Interwar defence debates concentrated on carriers, battleships, cruisers, and raw destroyer numbers, leaving small combatants largely unexamined. Emergency wartime construction then produced cheap, basic ships when a steady peacetime program could have refined gunboats and sloops year by year. A suggested program of a pair of roughly 700-ton gunboats annually would have been treaty-safe and could have sustained China Station, river, and inshore roles. Sloops could take anti-submarine and convoy escort work, while gunboats handled rivers and landing support. Each small ship released a destroyer for fleet duty. Even older V and W-class destroyers retained torpedoes and speed, so freeing them increased the number of fleet combatants available alongside newer H, Tribal, and J classes.
Notable Point · 49:25-53:23
Gunboats and sloops as force multipliers
A steady peacetime program for small combatants could have covered river, inshore, anti-submarine, and escort work while preserving destroyers for the fleet.