Delivery risk and self-escorting capital ships

German industrial constraints made a technically attractive design a procurement risk. Germany was struggling to deliver its own naval programme, and the Greek battleship Salamis was repeatedly running late while Greek and Ottoman buyers looked to British yards. Blohm & Voss offered an especially battlecruiser-like alternative, and American yards also sought the work. Dutch suspicion after the Spanish-American War kept the American option at the edge of the discussion. Dutch battleships also could not assume that a large escort flotilla would always be concentrated with them, so their secondary armament had to support self-defence against smaller attackers.