Shimakaze was planned and built as the experimental prototype of a new class of heavy destroyers, designated "Type C." Sixteen other units were ordered but later cancelled due to more pressing wartime needs. Though never repeated, she was a successful design, combining large size (around 25 feet longer than Yuugumo-class destroyers), firepower (six 5" guns in new Type D turrets), and heavy torpedo armament (three quintuple sets of 24" tubes, the most powerful such broadside ever mounted on a Japanese destroyer) with a 40-knot top speed. The latter was thanks to new high-pressure, high-temperature boilers able to generate nearly 80,000 shaft horsepower and would have propelled all future Japanese destroyer designs, had circumstances permitted their construction.