Tsushima
Battleship Shikishima.
Petropavlovsk the view from the left board.
Naval ordnance made great strides in the early battleship era. Until 1895, armor-piercing projectiles were solid, just as they had been back during the U.S. Civil War—and with about as little success. But in that year and in 1903, both a British as well as a U.S. company introduced versions of an explosive-filled projectile able to pass through its own caliber steel armor. New fillers, like trinitrotoluene (TNT), also reduced the possibility of these shells exploding when fired and increased the shells’ explosive effect. The various new propellants went under the name of smokeless powder, but they were more smoke less than smokeless.
Gunnery itself had finally begun to emerge from its prevailing primitive inaccuracy. As late as 1900, RN warships had difficulty in hitting a target a little over a mile distant. At Tsushima five years later, the Japanese could engage their enemy at 2.5 miles range— and were proud of it. Generally, although the big naval guns were capable of hitting a target at 6,000 yards, they rarely hit one at 1,500 yards, even in practice. By Jutland, hits were scored at 5 miles or more, but nonetheless, hits on both sides averaged an unimpressive 0.33 percent to 4 percent.
Russian battleship designs, which had in earlier decades followed British concepts, began to display more French influence by the 1890s—worse luck for them. The first Russian pre-dreadnoughts were the three unlucky Petropavlovsks (Petropavlovsk, Poltava, and Sevastopol, completed in 1903–1905—all three would be lost at Tsushima). The last pre-dreadnought Russian battleships were the Imperator Pavel class (Imperator Pavel and Andrei Pervoswanni, both completed in 1910). Although the Russian ironclad/battleship fleet was sometimes used as a bogeyman by the Royal Navy to extract more funds from Parliament, Russian capital ships remained generally inferior to their British counterparts. Their disastrous performance at Tsushima revealed the hollowness of the Russian naval threat. Nonetheless, the Russians were perhaps more quick than any other naval power to adopt technological innovations. For example, Sinope pioneered triple-expansion engines, and Georgi Pobiedonosetz was the first to carry electrically worked turrets and hoists. (A few Russian battleships were the only non–U.S. Navy warships to mount the U.S.-style cage masts.)
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The Russo-Japanese War at sea began disastrously for both sides off Port Arthur. First, the modern Russian battleship Petropavlovsk struck a mine on 13 April 1904 and sank. This was a double-disaster, for the stricken battleship carried down with it Russia’s best admiral, Stephan Makarov. And the mine had not yet finished its deadly work: Little more than a month later, two relatively new Japanese battleships, Hatsuse and Yashima, also struck mines off Port Arthur on the same day and sank with heavy loss of life.
In August, the Russian fleet finally sortied from besieged Port Arthur, the command devolved to Admiral Vilgelm Vitegift, who did not live long enough to demonstrate his abilities. Admiral Heihachiro Togo, despite his four-to-six inferiority in battleships and his awareness that, unlike the Russians, he was commanding Japan’s only battle fleet, did not hesitate to close with the enemy.
The Russians were actually giving a good account of themselves with accurate gunfire when fate entered the battle: A 12-inch Japanese shell ricocheted off the sea and plunged through the roof of battleship Tsarevitch’s armored conning tower, where it exploded. The errant shell wreaked havoc among the crowded Russian officers, killing Vitegift and wounding many others. The battleship’s steering engine then failed, and Tsarevitch began to circle toward the Japanese line. Lacking orders, the Russian fleet broke up in disarray, the fleet second-in-command signaled to follow, and the Russians retreated back to Port Arthur. Togo was frustrated by gathering dusk from following up his lucky shot. Later, Japanese shore batteries at Port Arthur finished off the battleships Poltava, Retvisan, Peresviet, and Pobeda. Sevastopol was scuttled in deep water outside the port, and Tsarevitch sought internment at Tsingtao, China. Port Arthur had become a battleship graveyard.
