Both ships that were faster than Shimakaze during their trails. While French destoyer Le Fantasque-class of six ships were 45 knots, they were reduced down to 37 knots after refit and reclassified as light cruisers by the Allies.
Tashkent was the only one of her class completed by the Soviets, based on French and Italian designs. She was 43 knots on trails (without her guns). There is no word on how fast she was in service because she didn't get her guns for almost two years, and then spent most of her days involved in the Siege of Sevastopol.
Shimakaze made 40.9 knots on trails but was designed to make 39 knots normally.
Shimakaze is the most heavily armed of these three due to her 15 torpedo tubes.
All three of them could technically be put in the "Awesome but impractical" bucket, with Shimakaze being at least hypothetically useful in war in the configuration where she clocked her speed, if nowhere near cost-effective enough to justify not just building several more Kagerous or even more Matsus than that for the same money.
The other two were laughably impractical. (Again, a test run without weapons is kind of meaningless when comparing to actual warships in combat load. That's like saying an original production run Reliant Robin is the fastest car in the universe if you let me launch it into space and catapult it off of some gravity wells to achieve speeds impossible while actually on the road.) Le Fantasque was also lumped together with the Italian's similar designs for being ludicrously fuel-inefficient in a war where Europe being able to keep access to a tiny trickle of oil from outside the continent would be one of its defining features.
Le Fantasque wasn't impractical for what the French wanted her for and she was a fair design for what she was (it's in her offical French designation contre-torpilleur, basically 'counter destroyer'). Her range was bad yes, but France wasn't the USN or Japan thinking about fighting over the south Pacific. The expected threat France was designing it's ships around in the 30s when she was built was a confrontation with Italy in the Mediterranean and in that arena close to bases both in France and her and Britain North Africa colonies her range wasn't a deal breaker. As for fuel supply with the friendly US at that point the largest oil producer on the planet and the Middle Eastern colonies of it's British ally which could pretty much directly supply the aforementioned North African bases fuel supply didn't look a great concern either.
In exchange for that Le Fantasque was legitimately fast, she made her speed runs with all equipment although the machinery was being forced (even then the highest recorded speed was actually 43.75, not 45 knots and four of the six came in closer to 42), but even without that she was still a legitimate 40 knot ship making her able to run down basically any other DD. She was also well armed with nine torpedo tubes, plus six reloads and five guns only slightly smaller then what Japan had on her 5500 ton cruisers. Her size also made her stable and she was a good sea boat, bar the issue that some of that speed had been bought with light construction and a number of the ships sustained structural damage in heavy seas. Still foibles like the later are common to many classes, it's not like the Japanese ships particularly the first generation "special" type destroyer didn't have their own problems in rough weather and at least Le Fantasque never to my knowledge cracked her own hull by firing her guns.
In terms of a destroyer for fighting other destroyers at the time she was built she's hard to beat, certainly she was a match for ANY Imperial Japanese destroyer ever built period. It always seemed a somewhat odd misuse of Triomphant to me that she was being used to putter along as a convoy escort around Australia as the various light unit centered clashes where occurring just to the north in the Solomons.
The thing is, I don't think you can really take the assumptions of a quick and easy war where attrition wouldn't be a problem at face value, here. Yes, the British managed to keep supply lines to the Middle East open because the Regia Marina was incapable of taking two steps without tripping on their own shoelaces, but as military planners who were planning these ships to fight a war in conditions a decade or two later, making plans that depend upon your enemy failing to achieve its most basic and obvious objectives (like, say, bombing a British naval base with feeble defensive capabilities on a tiny, isolated island within easy spitting distance of Italian airfields) is planning for disaster.
Yes, the United States had plenty of oil and it would have been extremely difficult for the Axis powers to have ever seriously stemmed the flow of material from North America to Europe, but at the same time, it's not like America was sitting on mountains of excess logistical capacity. Every shipment of fuel wasted on spendthrift destroyers was a shipment of fuel not delivered to a tank battalion.
Being able to run down enemy destroyers if they tried to flee is only as good as your capacity to actually defeat them, and part of the main problem with all the speedsters was that they were rather few in number because they were really expensive, and generally meant taking away the capacity to make a larger number of more economical destroyers. Even in a one-on-one battle, there's an awful lot of chance in destroyer-on-destroyer engagements, and if the enemy can afford to simply outnumber you because they shipped out a larger number of more cost-effective ships, then being able to charge directly into superior enemy numbers isn't much of a help.
The thing is, I don't think you can really take the assumptions of a quick and easy war where attrition wouldn't be a problem at face value, here. Yes, the British managed to keep supply lines to the Middle East open because the Regia Marina was incapable of taking two steps without tripping on their own shoelaces, but as military planners who were planning these ships to fight a war in conditions a decade or two later, making plans that depend upon your enemy failing to achieve its most basic and obvious objectives (like, say, bombing a British naval base with feeble defensive capabilities on a tiny, isolated island within easy spitting distance of Italian airfields) is planning for disaster.
Yes, the United States had plenty of oil and it would have been extremely difficult for the Axis powers to have ever seriously stemmed the flow of material from North America to Europe, but at the same time, it's not like America was sitting on mountains of excess logistical capacity. Every shipment of fuel wasted on spendthrift destroyers was a shipment of fuel not delivered to a tank battalion.
Being able to run down enemy destroyers if they tried to flee is only as good as your capacity to actually defeat them, and part of the main problem with all the speedsters was that they were rather few in number because they were really expensive, and generally meant taking away the capacity to make a larger number of more economical destroyers. Even in a one-on-one battle, there's an awful lot of chance in destroyer-on-destroyer engagements, and if the enemy can afford to simply outnumber you because they shipped out a larger number of more cost-effective ships, then being able to charge directly into superior enemy numbers isn't much of a help.
With the French design at least there were six of them, so if operated together they could effectively run down other groups of destroyers or even the generally under armored light cruisers of the era. The Russian design I am not to certain about. Shimakaze might have been a useful class had it been built in numbers before the war started (even if it was just four ships for one division), but not during a war.
NWSiaCB said: (Again, a test run without weapons is kind of meaningless when comparing to actual warships in combat load.
Tashkent was tested with ballast weighing as much as the weapons did.
I'm Shimakaze.I'm the fastest in Japan!40 knotsI'm the French destroyer, Le Fantasque.I can steam at a max speed of 45 knots.I am the Russian destroyer, Tashkent. I'm 42 knots.With a speed over 40 knots, I'm the fastest destroyer there is!