The Navy of the Independent State of Croatia (), was the navy of the NDH established by the Law on the Establishment of the Army and Navy issued on 10 April 1941 by retired Austro-Hungarian Lieutenant Colonel (later Marshal and Commander-in-chief of the armed forces) Slavko Kvaternik, with the approval of the Germans. The task of the navy, along with the army, was to defend the new state against both foreign and domestic enemies. The Law Decree on the Armed Forces of 18 March 1942 organised the navy as a branch of the army (). The navy was always a small part of the armed forces, numbering only 1,262 in September 1943. At the end of December 1944, the navy consisted of a flotilla of small craft stationed at Rijeka. The entire flotilla tried to desert to the Partisans in December 1944, but