Over the past month, the site has been continuously rocked by articles dedicated to the 110th anniversary of the Tsushima pogrom. The participants in the discussion adhere to diametrically opposite points of view.
First, everything was great, competent command, serviceable equipment, trained teams. So the stars converged, accidentally lost the battle with a score of 27: 3.
The second point of view was set out in detail even before the start of the battle, in the fall of 1904 in the articles of the cavalier N. L. Klado (15 days of arrest for writing - know whom to criticize): the Russian squadron has no chance against the Japanese fleet.
Subsequently, these conclusions were confirmed by eyewitnesses of the tragic events - battalier Novikov-Priboi and engineer V. P. Kostenko (the author of the memoirs "On the" Eagle "in Tsushima"): … There is not a single person on the squadron, starting with the admiral himself and ending with the last conscientious sailor who would believe in the success of a reckless adventure.
And Klado, and Kostenko, and the legendary Novikov-Priboy may be biased in their own way, but the general conclusion is so banal that it does not need long explanations. Tsushima became the "hour of truth" for the rotten tsarist regime, which launched the mechanism of great socio-economic transformations in Russia. Another 12 years will pass, and with the same speed as the Second Pacific Squadron, the dynasty of the Romanov Tsars will collapse and die.
The Russo-Japanese War exposed the complete indifference of the degenerates of the tsarist family to their own country, total nepotism, embezzlement, and a social gap between the strata of Russian society. Such a surface has surfaced that future Soviet historians, who had an extremely biased attitude towards the pre-revolutionary era, did not even have to finish writing and writing anything in an attempt to denigrate that era. The mess that was going on in tsarist Russia attracted a multivolume "black humor", if it were not for our country and the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
It is from this perspective that you need to look at Tsushima, and not try to look for an explanation in the low speed of EBRs and unusable shells.
Many people do not like the words about "a doomed squadron crawling under a hurricane of Japanese fire." But if this is not the case, then what did the Tsushima battle represent?
My respected opponent, Andrey Kolobov, tried to save the reputation of Z. P. Rozhestvensky, explaining that nothing could be changed:
In 1901, Rear Admiral Noel's Reserve Squadron, which consisted of 12 low-speed battleships and Vice Admiral Wilson's Channel squadron (8 modern battleships and 2 armored cruisers), met at joint maneuvers. Wilson had the advantage in speed, his ships, following the 13-knot speed, caught Noel by surprise and gave him a clear "crossing T" at a distance of 30 kbt.
… Three times the "fast" and "slow" fleets of Great Britain converged in "battles", and three times the "slow" fleet suffered a crushing defeat. A fleet with a lower squadron speed has no chance against a faster enemy. Or, to put it another way: there are no tactics that would allow a slow-moving fleet to successfully resist a fast-moving squadron …
It turns out that the fault of the Russian command is not, it was impossible to change anything under Tsushima!
Impossible, of course. After all, it was necessary to think about speed a little earlier, and not when the smoke of "Kasuga" and "Mikasa" appeared over the horizon.
A fleet with a lower squadron speed has no chance against a faster enemy.
The British knew about it. Andrey Kolobov also knows. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the results of the British maneuvers became the subject of heated discussion in the naval circles of Europe and Japan. Even before the 2TOE was dispatched, all this was leaked to the press and published in Russia.
The only ones who were in the dark about the importance of speed were Admiral Rozhdestvensky and the Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Fleet himself, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich.
They knew nothing. And they did not want to know.
A socialite from head to toe, "le Beau Brummell", Alexey Alexandrovich traveled a lot. The mere thought of spending a year away from Paris would have forced him to resign. But he was in the civil service and held a position no less than no less than an admiral of the Russian Imperial Navy.
- Memoirs of his cousin, Alexander Mikhailovich. A bright, strong quote, in fact - a terrible story.
After the fall of Port Arthur, what kind of “conquest of supremacy at sea” could there be? If the EBRs, having passed half the ground, simply do not have enough speed to confront the Japanese fleet. And this was clear to everyone who had the slightest idea of naval tactics and technical features of ships.
Wrap up the squadron before it's too late!
Although the conquest of supremacy at sea with the forces of 2TOE can be considered a completely logical decision against the background of the statements of those who promised to take Grozny with the forces of one battalion. In general, the Russo-Japanese War has extremely many parallels with that other war. But now we're talking about ships …
Yes, the Russians were not allowed to maneuver. But the paradoxical results of the British naval exercises of 1901-03. were in the open press. Next, bend your fingers. Intelligence service. Analysts. Modeling the situation. Command post exercises.
Finally, own maneuvers of this format - after all, we are talking about the fleet of not an ordinary country, but an entire empire!
