Z3 Max Schultz was one of four Type 1934 destroyers built for the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during the mid-1930s. Completed in 1937, two years before the start of World War II, the ship spent most of her time training although she did participate in the occupation of Memel in early 1939. Shortly before the beginning of World War II, the ship accidentally rammed and sank a German torpedo boat. Z3 Max Schultz spent the following month under repair. In mid-February 1940, while proceeding into the North Sea to search for British fishing trawlers, one of her sisters, , was bombed and sunk by a patrolling German bomber, with loss of 280 of her crew. While trying to rescue survivors, Z3 Max Schultz was either bombed by a patrolling German bomber, or struck a British mine and sunk, with the loss of all 308 of her crew. A contemporary German court of inquiry stated that Z3 Max Schultz was damaged by the German bomber, however postwar research revealed that Z3 Max Schultz may have hit a mine instead.
Design 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 that 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 now 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 designed speed of , but their maximum speed was . The Type 34s carried a maximum of of fuel oil which was intended to give a range of at a speed of , but they proved top-heavy in service and 30% 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 four 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, to port and starboard of her after funnel. A pair of reload torpedoes was provided for each mount. Z2 Georg Thiele had four depth charge launchers mounted on the sides of her rear deckhouse, which was supplemented by six racks for individual depth charges on the sides of the stern, with either 32 or 64 charges carried. Mine rails could be fitted on the rear deck that had a maximum capacity of 60 mines. A system of passive hydrophones designated as 'GHG' (Gruppenhorchgerät) was fitted to detect submarines.