The Navy of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes – from 1929, the Royal Yugoslav Navy (Serbo-Croatian Latin: Kraljevska mornarica; Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Краљевска морнарица; КМ) – included a wide range of vessels during its existence from 1920 to 1945. This list includes all sea-going warships ranging from a light cruiser down to motor torpedo boats (MTBs), and also includes river monitors that operated on the Danube and other rivers. Large auxiliary vessels such as submarine tenders and tankers are included, but hulks, tugs and smaller auxiliary craft are not.
The KM was formed in 1920, but it was not until March 1921 that a number of former Austro-Hungarian vessels were transferred, some of which were already obsolete.[1] The only modern seagoing warships transferred were twelve torpedo boats. Little was done to improve the fleet during the 1920s, but fleet modernisation was underway from the early 1930s, with a British-made flotilla leader followed by a class of modern French-designed destroyers and German-built MTBs. Almost all of the fleet was captured by the Axis powers during the April 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia, but a few vessels escaped to form the KM-in-exile, which operated under British supervision. Later in the war, several vessels that had been in Italian service were returned to the KM-in-exile, and these were joined by a British corvette. At the end of the war, these vessels were transferred to the fledgling Yugoslav Navy.[a]
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