Board Thread:Event Community Discussion/@comment-25730832-20170511175819/@comment-1915363-20170512021829

Mystia Lore. wrote: For me, it's DE and that's enough (KCV already had the DE name in it way before the Escorts ships were introduced) No, they're not. They are not destroyers to begin with. Their inability to replace actual destroyers in expeditions is solid enough an evidence to back that up. A true escort destroyer should be able to replace fleet destroyers in expeditions just fine, and the Kaibokans are too slow and lightly armed to do that.

FirstDagr wrote: The most stupid thing I read today, just call them DE. Patrol Frigates is literally something non existent in the IJN during WW2. Problem with that classification for Kaibokans is that they don't have torpedoes. A surface ship must have torpedo tubes to count as a destroyer in IJN, escort or no. Kaibokans don't have any, Combined with their slow speed, they are not eligible to count as DDs or DEs that could participate in Destroyer Squadrons, as evidenced by expeditions.

As far as DEs goes, closest thing IJN had to that are Type-D destroyers (Matsu and Tachibana class), which actually had torpedoes like 4/5 of American DEs.