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More important to the KM will be the adoption of higher angle mounts for their main guns, switching the 88mm guns out, and building light ships. They've been hit, accuratly, from beyand the range at which they can reply. In the second case, it was by a clearly dammaged ship. That has got to chill the core of any German capital ship sailor. They need the higher angle mountings to just beable to shoot at the longer ranges. And then they'll need dirictor fire control, and long base range finders to do it successfuly. That will be FAR more important IMHO than increaseing the overall number of secondarys, or bulges. Sure bulges might be helpful, and what gunnery officer doesn't want more guns? But will that really stop the successes the British lights have had? I don't think so honestly. I do think the Germans will need many more light ships of their own. then their own ships won't be so out numbered, and can match the British.

Equaly important, you have to concider why the ships weren't built that way to begin with. Both the German and British capital ships were limited by the width of the drydocks and "the need for speed". The Germans had less pre-built dry docks, and so had to build them from scratch. As such they had more felxability with the design of the ships. However, even on the German ships, they didn't get too wide. It becomes a matter of optimization. Wider ships require more hp to drive through the water. With pre-existanting power plants, adding bulges almost always makes them slower. The Germans have already seen the difficulties raised by lack of speed in Letterstime. Both at Dogger Banks, and Jutland. With new builds, why build the ships bulged? Why not simply build a wider ship? That becomes expecally tricky with the new build BCs. They're suppost to be fast, and they're already HUGE. You add bulges, add additional hoursepower to keep the speed, armor to protect the new engines and hull, and they get even bigger. They were already big as the Germans could build, any bigger and they will probably require new dry docks. Uh oh...

The older German DNs are pretty slow to begin with. Adding buldges to the Nassau class might well turn them into 18 knot ships. That's really too slow for line work in the North Sea. Thus they go from margional utility in the North Sea, to virtualy none. The same can be said about the von der Tann and Blucher. The newer Ks, Seylite, Molke, and Deffliner already have pretty decent torpedo protection to begin with. Not so sure the bulges would be needed to help with the protection. For the already build, but new BCs it's probably not worth it, as they're already only only margionaly faster than the QE class. For the Ks it might be worth it, if you expect them to continue to opperate with the Hex ships. But do you want to leave them in the yard long enough to try to put that together, they are potentialy the second most important, and most powerful ships in the KM? Not having the Ks is a serious handy cap for the Germans in any engagement.

As far as the other possible modifications. It should be fairly cheap to switch 88mm secondarys on the DNs for 150mm guns in the superstructor. This should simply the amo situation with the secondarys, increase the punch and range of the secondarys, and be roughly displacmeent neutral. The British CLs and TB have shown an amazing abity to soak up 88mm hits, but the 150 mm hits seem to leave a mark. Also, the Germans should have noticed by now that in bad weather, the casemate guns are a bit close to the water. It is also rather important to remove weight from the German DNs before you add much else as for the most part they were already overweight.

Why would the Kaisers be faster and not the BCs? Well, maybe the BC's except Blucher. If the Kaisers could be tuned by the Americans for better speed, surly so could the BCs. If anyone needs the speed, it's gotta be the BCs. And if tuning will give the Kaiser a few horse power, then surely an similar precentage would also give the Defflinger a bigger precentage increase. And that's even assuming the Americans are allowed to touch something as important, and tempremental as one of the Germans highly important capital ships. Also, I can't immagion that anything done to the Kaisers can't also be done to the Konig.

The other question that I have is how was the increase done? There are several ways to increase the power out of a steam turbine. Some are bad for the turbine, and others take alought of extra steam, a precious few just take a limited amount of additional steam and arn't bad for the turbine. I've very curious on what was "improved" and if it allowed for extended power, or just power for short peroids?