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Echoes of
Tsushima
By Ronan Thomas
In 2005, East Asian regional strategy is
once again a hot topic for policy makers,
diplomats and journalists. As China begins to
reassert itself regionally and as its economy
revives to challenge conceptions of its place in
the world, Japan, Russia, Korea (North and South)
and the United States are busy reassessing their
relative geostrategic and military positions in
the region.
For the historian, this
rivalry finds a particular echo. One hundred years
ago, as the Russo-Japanese war raged, the first
major naval engagement of the 20th century took
place in the Korea/Japan straits - the Battle of
Tsushima of May 27-28th, 1905. In this battle, the
Russian Baltic Fleet under Admiral Rozhestventsky
was destroyed by an Imperial Japanese fleet under
Admiral Togo, rewriting naval strategy of the
period. With the Russian defeat, the
Russo-Japanese war ended decisively in Japan's
favor, Tsarist Russia turned inwards to meet
growing revolutionary pressures and her naval
aspirations in the Far East were extinguished for
a generation.
Critically, Japanese
regional naval confidence was established for the
next 40 years. Japan went on to colonize Korea in
1910 - without international opposition - and
victory at Tsushima underwrote Japan's strategic
thinking in the years leading up to its bid for
Asian regional dominance from 1937 and the fatal
attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
Even today, the facts of the battle are
extraordinary. A Tsarist battle fleet comprising
40 aging warships and other vessels sailed 18,000
miles around the world from the Baltic to the
Korea/Japan straits, dogged by poor logistics and
morale, inadequate sea repairs in warm waters and
more importantly lack of self belief. Russia
embarked on this hazardous course as a last resort
following the comprehensive defeat of its Pacific
Fleet by Japan at Shantung (Yellow Sea) in August
1904. As the only ships available to Russia, they
represented the last hope of set-piece victory
against Japan. Losing on land, Russia's military
leaders hoped that victory at sea would turn the
tide. In the event, both ships and crews were to
prove not good enough - Russian naval leadership
was poor and gunnery tactics inferior.
The
voyage soon acquired something of a farcical
character, a perception that has lasted to this
day and is still considered shameful in Russia. En
route to the Pacific, the Russian fleet first
shelled British fishing vessels at Dogger Bank,
killing three fishermen, thinking them to be
Japanese torpedo boat crews. They then later fired
at each other. Moreover, Rozhestventsky was no
Lord Horatio Nelson of Britain: he was castigated
by his colleagues as inflexible, authoritarian,
yet fatally also stricken by indecision.
Commanding the flagship Suvarov, he ordered 19
barnacle-encrusted battleships, armored cruisers
and other vessels of his reduced flotilla to
engage a fleet of 31 well ordered Japanese
warships, most twice as fast as their Russian
counterparts (such as Admiral Togo's flagship,
Mikasa, built by Vickers & Sons in Britain).
The fleets met in the Korea/Japan straits due east
of Tsushima Island and just north of nearby Iki
Island on the morning of May 27 1905.
From
the opening salvoes, the Japanese demonstrated
superior gunnery tactics, using better ammunition
and ranging and Togo correctly maneuvered his
ships to capitalize on Russian mistakes. At the
critical moment, he ordered his fleet to "cross
the T" of his adversary - ie crossing the enemy
line and focussing maximum fire of his six- and
twelve-inch guns. He managed this maneuver twice,
and in later night attacks his ships quickly
exacted a heavy price on the Russians. At ranges
of between 6,000 and 12,000 yards, 21 ships of
various classes were sunk,13 were captured or
incapacitated and perhaps 11,000 sailors were
killed or wounded on both sides.
Russia
lost four prized battleships on the first day of
the battle - the flagship Suvarov (Rozhestventsky
was transferred to the destroyer Bedovyi after
fatal damage was inflicted) Borodino, Emperor
Alexander III and Oslyabya. Added humiliation for
Russia came with the surrender or scuttling on May
28 (by Rozhestvensky's deputy Rear Admiral
Nebagatov)of the remaining battleships Orel, Sisoy
Veliki, Emperor Nikolas I, Navarin and battle
cruisers Vladimir Monomakh and Admiral Nakimov. At
least 6,000 Russian sailors were taken prisoner.
Several ships escaped the debacle in all
directions, including the cruiser Aurora, later to
become famous as the vessel that signaled the
Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 and still
sits at anchor in St Petersburg. Rozhestventsky,
lying badly wounded on the Bedovyi, was captured
at sea and taken to Japan's Sasebo naval base. He
was later visited in hospital by Togo and later
returned to Russia in disgrace where he died in
retirement in 1908.
For Japan victory was
complete. Only three Japanese vessels were lost at
Tsushima and Japan's battle cruisers had proved
more than a match for Russia's battleships. An
estimated 700 Japanese sailors were killed or
wounded compared to about 10,000 Russians.