Moscow then dispatched the 2nd Pacific Squadron, commanded by Admiral Zinovi Petrovich Rohdzsvenski, from the Baltic to the Pacific, halfway around the world, to salvage the desperate situation in the Pacific.
Rohdzsvenski’s main units numbered eight battleships, three armored cruisers, and three hopelessly obsolete armored coast-defense warships. The core of the Russian fleet was represented by the four new battleships of the Borodino class (Borodino, Alexander III, Orel, and Kniaz Suvarov). The Russians again appeared to have a strong edge in numbers, but they were, in truth, inferior in just about every other way, particularly guns, armor, and speed. And Rohdzsvenski’s fleet was also outclassed in the intangibles that really counted: leadership, morale, and training. By the time it met the Japanese, the Russian fleet was completing a debilitating seven-month epic of endurance. Instead of training, the crews had exhausted themselves in repeated coaling stops and were suffering from low morale and heat exhaustion.
The Japanese squadron numbered only four battleships and eight armored cruisers, but this was a homogenous fleet, with higher speed and morale, and was led by one of the great fighting commanders of the age, Admiral Togo, in his flagship Mikasa. Mikasa had been constructed in Britain, and all of Togo’s warships were foreign- built. On the other side, and unfortunately for them, the Russians’ battleships had been constructed on the usual bizarre French design pattern and were top-heavy and outclassed by Togo’s capital ships.
Although Admiral Rohdzsvenski had hoped to make for the Russian naval port of Vladivostok, Togo cut him off, forcing the Russian fleet to battle. From the start, Togo outfought the Russians. The Japanese fleet dumped coal to tackle their opponents more quickly, whereas the Russians were encumbered by bags of coal everywhere, endangering stability. While the Japanese communicated by radio (this being the first naval battle in history in which radio was used), the Russians relied on signal flags, despite the smoke and haze (Rohdzsvenski feared that his radio messages could be intercepted).
On the afternoon of 27 May 1905, Togo, after sighting his prey, made a daring move to the northeast to cut off the Russians from Vladivostok and to enable him to cross the T. The move also exposed his fleet to Russian broadsides during the long turn. But Russian gunnery was poor (something Togo might well have suspected), and the Japanese were able to make their line-ahead formation unhindered, parallel to the Russians. Now Japanese superior speed and gunnery began to tell, although neither side could gain a complete view. By nightfall, the Japanese had practically destroyed Rohdzsvenski’s fleet; Togo carried on the fight into the night with torpedo-boat attacks.
Dawn revealed that eight of the twelve Russian capital ships in the line had been sunk, including three of the new Borodinos, and the other four captured. (Four cruisers were sunk and one scuttled.) The Japanese lost three torpedo boats. Comparative human casualties also indicate the extent of the Russian disaster: 4,830 Russians killed and a little less than 7,000 captured, as compared to 110 Japanese fatalities. As noted, Tsushima was the first naval battle in which radio was employed, but it was also the last in which underwater torpedoes and aerial weapons did not count. Finally, all attention was focused on the gunfire losses of the Russians, and the three battleships sunk by mines were practically ignored.
Overnight, Russia had ceased to be a Pacific power, replaced by a victorious Japan, which would continue to expand its power in Asia and the Pacific until the conclusion of its disastrous war with the United States. It would be difficult to imagine more convincing proof that Mahan’s great-gun high-seas naval battle could decide the course of empires.
Of the three early battleship era naval battles, only Tsushima repaid detailed studying; the other two were so one-sided that little could be learned except that armor, training, and leadership still mattered. Tsushima was indeed perused in detail by naval architects and officers. All the intricate theories, war-gaming, and writings on the future of naval warfare had been put into practice almost to perfection. Admiral Togo became such a hero that babies in the United States and Great Britain were named for him. Yet Togo’s Mikasa, considered at the time the world’s most powerful warship, would soon be rendered obsolete by Dreadnought.
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