Shimakaze

Appearance

 * Artist: Shizuma Yoshinori (しずまよしのり)
 * Shimakaze has long blonde hair and modest breasts. She is typically seen wearing an outfit with a sailor collar & striped thighhighs, she also wears a headdress that looks like bunny ears. She is often accompanied by Rensouhou-chan, familiar-like turrets which originated from Shimakaze's three twin 12.7 cm/50 naval gun turrets.

Personality

 * Seiyuu: Ayane Sakura (佐倉綾音)
 * she's portrayed as a hyperactive and excitable absent-minded girl.

Trivia

 * Her name means "island wind."
 * It was first carried by the fourth ship of the Minekaze class in 1920, of which the Mutsuki class is sometimes considered as a sub-class.
 * The Minekaze-class Shimakaze participated in WW2 under the name of Patrol Boat n°1, and was sunk before the Shimakaze-class Shimakaze was completed.
 * Guided missile destroyer JS Shimakaze (DDG-172) exists  in JMSDF today.
 * She consumes 20 fuel and 25 ammo at full refuel, which is the highest resource consumption in-game among the destroyers, though this resource consumption ratio is later shared with Akizuki-class destroyers.
 * She was a unique ship with no sister ships.  In media, she is often shown as depressed by this.
 * However, Amatsukaze used prototype steam boilers and turbines which were later used in Shimakaze's construction.
 * Sunk in the Battle of Ormoc Bay near Cebu, Philippines, 11 November 1944.
 * She was not actually the world's fastest destroyer at the time; that honor goes to the French Le Fantasque-class destroyers. Le Fantasque and her sisters had a top speed of 45 knots as opposed to Shimakaze's 40.9 knots. However if one considers offshore speed, Shimakaze would be the fastest destroyer at that time.
 * Fans have given her the nickname "Zekamashi", her name "spelled" backwards as it would be on an old Japanese life preserver. This is because traditionally, Japanese was written in vertical columns from right to left. If you tried to write on something thin like a life preserver, there would only be space for one character per line, so you would end up writing backwards by modern, left-to-right standards.
 * Kongou uses this nickname in the anime.
 * With Amatsukaze, Akizuki, and Teruzuki, she is one of 4 destroyers with "animated turrets".
 * Shimakaze was NOT the last destroyer build by Japan which participated in WWII : she was actually followed by the Matsu class, which were supposed to be "more cost efficient" (hence cheaper and weaker) and Matsu's subclass, the Tachibana class. Although many destroyers of those two classes hadn't time to participate in combat, some were engaged in battles and sunk.

Historical Note
Shimakaze was planned and built as the experimental prototype of a new class of heavy destroyers, designated "Type C." Sixteen other units were ordered but later cancelled due to more pressing wartime needs. Though never repeated, she was a successful design, combining large size (some 25 feet longer than yuugumo-class), firepower (six 5" guns in new Type D turrets), and heavy torpedo armament (three quintuple sets of 24" tubes, the most powerful such broadside ever mounted on a Japanese destroyer) with a 40-knot top speed. The latter was thanks to new high-pressure, high-temperature boilers able to generate nearly 80,000 shaft horsepower and would have propelled all future Japanese destroyer designs, had circumstances permitted their construction.