Board Thread:Event Community Discussion/@comment-28069733-20170521154728/@comment-1637496-20170523173903

Unaccepted wrote: This is just flat wrong. DE perfectly describes the role of the Kaikouban : Escort ships capable of near 20 knots and open ocean endurance to protect convoys of unarmed ships,  when using the USN classification system. Post war the name even changed from DE(Destroyer Escort) to DE(Ocean Escort). 20 knots was an expedient forced upon by diesel production issues, from Norman Friedman's U.S. Destroyers An Illustrated Design History

"However, in an expanding war economy diesels were in short supply, and quite soon the number of DEs on order was increased very sharply. The solution was to halve the DE diesel power plant: although the DE hull was redesigned and lengthened to take all eight engines, in practice diesel-powered DEs received only the four driving through generators and motos, for a total of 6,000 bhp and the loss of 4.5 knots."

The original 24 knots speed was  in the turbo-electric and geared turbines destroyer escorts, from the same book:

"This was not particularly satisfactory. and turboelectric drive was adopted as an alternative. Turbines themselves had not presented great production difficulties, but drive through generators and motors were considerably less compact than gearing. The DE hull had to be lengthened to 300 feet and displacement had to rise 200 tons. In fact, the reduction in wave-making resistance due to the greater length balanced off the increase in frictional resistance due to the greater wetted surface, and speed was held to the original design figure of about 24 knots. The 300-foot hull was standardized for case of production, although some ships employed the diesel-electric plant in it. Late production DEs, benefiting from the expansion in gear-cutting plant, were powered by diesels and steam turbines through smaller, more easily produced gears."

Limitedly to the USN nearly half of the over 400 destroyer escorts were steam powered capable to reach the original 24 knots requirement (211 vs 229), while the Royal Navy received 32 diesel powered Evarts and 46 turbo-electric Buckleys.

Unaccepted wrote: There was only a single class of ships classified as PF, the Tacoma-class. USN PF where meant to be longer ranged version of DE, but where immediatley discontinued after the Tacoma-class because they where decidedly inferior to the shorter ranged and often smaller DE-classified ships. The USN also completely abandoned the Firgate classification until the early 1970s when they started building guided missile frigates. And one single class doesn't count even though it was historically used by the same USN, right? After all we're part of the community where 388 "something else" vs 386 "DE" still results in the victory of DE, if anything this experience taught me that logic doesn't need to apply around here.