The Khmer Navy was always short of destroyers to escort the fleet. The fleet had not needed them in the early part of the new century. But by the end of WW1, the battlefleet, now with aircraft carriers added required many more. 1922 and trials were undertaken with three units built one at each major port. These would become the initial ships of the Phuthaloetla class. The ships fell into three distinct sub-classes. The first fifteen had four single 5.1" low angle weapons, the next twelve had four single 5.1" dual purpose weapons, the last eighteen were armed with the new twin 5.1" dual purpose light turrets. By keeping the same hull and powerplant the first 27 required few internal changes. It was the last ships that required a slightly different layout to accommodate the new turret armament. A further eighteen ships of the twin type were ordered in 1941-42 and completed in 1943-45. These were the Khmer War Production destroyer type.
The class was considered big enough to be able to provide its own destroyer leader vessel. In reality, adding Captain 'D' and his staff, overloaded the ships. Normally a light cruiser would be tasked with providing the leader, up until the Prajadhipok class destroyers started being completed. At that stage, one Prajadhipok class and six Phuthaloetla class would make up a flotilla.
The first advance to the class came in 1934 when the low angle 5.1" were replaced with dual purpose guns. A simple high angle director was fitted. The single 3" AA of the previous ships was replaced with another searchlight. Except for the shape of the gun housings the two sub-classes were fairly identical. Some of the enhancements of the DP sub-class were retroactively fitted to the original design, e.g. gun director.
The last iteration of the class with twin, powered, gun turrets, was by far the best of type. Changes required by the turrets allowed space for two twin 40mm AA guns. A nice addition to the light AA which had previously only had the 28mm singles. The drawing above show one of the type after visiting the Australis Cockatoo Dockyard in early 1942 and receiving Commonwealth Radar and predictors.
