"1936A Narvik class Z-31 Zerstörer " Topic

"The Zerstörer 1936A-class destroyers, or Narvik-class destroyers as they were known to the Allies, were a class of German destroyers of the Second World War. In common with other German destroyers launched after the start of World War II, the Narviks were unnamed, known only by their hull numbers – Z23 to Z39.
In terms of armament, they were closer to light cruisers than the typical destroyer. The use of 15 cm (5.9 inch) guns was atypical of destroyers which tended to have guns around 120 – 127 mm (4.7 to 5 inch) in calibre. They were intended to carry two forward guns in a twin turret, but as the twin turrets were not ready in time, early class 1936As carried a single mounted gun forward.
Despite being powerful the ships were not without their flaws. There were problems with the reliability of the high pressure steam engines and seakeeping in rough seas due to the newly designed bow and heavy forward artillery.
The eight ships of the Zerstörer 1936A class (Z23 to Z30) were all laid down between 1938 and 1940. The seven destroyers numbered from Z31 to Z39 were classed as Zerstörer 1936A (Mob); they were laid down in 1940 and 1941 and were slightly larger and had some internal modifications (including engines that caused less trouble than with their predecessors) from the original design to shorten construction times."
From wiki,

From here.
link

Hope you enjoy!.

Amicalement
Armand

I once read a book about the German destroyer force in WW2. What really struck me was how often they had to ditch their mission and return to base because of mechanical issues. If they sent out 4 DDs, at least one would be putting back to port.

This level of unreliability would have been a major scandal in the US or UK navies, and heads would have rolled. The Germans just put up with it.

Like the Americans put up with non functioning torpedoes for, almost, two years?

No adverse results, to the ordnance people anyway.

The problem with German ships was the same problem with German vehicles and other equipment – it was over-engineered, which made it mechanically touchy and prone to failure. One of the destroyer types had unproven engines installed (basically they were guinea pigs), which proved to be extremely problematic.

This brings up one of the problems with most naval rule sets – the tendency to give tonnage and nominal firepower an automatic advantage.

It was noted in the action between HMS Glowworm and the German destroyers off Norway that the 4-inch guns of Glowworm handled better in the rough sees than even the 12.7cm guns of the German destroyers, let alone the 15cm guns.

Of course neither the Glowworm or the German destroyers scored hits on each other. Per the Glowworm website she did get one or more hits on the Hipper, but by then the ranges were down to hundreds not thousands of yards.

Actually German torpedoes were every bit as useless as the American Mk14's Mserafin.

So bad was it that the U-boat service almost mutinied at one stage, claiming there was no point in them risking their lives to fire dud weapons. On October 30 1939, U56 fired three torpedoes at HMS Nelson, and they all failed to explode when they hit the ship which was carrying Winston Churchill at the time.

That any armed force was sent to war with such a useless weapon is considered to be the worst scandal ever to befall the German military.

they are pretty ships

Glad you enjoyed them my friend.
About torpedoes failing I know that same case happened here in 1982, but it seems that great part of it was because of sabotage.

Amicalement
Armand

In the US, the torps somehow never got live-fire tests…

Took YEARS to get the Mk14s (sub) and Mk15s (surface) unsnarled, and the 'running too deep' problem was one that should have been caught just by doing the dang math!