Board Thread:Event Community Discussion/@comment-28069733-20170514083426/@comment-26874340-20170516220735

You know, on japanese wikipedia, it does say IJN discontinued the usage of Kaibokan in 1931-Jun-01 and then reinstated it in 1942-Jul-1 under a new definition.

The older three ships that could still set steam, Yakumo, Izumo and Iwate were reclassified from Kaibokan to Heavy Cruiser, 1st class. The other three, Asama, Azuma and Kasuga were struck from the warship list and reclassified as "Special Training Ship"s.

Under the new, 1942, definition of Kaibokan, their roles were similar to Frigates of other nations. All the newer Kaibokan are between 730t and 940t displacement and thus fit the Frigate definition better, however Kaibokan are still lighter than WW2 era PF from RN and USN.

To add to that, if you look into the USN definition of DE and DDE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyer_escort. DDE is flatout wrong, while DE is not entirely a perfect fit either. "DE" is also used by the Hunt-class, which is closer to Kamikaze-class levels of performance. USN changed "DE" to "FF" in 1975 to better fit classification used by other nations.

All said and done, use PF or FF or "Escort Frigate", but not DE or DDE