Factual Bit.
In 1920, King Vajiravudh in Thailand was a keen supporter of naval power. He wanted to build a Navy for Thailand but he was unable to get funding for it, primarily due to him being rather unpopular with various circles. So, he opened a public subscription to buy a battleship for the Thai Navy. It wasn't very successful; he did raise enough money to buy a British R-class destroyer that became the Phra Ruang and served until the mid-1950s.
HOWEVER SUPPOSE.....
The collection goes a bit better and faced with the popular support for a real Thai Navy, the people who had opposed the idea change their mind and put up the rest of the cash. The Thais enter negotiations with the British (relations were pretty good then) and the British, by now facing mass scrappings under the Washington Treaty, offer not one battleship but two battle cruisers. Lion and Princess Royal.
The Thais grab them, they take delivery and for years run one while keeping the other in dock while they train enough crew for both. They don't order teh four armored gunboats they eventually ended up with and scrap a lot of superfluous tonnage to make the crews available. In the 1930s, both battle cruisers get modernized in Japan, being converted to oil firing and having an anti-aircraft armament installed in place of some of their 4 inch low-angle guns.
So, by 1939, the RTN has two battle cruisers in good condition, eight pretty neat torpedo boats and four submarines. ANd the effects of that force structure are......?
In 1920, King Vajiravudh in Thailand was a keen supporter of naval power. He wanted to build a Navy for Thailand but he was unable to get funding for it, primarily due to him being rather unpopular with various circles. So, he opened a public subscription to buy a battleship for the Thai Navy. It wasn't very successful; he did raise enough money to buy a British R-class destroyer that became the Phra Ruang and served until the mid-1950s.
HOWEVER SUPPOSE.....
The collection goes a bit better and faced with the popular support for a real Thai Navy, the people who had opposed the idea change their mind and put up the rest of the cash. The Thais enter negotiations with the British (relations were pretty good then) and the British, by now facing mass scrappings under the Washington Treaty, offer not one battleship but two battle cruisers. Lion and Princess Royal.
The Thais grab them, they take delivery and for years run one while keeping the other in dock while they train enough crew for both. They don't order teh four armored gunboats they eventually ended up with and scrap a lot of superfluous tonnage to make the crews available. In the 1930s, both battle cruisers get modernized in Japan, being converted to oil firing and having an anti-aircraft armament installed in place of some of their 4 inch low-angle guns.
So, by 1939, the RTN has two battle cruisers in good condition, eight pretty neat torpedo boats and four submarines. ANd the effects of that force structure are......?