Jubilant celebrations followed and the
Russo-Japanese war was finally conceded by Russia
with the Treaty of Portsmouth, brokered by the
United States in September 1905. Togo's flagship
the Mikasa was later anchored in honorable
retirement under the Naval Treaty of 1922 in
Yokoshuka Harbor, Japan, much like HMS Belfast on
the Thames. The ship is still there.
After
the battle naval strategists from Britain and
Germany pored over the reports as a case study in
how to fail or succeed at sea. The world of 1905
hummed with intense naval rivalry. Britain's
revolutionary armored warship HMS Dreadnought was
under construction by October that year and set to
render competitors obsolete when launched in
February 1906. The era of the naval race between
Great Britain and Germany was about to begin. A
British Royal Navy observer had actually been
present at Tsushima. Captain WC Pakenham had made
notes under shellfire on the Japanese battleship
Asahi - he was later decorated by Togo for his
calm demeanor - and filed his reports back to an
eager admiralty. Tsushima thus became an object
lesson for naval planners and fed into strategic
planning for later major ironclad clashes during
the Great War, most particularly at Jutland in
1916. Not all the lessons were applied in the
event, notably a conclusion from Tsushima that
improved gunnery tactics and superior technical
sighting equipment would be critical elements in
future engagements.
The location of the
battle was also highly significant. In East Asia
the waters south of Korea and in the sea lanes of
the Korea/Japan straits have a long history as a
naval killing ground. The straits have proved
strategically important for local powers, as the
English Channel has been in British history. For
centuries Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Mongol
forces have fought naval actions here. The Mongol
warlord Kublai Khan's huge fleet twice attempted
to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281 but foundered
disastrously. In 1592 and 1597 Korean Admiral Yi
Soon-sin, a commander regarded in Korea today as
highly as Nelson is in Britain, dominated the
straits and the approaches to Korea using the
forerunner of ironclad warships - armored
so-called "Turtle ships" - and defeated opposing
Japanese fleets. In World War II, the straits were
to feature again with surface, submarine and air
operations conducted by both Japan and the United
States. Modern tourists from Busan, South Korea
taking the ferry to Tsushima Island or to Chejudo
Island, the latter a traditional honeymoon
destination for Korean couples, pass through once
viciously contested seas and over naval
graveyards.
Today, the Korea/Japan straits
remain a major international maritime
thoroughfare, but one haunted by the ghosts of
Tsushima. Flying over the straits to Tokyo from
Seoul gives a powerful reminder of the dramatic
events that unfolded a century ago. One can
compare the public in-flight navigation display
with the known naval lines of battle by looking
due south. The track of Rozhestventsky's ships as
they advanced, in line astern, on a southwesterly
track northeastwards and the positions of Togo's
fleet heading southwards can be visually
estimated. The approximate area of sea where the
Russian admiral was captured unconscious on board
the fleeing destroyer Bedovyi can be guessed at by
the imaginative. The wrecks of the Russian
battleships and cruisers rest over 90 meters down
east and north of Tsushima Island in the warm
Tsushima current, which flows northward into the
Sea of Japan. The area is regularly battered by
typhoon-strength winds and hurricanes. Many sank
as smashed burning hulks and their condition today
is judged as poor. The wreck sites remain war
graves and diving on them is rare due to the
combination of crowded sea lanes and the typhoon
season each year making examination and filming
difficult.
The events of Tsushima are now
finding added resonance in revived competition
between old and new regional naval rivals.
Overall, what remains unclear is whether current
strategic arrangements will survive in future with
the rise of China and the uncertain response of
other regional actors, each with individual
security concerns.
Japanese government
reports in 2005 suggest planned aircraft carrier
construction by China, prompting concerns that
Japan might follow suit to emerge from America's
existing protective alliance. To make matters
worse, Chinese-Japanese relations soured in 2005
over differing perceptions of Japanese actions
during World War II and have been exacerbated
further by intrusions by Chinese submarines into
Japan's territorial waters near Okinawa.
The grip of history and memory remain
strong. Japan continues to be embroiled in inshore
disputes with both North and South Korea and
argues with Russia over rights to the Kurile
Islands. Japan is also highly concerned by North
Korean missile tests over its territory and
possible nuclear weapons acquisition. Japan's
neighbors, North and South Korea regularly lose
lives in naval duels in their home waters and
display their own resentments concerning Japan's
war record. Russia's Pacific fleet, weakened in
the years since 1991 by decay and lack of
modernization, remains an active regional naval
actor but its parlous position was illustrated
this month by its need for international
assistance to retrieve successfully a stricken
mini-submarine off the Kamchatka peninsula.
Finally, China's claims to the island of
Taiwan, further south, involve the United Sates
navy as the nominal guarantor of security under
treaty obligations of 1979. A major flashpoint
here is considered eminently possible. The US navy
also has hypothetical plans for blockade of North
Korea to prevent possible export of missile or
nuclear technology.
The naval theater of
East Asia thus continues to provide potent
strategic challenges a century after Tsushima. The
era of the ironclad may be over but the echoes of
1905 can still be heard.
Ronan
Thomas is a security consultant and writer on
geostrategy and history.
(Copyright
2005 Ronan Thomas) |
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