Talk:Battle of Tsushima

Confusing Paragraph

Tōgō's greatest advantage was that of experience, having five of the ten fleet commanders in either navy with combat experience aboard modern warships on his side,[r] while Rozhestvensky had none. The others were all Russian admirals whom he had defeated, including Oskar Starck, who had been relieved of his command following his humiliating defeat in the Battle of Port Arthur; Admiral Stepan Makarov, killed by a mine off Port Arthur; Wilgelm Vitgeft, who had been killed in the Battle of the Yellow Sea; and Admiral (Prince) Pavel Ukhtomsky who was relieved and recalled to Mukden by Viceroy Yevgeni Alekseyev[s] after six battleships of the Pacific Squadron failed to reach Vladivostok as a result of the Battle of the Yellow Sea.[36] Admiral Karl Jessen, who experienced the Battle off Ulsan, remained in Vladivostok.

Who are "the others", and how are there so many of them?

Assuming "the others" are the 5 fleet commanders with experience not on Japan's side, wouldn't that give each side 5 experienced commanders? If so, how did Rozhestvensky have none? What happened to the other 5 fleet commanders with experience? And how is one of them a commander who had been killed in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, and another another a commander who had been killed by a mine off Port Arthur? How are already-dead commanders participating in this battle?

Either I'm reading it wrong, or it's extremely confusing.

Mr. Moral Panic (talk) 02:13, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

At the time, all the admirals in the world knew a lot about sails and Trafalgar. Very few had experiences on modern steel warship, guns that reach 10km, torpedoes or radio communication. So admirals with actual modern fleet warfare experience of the time, was quite a rare breed (and was extremely valuable in retrospect, in my view).

There were five such examples in the Imperial Russian Navy up to that point in history:

1.Vitgeft -killed, 2.Makarov -killed, 3.Stark -recalled, 4.Ukhtomsky -recalled, 5.Jessen -active in Vladivostok.

Captain 2nd rank, Vladimir Semenoff experienced Siege of Port Arthur and Battle of the Yellow Sea. He went back to Kronstadt after the Yellow Sea combat, joined the Second Pacific Squadron, and participated in this battle as a staff officer to Rozhestvensky. So, leaving the common sense that we learn more from failure than success aside, it was logistically possible for the latter three in the above list to participate in this battle, but they were not assigned to do so.

Imperial Japanese Navy, on the other hand, chose Togo, who was very well experienced in modern naval warfare (not only in Russo-Japanese War, but also in fleet battles in the previous Sino-Japanese War), despite being junior in seniority ranking within IJN at the time, to lead the Combined Fleet, let alone keeping the four other admirals (Kamimura, Kataoka, Dewa and Uryu) with such combat experience in the fleet.

With this as the background, is the paragraph easier to understand? How would you word it, without making it unnecessarily long? Yiba (talk | contribs) 03:28, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

How does this look?

Tōgō's greatest advantage was that of experience, having five of the ten fleet commanders in the history of the Russian or Japanese navy with combat experience aboard modern warships on his side,[r] while Rozhestvensky had none. The other five were all Russian admirals whom he had defeated and not present for this battle, including Oskar Starck, who had been relieved of his command following his humiliating defeat in the Battle of Port Arthur; Admiral Stepan Makarov, killed by a mine off Port Arthur; Wilgelm Vitgeft, who had been killed in the Battle of the Yellow Sea; and Admiral (Prince) Pavel Ukhtomsky who was relieved and recalled to Mukden by Viceroy Yevgeni Alekseyev[s] after six battleships of the Pacific Squadron failed to reach Vladivostok as a result of the Battle of the Yellow Sea.[36] Admiral Karl Jessen, who experienced the Battle off Ulsan, remained in Vladivostok.

Yiba (talk | contribs) 05:14, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Compass Reference

I don't know too much about naval science but isn't "west-north-east" as mentioned in this article impossible? Kent Wang 19:37, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes it is. A quick search of Wikpedia yields this page on compass points:Boxing_the_compass. "West-north-east" isn't among them. Difficult to tell what direction the author actually meant to type, though, and I'm having no luck looking for reference material with sufficient detail. Iulianus 09:39, 27 May 2004 UTC

I think he meant that the ships moved west, then north, then east, although I can't be entirely sure.

About the course: Rozhestvensky ordered the Russian task-force to keep moving towards Vladivostok on the course of North-East 21 degrees.

• • if you route on 270° (west), tou can have only N, W, South in the 3 letters, not East, meaning route on 90° ! ;D Alvaro 23:36, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

Pusan is WNW

• Given the map I added, the Japanese Fleet approached from the NNW southerly, or hugged the coast southerly, then cut eastwardly, thus possibly approaching from the WNW. I would infer the Japanese would not allow them selves to travel south of the Tsushima Islands. In any event, with such a speed advantage, they were dominent before the battle fired shot one. [[User:fabartus |fabartus] 15:48, 2005 May 28 (UTC)

• Jukes essential history (See full reference in following section) shows the Combined Japanese fleet approaching the Russian on a near reciprocal course, to wit, on a heading of 202 to 212 degrees true (by my estimate). He was ahead (North of) and Eastward of the Russians at that time moving dead slow, lurking over the area he expected the Russians to appear near given the scouting report of the night before. He'd also had two fleet detachments make contact and shadow the Russians from early morning on. By 09:45 hrs, his third division (Old captured Chinese Battleship Chin Yen plus three cruisers) had parralleled the Russian fleet about 7 nautical miles off starting when they were even with the south Island of TsuShima Islands. Fearing the coastal batteries on the Islands, the Russians were transiting closer to Kyoto in the approximately fifty mile wide channel, which gave sufficient sea room for the third division.

After that he made a number of course changes crossing and recrossing the Russian 'Tee' so that his track is pretty close to a twisted pretzel. The Russians came along the same course, but gradually bent more and more westerly.Fabartus 20:30, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC) Japan

The Japanese

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Speed

I got a lot of questions. Why russian speed is 8 knots? All russian sources talk about 9 knots, and they also insist that the speed was determined by erratic decision of Рождественский to keep transports with the squadrones, while fighting. Russian battleships could move with 12-knots speed. Manchjurshi

Destroyers and auxiliaries

Citation added. (125) --ThomasJa276 (talk) 11:07, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Request to purchase additional ships from Argentina and Chile

Pleshakov claims Rozhestvensky wanted Russia to purchase another seven cruisers from Argentina and Chile but doesn’t expand on that. Anyone know any more comprehensive source on this.

©Geni (talk) 03:05, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Eight of them are explained in the last paragraph in the British Support section with sources. Constitución (battleship, HMS Swiftsure), Libertad (battleship, HMS Triumph), Esmeralda (IJN Izumi) and Chacabuco from Chile. Bernardino Rivadavia (IJN Kasuga), Mariano Moreno (IJN Nisshin), General Belgrano and Pueyrredón from Argentina. The Esmeralda and similar Arturo Prat (IJN Tsukushi) are not included in the seven, as those purchases by Japan were well known by the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War.

Yiba (talk | contribs) 06:44, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

p.s. Citation #73 of this article shows "Submarine Boat" No.1 through No.5 along the left edge of the red square's'. Also, there is a historical site at 35.03490740856227N, 138.8859816949849E in Japan (A peculiar shaped concrete pier with rails leading to a tunnel), which I strongly suspect was the development/production facility for Kaiten during WWII. Thought you may be interested. I have been in USS Albacore, which amazed me with its small size, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Yiba (talk | contribs) 09:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC) Yiba (talk | contribs) 09:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC)