Board Thread:Wikia Discussion/@comment-141749-20170525045750/@comment-26850872-20170525150459

Japanese Wikipedia seems to go with the notion that Kaiboukans are best to be called Frigates as the English equivalent for that term. However I'm not that very historically - and language-wise - informed on these things so I'd rather not have us jump to this as a conclusion, plus if there are more sources (if our more Japanese-literate readers are more than willing to contribute to) that support this claim.

Closest to that which we have looked at is Patrol Frigates (PF) but even that is being strongly debated against, plus the Japanese seems to just use the word "Escort" as collective term for them so... to put it short, I just don't know anymore. :v

From the Japanese wikipedia on the one moment I decided to just look up "Frigate" in the JP version:

"日本海軍については、大戦末期に大量建造された船団護衛用の海防艦がフリゲートに相当する. 船団護衛の際に、司令艦となる甲型・乙型、司令艦の指揮下で護衛任務にあたる丙型・丁型があった."

Rough reading:

"In regards to the IJN, the Kaiboukans - fleets of ships built in large amounts towards near the end of the WWII for escort purposes - are best be referred to as frigates. In the case of fleet escort, command ships are designated as Type A and Type B, and ships acting as escorts under the command of these ships are designated Class-C and Class-D respectively."

(Source: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/フリゲート)

The Japanese entry of Kaibokan mentions that in any other countries these ships would be classified as Frigates (FF?) but uses "Escort" as the English term for them:

"他国でいうフリゲートに相当する. 海防艦の英語表記はEscort（護衛艦）であり、対空・対潜武装を中心としたものであった."

Rough reading:

"In other countries their equivalents would be frigates. The English term for them would be 'Escorts', ships with armaments focused on anti-air and anti-submarine tasks."

(source: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/海防艦)

Of course, given my not-so-efficient literacy level with Japanese these are pretty much reference content picked by your good ol' Ctrl+F, so... yeah. Take my opinions with a grain (or lots of grains) of salt if you will.