Board Thread:Event Community Discussion/@comment-25730832-20170511175819/@comment-26574811-20170513030459

Ar-cen-ciel wrote: Vcharng wrote: I think we may need to distinguish Shimushu (Pre-war Kaiboukan) and Etorofu (mid-war Kaiboukan). Shimushu was never designed to be escorts, but she was used as such later; Etorofu, on the other hand, was designed with escort duty in mind. Hmm, is the description in their character and class category page good enough? They're treated as the same ship type in game, though the latter have lower level requirement to get OASW. Well, character library description could be wrong (e.g. Akagi's stating that Midway was lost due to over-confidence), but the Kaiboukans seems to be correct.

So for me, Kaiboukan is a family of ships that starts as coastal patrols and was tasked (and modified in the case of Etorofu) with convoy escort later, but not designed as such.