Tsushima Campaign Notes

Perhaps the greatest distinction between doing research on the Battles of Tsushima
and Jutland is the fact that no source exists with the level of detail of Campbell’s
detailed account of the Jutland battle. This is due to two likely reasons, one that the
Russians were in no state after the battle to document the events with much
certainty, nor did that have much motivation for making the news of their defeat any
more extensive, and the fact that the conveyance of information between the
Japanese and the western world is so greatly hindered by the language differences.
In any event, the information about the ships, their course during the battle, and the
damage they took is very incomplete and mainly narrative. In additional, only rough
charts of the battle and the other naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War exist in
the popular press and so there is certain amount of guesswork that has to take place
to form a complete representation of the naval battles in this war.

An accurate determination of the hits and misses in the battles is not possible, but
basing the values relative to Jutland can be done using a common understanding
that the training and quality of the Russian navy was far below that of the Japanese
navy, in some cases embarrassingly so. The lack of critical hits during these battles
prevents any kind of estimation of what parameter values would be appropriate, but
again, relative to Jutland values, it is possible to generate values that appear to
reflect the relative capabilities of the two navies.

The time of the Russo-Japanese War was prior to the introduction of the great ship
Dreadnought in 1906 and so the battleships of the Russian and Japanese fleets
have the lower number of guns, 4 is typical, that existed on the first-class ships of
that time. Smaller ships such as the cruisers and destroyers are also modestly
equipped in comparison with their counterparts of 1916 and there are no ships
comparable to the British and German Battle Cruisers that sailed the North Sea.
Still, the battles between fleets of the time were deadly enough, with the shorter
engagement distances appearing to make up for the reduced lethality of the ships so
that battles of the war are still very damaging and bloody affairs. Both sides had
destroyers with their deadly torpedoes, which at that time was commonly a part of
the armament of all ships up to the largest battleships of the day, and the Japanese
also had a number of torpedo boats, which literal to their name do not appear to
have any real capability to fire guns and thus are not unlike the American PT boat
that was to prove so fearsome to the Japanese in the second World War.

Battleship Designations
Since this war took place in the pre-Dreadnought age, the prefix BB is used as the
standard prefix for battleships in the game while the lesser prefix B is used for the
coastal defense battleships of the Russian fleet, which reflects their lower standing in
the overall capabilities of the pre-Dreadnought battleship.

Laying Smoke
The issue of the laying of smoke screens is an interesting one here. While the ships
themselves, the destroyers and torpedo boats, appear to have the technical ability to
generate a good deal of smoke based on a manipulation of their boilers and funnels,
the tactic of laying a smoke screen is not part of the naval practice of the time, at
least it was not utilized during any of the historical battles in this game. But to
completely disallow this option would prevent players from investigating how this
tactic would have affected the outcome of the battles. For that reason, the ability to
lay a smoke screen is flagged in the ship database, but through the use of parameter
data values, it is either allowed or, by default, disallowed. Players who wish to
investigate this option can utilize the optional PDT file Tsushima_Smoke.pdt which
has values allowing the laying of smoke screens by ships with that capability.

Battle Tactics
There are two fascinating pages on the Russo-Japanese Research Society web site
having to do with the instructions by both Japanese and Russian admirals to their
respective fleets.
Japanese Battle Instructions - http://www.russojapanesewar.com/instruct.html
Russian Battle Instructions –
http://www.russojapanesewar.com/makaroff-instruct.html

In particular, Togo mentions how the Chihaya and Tatsuta, light cruisers in the 1st
and 2nd Divisions, will have the responsibility to advance and engage any torpedo
attack by the enemy, in addition to their more standard roles as signal repeaters for
the division.

16-Point Turns
The "turn about" or 16-point turn is an interesting tactic of this era of naval fighting.
The Germans embraced this tactic as the Gefechtskehrtwendung and used it no less
than 3 times during the battle of Jutland. The British on the other hand didn’t employ
this tactic in battle. Both the Japanese and Russian instructions mentioned above
talk about the 16-point turn as one of the tactics they may use in battle. So allowing
both sides to perform this tactic in the game is justified. However, in the Tsushima
battle, it could be argued that the general training of the Baltic Fleet was so low that it
couldn’t be performed by that force. So the ability to perform the About Turn in the
game is limited to engagements involving the Pacific Fleet exclusively.

Historical Charts
As mentioned above, the engagement charts available in the general media for the
battles of the Russo-Japanese War are very crude and lacking in much detail.
Fortunately, there is a set of charts available for purchase from the Russo-Japanese
Research Society that are translated versions of charts created by the Japanese
after the battle of Tsushima. These charts have considerable detail and are the
basis for the overlay chart Tsushima.bmp in the game.

Bibliography

The Fleet That Had To Die, Richard Hough, Birlinn Limited, 2000.

The Russo-Japanese Research Society, http://www.russojapanesewar.com