Plan Z escorts were a missed small-cruiser opportunity

The 1937 projects were conceived as ocean-going escorts for Plan Z, with design displacements between 4,427 and 4,797 tons. Hulls of that size could carry 150 mm guns more sensibly than the smaller destroyers criticised earlier. They were small-cruiser or large-destroyer screening assets intended for Atlantic and tropical service. Their eight torpedo tubes appeared in either two quadruple sets or one quadruple and two twin sets. The counterfactual places several alongside Bismarck and Prinz Eugen at the Denmark Strait, Scharnhorst at the North Cape, or Tirpitz on Arctic operations. Such escorts could have maintained contact with the capital ships and supported their operations. Even a 1937 construction start probably would not have produced completed ships before Narvik at the German building pace. Their greater potential lay in providing useful escorts later in the war.