For the record, full names of the german destroyers, in no particular order:
Leiberecht Maas
Georg Thiele
Hans Lody
Paul Jakobi
Bernd Von Armin
Richard Beitzen
Dieter von Roeder
Karl Galster
Dieter Kunne
Friedrich Ihn
Friedrich Eckhold
Georg Schultz
Wolfgang Zenker
Theodore Riedel
Hermann Schoemann
Bruno Heinemann
Erich Koellner
Erich Giese
Erich Steinbrink
Wilhelm Heidkamp
Hans Ludemann
I can't remember the Schmitt one. I think she was the Hans Schmitt, but I may just be thinking of that because it sounds right.
Most of these people were (apparently) German flotilla leaders from the First World War, although the only one I can place is Maas, who was killed at the battle of the Helgoland Bight in 1914. It's interesting that they chose to immortalise these people and not some of their more memorable WWI heroes like Nerger of the Wolf, Muller of the Emden, or Hartog of the Defflinger. It's possibly that since none of these latter guys were actually destroyer commanders they were saving the names for later, bigger, ships.
I've always liked these names, and thought it a bit of a pity that they reverted to simple Z-numbers for the later Narviks. The German destroyer force never achieved the same distinction as the cruiser and battleship arms. The ships themselves were designed for the Baltic, and although solid designs didn't deal with the open atlantic waters very well (a weakness that also effected the German light cruisers). Like all destroyers, their full endurance wasn't great, and the Germans didn't have the luxury of being able to reliably resupply at sea. On top of this the German destroyers took terrible losses in the Norwegian campaign (as did the light cruisers), and by the middle of 1940 12 of the 22 listed above were lost.
Out of interest, I don't know what on earth Christian IV is talking about when he says destroyers can take too much damage in this game. In the first place, and contrary to his version of reality, there are a number of accounts of destroyers surviving repeated heavy calibre hits. But most relevant is that destroyers in this game are very fragile. They take one heavy hit to the lower hull and they flood quickly and sink. I threw 8 German destroyers against 2 cruisers and lost all of them (sank the Manchester, but couldn't finish off Sheffield). I have major problems finding jobs for them that won't get them killed.
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