Republic of Finland
After gaining independence in 1917, Finland received roughly 30 vessels belonging to the former Russian Empire, which were of poor construction. After an accident in 1925 which saw the loss of an entire torpedo boat and crew in a storm, Finland began a naval armament program centered around the Turku shipyard
Crichton-Vulcan with the goal of replacing the old Russian ships with new ones of domestic construction. The goal of the naval expansion was to intercept Soviet shipping in the Baltic and protect against amphibious landings.
*2 Ilmarinen-class Coastal Defense Ships (slow, heavily armed and armored cruisers)
*3 Vetehinen-class Submarines
*2 Vesikko-class Submarines (I included the Saukko in this class)
*4 torpedo boats
Of note is that all of the ships were designed by a Dutch company called Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw. This was in fact a dummy company owned by the Kriegsmarine for the purpose of designing and experimenting with submarines and other vessels in order to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles. The Design 1047 Battlecruisers in the Dutch entry were created by this firm, which also designed the Scharnhorst. Finland's submarines were actually prototypes for the German subs. The
Vesikko was the prototype for the German Type II sub, for example.
All of these ships that can be represented in-game were finished by 1936. PI chose to merge all of the subs together into one unit, and the torpedo boats aren't vanilla units. The two coastal defense ships are modeled as level 0 heavy cruisers.
Republic of China
Until the 1st Sino-Japanese war, China had the largest navy in Asia. The war was disastrous for China, which saw all of its battleships and the majority of its fleet destroyed by Japanese cruisers. In the early 30's, China began rearm its navy and overhaul the ships that survived the 1st Sino-Japanese War and the Warlord Era of the Chinese Civil War. The first step was ordering the Ning Hai cruiser from Japan, which was finished on September 1, 1932. The Ning Hai's sister ship, the Ping Hai, was built in Shanghai under Japanese supervision, and was launched on Sept. 28, 1935 and commissioned on June 18, 1936. Aside from those two vessels, the newest Chinese ships were the two American-built Chao Ho-class cruisers, commissioned in 1911. The rest of the navy was built in the late 1890's and was hopelessly outclassed by the IJN.
Due to the tensions between China and Japan, the RoC began a naval rearmament plan that was vastly different from other nations. Aside from the two Ning Hai cruisers, the focus of the rearmament was to modernize the existing fleet, especially the ships' AA guns. The reason for focusing on the existing ships was that Japan was unwilling to build or sell more to China, and the Europeans refused to build or sell ships to the RoC for two reasons. The first was that France, the UK, the US, and the Netherlands didn't want to antagonize Japan and prompt an attack on their colonies. The second reason was that all of the European naval powers, majors and minors, were busy rearming themselves due to tensions in Europe and couldn't spare ships for China.
The Chinese fleet when the 2nd Sino-Japanese war broke out, excluding small craft like torpedo boats, was:
*2 Ning Hai-class cruisers
*2 Chao Ho-class cruisers (3 were ordered, but the revolution in 1912 forced the Fei Hung to be canceled; it was sold to Greece instead and renamed the Elli)
*3 Hai Yung-class cruisers
*1 Hai Tien-class protected cruiser (the Hai Chi was the only surviving ship of the class)
*1 Tung Chi-class cruiser
*3 Chang Feng-class Destroyers
All ships were either sunk in port by Japanese bombers or sunk in the Yangtze river to act as a blockade. Both Ning Hai-class cruisers were raised and served in the IJN. Note that FTM vanilla's fleet is inaccurate. It has 1 too many destroyers units, is missing the Ping Hai in the starting build queue, and is missing the Hai Yung, Hai Chou, Hai Chi, and Tung Chi cruisers. The OOB was fixed by myself and Paradox decided to include the fix in TFH.
The reason I included China in this thread despite having a fleet that was almost entirely purchased or built abroad is because it built the Ping Hai domestically, which IMO qualifies it as a nation with a naval industry, although a very small one. Since the late 1800's China was building its own small gunboats domestically, which are too small to include in-game.
For sources, I used this
site and
this one.
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