and description Design work on the Type 34 destroyers began in 1932, around the time that Weimar Germany renounced the armament limitations of the Versailles Treaty which had ended World War I. Initial designs were for large ships more powerful than the French and Polish destroyers then in service, but the design grew as the Kriegsmarine expected it to serve as a small cruiser. The design work appears to have been rushed and not well-thought out as the short forecastle and lack of flare at the bow compromised the ships' seakeeping ability and their stability was inadequate. The only real innovative part of the design, the high-pressure water-tube boilers, were an over-complicated system that received almost no shipboard testing before being installed in the Type 34s, and frequently broke down throughout the life of the ships. The class had an overall length of and were long at the waterline. The ships had a beam of and a maximum draft of . They displaced at standard load and at deep load. The two Wagner geared steam turbine sets, each driving one propeller shaft, were designed to produce using steam provided by six Wagner boilers. The ships had a design speed of , but their maximum was . The Type 34s carried a maximum of of fuel oil which was intended to give a range of at a speed of but proved top-heavy in service and 30 percent of the fuel had to be retained as ballast low in the ship. The effective range proved to be only at 19 knots. The crew of the Type 34 class ships numbered 10 officers and 315 enlisted men, plus an additional 4 officers and 19 enlisted men if serving as a flotilla flagship. The Type 34s carried five SK C/34 guns in single mounts with gun shields, two each superimposed, fore and aft. The fifth gun was carried on top of the aft superstructure. The guns were numbered from one to five from front to rear. Their anti-aircraft armament consisted of four SK C/30 guns in a pair of twin mounts abreast the rear funnel and six C/30 guns in single mounts. The ships carried eight torpedo tubes in two power-operated mounts. A pair of reload torpedoes was provided for each mount. Z4 Richard Beitzen had four depth charge launchers mounted on the sides of her rear deckhouse, supplemented by six racks for individual