I believe airships were a counter to German U-Boats during WWII on the US east coast. They were excellent spotters and could even attack. That said, I think a modern destroyer would be shooting one of these out of the sky before the airship even knew a destroyer was there.
The problem here is that it was a huge different between WWI and WWII destroyers and battleships (AA, detecting subs, etc.) and there is a huge difference between WWII and modern destroyers and cruisers.
A modern destroyer is more like a Missile Cruiser than a destroyer.
My (almost perfect) solution to all this would be.
Destroyers and Cruisers come with a basic stats. Then through upgrades and/or promotions (probably better with promotions) it can improve it's AA capacity, sub detection, sub warfare, offensive, defense.
If you look at the russian navy, it has very specialized ships. They have for example both a destroyer class and a cruiser class that is specialized in sub warfare but with only basic other weapon system. And they have both destroyers and cruisers that is AA specialists, but with only basic other weapons systems.
This would mean that if you have a "WWI" fleet and then if you face an enemy that have flights and you don't have promoted your fleet with AA (or cannot) then your ships are more or less sitting ducks or if you have your "WWI" fleet and then you haven't promoted them to counter subs then you may have trouble finding any (like early WWII). OR
There could be one set of ships (pre WWII) and another set of ships (WWII) and a third set of ships (modern).
