Battle of Tsushima

The Battle of Tsushima was the final naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War, fought on 27–28 May 1905 in the Tsushima Strait. A devastating defeat for the Imperial Russian Navy, the battle was the only decisive engagement ever fought between modern steel battleship fleets and the first in which wireless telegraphy (radio) played a critically important role. The battle was described by contemporary Sir George Clarke as "by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar". The battle is known in Japan as the Naval Battle of the Sea of Japan.

The battle involved the Japanese Combined Fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō and the Russian Second Pacific Squadron under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, which had sailed over seven months and 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km) from the Baltic Sea. The Russians hoped to reach Vladivostok and establish naval control of the Far East to relieve the Imperial Russian Army in Manchuria. The Russian fleet had a large advantage in the number of battleships, but was overall older and slower than the Japanese fleet, and outnumbered nearly three to one in total hulls. The Russians were sighted in the early morning on 27 May, and the battle began in the afternoon. Rozhestvensky was wounded and knocked unconscious in the initial action, and four of his battleships were sunk by sunset. At night, Japanese destroyers and torpedo boats attacked the remaining ships, and Admiral Nikolai Nebogatov surrendered in the morning of 28 May.

All 11 Russian battleships were lost, of which seven were sunk and four captured. Only a few warships escaped, with one cruiser and two destroyers reaching Vladivostok, and two auxiliary cruisers as well as one transport escaping back to Madagascar. Three cruisers were interned at Manila by the United States until the war was over. Eight auxiliaries and one destroyer were disarmed and remanded at Shanghai by China. Russian casualties were high, with more than 5,000 dead and 6,000 captured. The Japanese, which had lost no heavy ships, had 117 dead.

The loss of almost every heavy warship of the Baltic Fleet forced Russia to sue for peace, and the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed in September 1905. In Japan, the battle was hailed as one of the greatest naval victories in Japanese history, and Admiral Tōgō was revered as a national hero. His flagship Mikasa has been preserved as a museum ship in Yokosuka Harbour.

On 8 February 1904, destroyers of the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the Russian Far East Fleet anchored in Port Arthur; three ships – two battleships and a cruiser – were damaged in the attack. The Russo-Japanese War had thus begun. Japan's first objective was to secure its lines of communication and supply to the Asian mainland, enabling it to conduct a ground war in Manchuria. To achieve this, it was necessary to neutralise Russian naval power in the Far East. At first, the Russian naval forces remained inactive and did not engage the Japanese, who staged unopposed landings in Korea. The Russians were revitalised by the arrival of Admiral Stepan Makarov and were able to achieve some degree of success against the Japanese, but on 13 April Makarov's flagship, the battleship Petropavlovsk, struck a mine and sank; Makarov was among the dead. His successors failed to challenge the Japanese Navy, and the remaining six Russian battleships and five armoured cruisers were effectively bottled up in their base at Port Arthur.

By May, the Japanese had landed forces on the Liaodong Peninsula and in August began the siege of the naval station. On 9 August, Admiral Wilgelm Vitgeft, commander of the 1st Pacific Squadron, was ordered to sortie his fleet to Vladivostok, link up with the Squadron stationed there, and then engage the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in a decisive battle. Both squadrons of the Russian Pacific Fleet would ultimately become dispersed during the Battle of the Yellow Sea, where Admiral Vitgeft was killed by a salvo strike from the Japanese battleship Asahi on 10 August, and the Battle off Ulsan on 14 August 1904. What remained of Russian Pacific naval power would eventually be sunk in Port Arthur in December 1904.

With the inactivity of the First Pacific Squadron after the death of Admiral Makarov and the tightening of the Japanese noose around Port Arthur, the Russians considered sending part of their Baltic Fleet to the Far East. The plan was to relieve Port Arthur by sea, link up with the First Pacific Squadron, overwhelm the Imperial Japanese Navy, and then delay the Japanese advance into Manchuria until Russian reinforcements could arrive via the Trans-Siberian railroad and overwhelm the Japanese land forces there. As the situation in the Far East deteriorated, the Tsar (encouraged by his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II), agreed to the formation of the Second Pacific Squadron. This would consist of five divisions of the Baltic Fleet, including 11 of its 13 battleships. The squadrons, including the later-formed Third Pacific Squadron, departed the Baltic ports of Reval (Tallinn) and Libau (Liepāja) on 15–16 October 1904 (Rozhestvensky fleet) and 2 February 1905 (Nebogatov fleet), and on 3 November 1904 (protected cruisers Oleg and Izumrud, auxiliary cruisers Ural and Terek, destroyers Gromkiy and Grozniy under the command of Captain 1st rank Leonid Dobrotvorsky.), numbering 48 ships and auxiliaries.

The Rozhestvensky and von Fölkersahm squadrons sailed through the Øresund Strait into the North Sea. The Russians had received numerous fictitious reports of Japanese torpedo boats operating in the area and were on high alert. In the Dogger Bank incident, the Rozhestvensky squadron mistook a group of British fishing trawlers operating near the Dogger Bank at night for hostile Japanese ships. The fleet fired upon the small civilian vessels, killing several British fishermen; one trawler was sunk, while another six were damaged. In confusion, the Russians even fired upon two of their own vessels, killing some of their own men. The firing continued for twenty minutes before Rozhestvensky ordered firing to cease; loss of life was limited by the fact that the Russian gunnery was highly inaccurate. The British were outraged by the incident and incredulous that the Russians could mistake a group of fishing trawlers for Japanese warships, thousands of kilometres from the nearest Japanese port. Britain almost entered the war in support of Japan, with whom it had an alliance (but was neutral in the war, as their mutual defense clause stipulated "when either nation faced 'more than one' adversaries in a war"). The Royal Navy sortied and shadowed the Russian fleet until a diplomatic agreement was reached. France, which had hoped to eventually bring the British and Russians together in an anti-German bloc, intervened diplomatically to restrain Britain from declaring war. The Russians were forced to disembark officers who were suspected of misconduct to give evidence to the International Court of Inquiry at Paris, ultimately accepting responsibility for the incident and compensating the fishermen.