British entered the First World War. All were obtained for comparatively low prices; Canada was sold for just £1,000,000, less than half of what had been required to construct the ship. The Chileans continued to acquire more ships from the British in the 1920s, adding six destroyers (the Serrano class), three submarines (the Capitan O'Brien class), and smaller ships in the late 1920s. Almirante Latorre was sailed to the United Kingdom in 1929 to be modernized at Devonport Dockyard, which was completed in 1931. In the late 1930s, the Chilean government inquired into the possibility of constructing an 8,600 long tons (8,700 t) cruiser in the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, or Sweden, but this did not pan out. A second plan to acquire two small cruisers was dropped with the beginning of the Second World War. Interestingly, soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States attempted to purchase Almirante Latorre, two destroyers, and a submarine tender, but the offer was rejected.

With the beginning of the Second World War, the three major South American navies found themselves unable to acquire major warships. By the end, however, the United States and United Kingdom both had many ships that were unnecessary or surplus to the requirements of their post-war navies. Still, the South American countries ran into political difficulties in acquiring anything larger than Flower-class corvettes and River-class frigates. The war had proved the obsolete status of battleships, so the navies were seeking cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, which they were finally able to acquire when the Red Scare began to strongly affect American and international politics. One of the deals reached under the Mutual Defense Assistance Act (1949) with South American countries sold six light cruisers to Argentina, Brazil, and Chile in January 1951. While this bolstered the navies of important South American allies of the United States, which would be treaty-bound to assist the United States in any war, naval historian Robert Schenia argues that the American government also used the opportunity to significantly affect the traditional naval rivalry among the three countries:

While more than ninety percent of the aid provided under [the Mutual Defense Assistance Act] went to European and Asian countries, the United States, now the dominant foreign power in Latin America, used surplus ships as a tool to further mutual interests ... and reshape the Latin American naval panorama. Thus Argentina's pre-World War II formula that she had to possess a fleet equal in strength to the combined fleets of Brazil and Chile changed in one stroke to 1A = 1B = 1C (Schenia, Naval History, 173).

Ships

Ship	Country	Builder	Laid down	Launched	Completed	Fate
Minas Geraes		Armstrong Whitworth	17 April 1907	10 September 1908	January 1910	Scrapped 1950s.
São Paulo		Vickers	30 April 1907	19 April 1909	July 1910	Sank en route to scrapyard, September 1951.
Rio de Janeiro		Armstrong	14 September 1911	22 January 1913	August 1914	Acquired by Ottoman Empire, then taken over by the United Kingdom; served in the First World War; scrapped 1924.
Riachuelo		Armstrong	–	–	–	Ordered but soon canceled after the outbreak of the First World War.
Rivadavia		Fore River	25 May 1910	26 August 1911	December 1914	Scrapped 1950s.
Moreno		Fore River	9 July 1910	23 September 1911	February 1915	Scrapped 1950s.
Almirante Latorre		Armstrong	27 November 1911	27 November 1913	October 1915	Acquired by the United Kingdom and served in the First World War; acquired by Chile again, 1920; scrapped 1950s.
Almirante Cochrane		Armstrong	20 February 1913	8 June 1918	February 1924	Acquired by the United Kingdom and converted to the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle; sunk 1942.

• 
  The Minas Geraes class was designed, constructed, and completed before the other South American dreadnoughts, but was smaller and not as well-armed. Two later dreadnoughts, Rio de Janeiro and Riachuelo, were planned to rectify this, but the former was sold to the Ottoman Empire amid falling government revenues, and the other was not laid down when the First World War broke out and all British shipbuilding for foreign countries was suspended.
• 
  The Rivadavia class were the second dreadnought class purchased by a South American country and the only ones to not be built by a British company. Ordered in response to the Minas Geraes class, they mounted the same-size main battery as the Brazilian ships (12-inch), but the Argentine ships were much larger and significantly better-armored.
• 
  Almirante Latorre was the last South American dreadnought built, and was larger and better armed than her counterparts. The more efficient arrangement of the five 14-inch turrets, with all mounted on the centerline rather than en echelon, allowed the main battery to fire on a single broadside without damaging the ship.

See also

• World War I naval arms race

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