List of German Navy Ship Classes - The Type Codes

The Type Codes

The post-war navy of western Germany introduced a three digit code system to designate every class of vessel they ordered to design or acquired from foreign nations. Even some classes that were only built for export got such codes, most prominently the Type 209 submarine. After reunification the Deutsche Marine kept the system, codes for ships from the former forces of East Germany (NVA) were added. (See #Former NVA units).

The code is sometimes prefixed with a letter according to the category of the ships, e.g.:

• U for submarines (U-Boot)
• Z for destroyer (Zerstörer)
• F for frigates (Fregatten)
• S for fast attack craft (Schnellboote)

Upgrades to the design or major refits of already built ships are marked with a postfixed letter, beginning with A for the first modification. This letter is usually spoken and sometimes written according to the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, e.g. class 206 alpha for the upgraded Type 206 submarine.

The codes are grouped with a two-level categorization, the first digit defines the first category. Categories are usually further subdivided in blocks.

In each block of Type codes, the numbers were assigned chronologically for designed types. Classes acquired from foreign nation or from World War II were given numbers near the end of their block. Sometimes a block is further divided, e.g. Types 120—139 have apparently been split in frigates (120-129) and corvettes (130-139) with the upcoming Type 130 corvette.

The Type codes starting with 0 are not used, and also the digit 0 is skipped at the start of a category, i.e. codes 000-099, 100, 200… are not used.

Individual ships in a class are designated with two digit number following a slash, e.g. 123/02 for the frigate F216 Schleswig-Holstein, second ship of the Type 123 Brandenburg class.