Shipbucket

Hood, I have just had a look at the Atlantic cruiser thread again and for 1912/13 designs they were probably as far as development had gone for 'light' cruisers. By 1912-13 lots of ships had superfiring turrets so the designs could have gone a tad further in the way of innovation which the RN was known for.

I had a look in the main archive never were section, the Atlantic cruiser drawings are not there. (Having had a play in the new test archive, they are in there.)

I'm not sure there would be much of a point to upgunning these ships to use 21 Cm guns, British cruisers of the period carried extremely light armor that would be dealt with just fine by 15 Cm guns. 17 Cm guns would have no trouble damaging British cruisers and 21 Cm guns would offer little advantage over them as well. Seems like you'd be driving up the size and cost of your ships and getting very little in return from it. As GD mentioned, a modern 17 Cm gun would likely prove superior to the British 7.5" weapons in rate of fire and competitive enough in range there would be no discernible difference in battle.

That said they are very handsome ships, all of them. They look very much like the post war Emden scaled up to accept a much more potent armament, and I have always been a fan of how that ship looked.