Her rigging involves hip-mounted platforms, with single-cannonturrets on her sides with adjacent anti-air guns, and a mast and smokestack to her back. On her ankles, she has depth charge launchers.
Personality
As a coastal defense ship, her class is even smaller than destroyers, and as such, she is portrayed as an "elementary school student" character, even younger than the generally "middle school" appearances of the destroyers. Shimushu has a cheerful and thoroughly childish personality. She has a verbal tick of "-ssu" (not unlike a certain class of mascots, dood) or "shu", seemingly because of her name, and will sing songs composed mainly of "shu" in her official lines. She is frequently depicted, as in her official art, with her arms up with her hands across her forehead as though shading her eyes. Her official lines portray her as close with her sister-ship Kunashiri.
History
The historical IJN Shimushu was commissioned on June 30th, 1940, and served the entire length of the war. Originally designed as an escort and minesweeping vessel, and without the speed and even less firepower than a destroyer, Shimushu's accomplishments were always escort duty, including the escort of landing craft during the invasion of the Philipines. One notable failure in February of 1944, however, was Hi-40, a mission where she was assigned as the sole escort of 6 tankers, all of which were lost to the submarines USS Greyback and USS Jack. In November of that year, the USS Haddo struck her with a torpedo, blowing off her bow, although she was repaired by the end of January 1945. After the war, she served as a repatriation vessel before being turned over to the USSR, which put her in auxiliary roles before ultimately scrapping her by 1959.
Trivia
She is named after Shumshu Island, the second-northernmost of the Kuril Islands, just off the tip of Russia's Kamchatka peninsula.
