Battle of Ko Chang

17 January 1941, Ko Chang anchorage, Gulf of Thailand

French naval victory; two Thai torpedo boats sunk and Thonburi wrecked

In late 1940 Thailand went to war with Vichy France to win back the lands in Laos and Cambodia it had lost to France in the 1890s and 1900s, and its army was getting the better of the French. To relieve the pressure, Admiral Jean Decoux, governor of Indochina, sent a small squadron under Capitaine de Vaisseau Régis Bérenger to attack the Thai fleet: the old light cruiser Lamotte-Picquet and four sloops. At dawn on 17 January 1941 they came in among the islands of the Ko Chang anchorage, where a seaplane had found Thai ships the day before, and caught their crews asleep. Lamotte-Picquet sank the torpedo boats Chonburi and Songkhla. The Japanese-built coast-defence ship Thonburi got under way and fought a running battle among the islands, but an early hit killed her captain, and she was set on fire and escaped, listing, into shallow water, where she was run aground and capsized. Thai aircraft attacked the French squadron as it withdrew, hitting Lamotte-Picquet with a bomb that failed to explode. It was the clearest French victory of the war, but Japan stepped in to mediate, and the peace in May gave Thailand most of the land it had claimed.