Failed? Or didn't you want to?
But how could competent and honest specialists come from where the Admiralty was headed by Prince Alexei Alexandrovich and his incomparable Eliza Balletta. Someone will say: deja vu. Yes, lieutenant. History moves in a spiral.
The only charismatic figure is Admiral Makarov. A dedicated naval specialist. And he disappeared on the battleship "Petropavlovsk" at the very beginning of the war.
And around - a gloomy mass of opportunists, headed by the degenerate of the royal family. A mess in the fleet and armor plates of ships, fastened with wooden bushings. No matter what the monarchists say about their idols now. Fact, fact! Courchevel revelry of the grand dukes, the diaries of their relatives, surviving bryuliks with the initials, which they gave to French prostitutes.
Every conscientious officer and sailor of the 2TOE understood: this is not how one prepares for a great campaign.
- There will be no victory!.. I can vouch for one thing: we will all die, but we will not surrender …
- Speech at the farewell banquet of Captain 1st Rank N. M. Bukhvostov, commander of the EBR "Emperor Alexander III"
Then a lot of things happened. Hero sailors entered immortality (the last battle of “Admiral Ushakov”). The degenerates escaped (the flight of the squadron headquarters with the EDR "Prince Suvorov" with the subsequent surrender of the destroyer "Bedovy" to the enemy). While on "Suvorov" 900 sailors remained and took a heroic death. This egregious case is abhorrent to the great maritime tradition, when the elders are the last to be saved.
"Save the sailors, then the officers"
- The wounded captain of the 1st rank V. N. Miklukha (commander of the coastal defense EBR "Admiral Ushakov"). When the Japanese boat returned for him, he was already dead.
Those who send you to the last battle will not die next to you. And no matter what they say about the serious wound of Rozhestvensky, removed from the EBR in an unconscious state, there were enough fugitives among the staff and without the admiral. Who did not dare to repeat the feat of the “Guardian” even afterwards. “Problem” was surrendered to the enemy without a fight. And when a towing cable burst in a storm, the degenerates fired signal flares all night - they were so eager to get into Japanese captivity.
To fight with such an attitude and with such commanders is to our own detriment. And then all the questions can be answered: they didn't know, they didn't know, it happened, but if they knew, then …
Although they guessed and knew about everything. But they did not want to do anything about it and did not want to.
Part number 2. Hike. Less than half a year has passed …
A heated discussion was caused by a moment about the difficulties of the transfer of ships of the Second Pacific Squadron from Libava to the Far East.
For coal-fired steam ships of the pre-turbine era, the voyage from Libau to the Sea of Japan in the complete absence of friendly bases along the way was a real feat - an epic that deserves a separate book.
Imagination already draws a breakthrough through horror and fire, without time to rest, when enemies scurry around and “no one wants mercy”.
October 2, 1904 - exit from Libau.
October 13 - October 19 - forced parking in the Spanish port of Vigo (the squadron was blocked by the British fleet as a result of the "Hull incident": an accidental shelling of British fishing vessels and the cruiser "Aurora", mistaken for Japanese destroyers).
October 21 - parking in Tangier (French Morocco).
October 23 - The main forces of the squadron left Tangier and went to the French Ivory Coast. At the same time, some of the ships chose a different route, passing directly by the Suez Canal.
Dakar (October 30 - November 3).
Gabun (November 13-18).
Great Fish Bay (Portuguese possessions in West Africa, November 23-24).
Angra Peckena (German Southwest Africa, November 28 - December 4).
Finally, on December 16, the main forces of the squadron arrived in Madagascar (Nossi-Be). And they stood there for the next THREE MONTHS.
In addition, ships from the 2nd TOE (“catching up detachment” of Captain 1st Rank Dobrotvorsky) managed to visit: the Spanish Pantevedro, British Souda Bay (Crete Island), Greek Piraeus, German trading posts Djibouti and Dar es Salaam (modern Djibouti and Tanzania).
On March 31, 1905, Rozhdestvensky's ships arrived at Cam Ranh (the same one, then it was French Indochina), Van Fong and Kua Be. Despite protests from Japanese diplomacy, they stayed in Vietnamese ports throughout April. The French looked at the presence of the battleships 2TOE "through their fingers", only occasionally suggesting that they go to sea for a day, in order to then again pay a "friendly visit" to Cam Ranh …
How “friendly” were the Spanish, German, Portuguese and French ports - there is no precise legal definition. No one rushed to "hammer into the gums" with our sailors, but they were in no hurry to open fire as soon as they saw the Russian EBRs. They cost how much they needed. They paid and bought coal, as well as everything necessary to continue the "unprecedented" campaign.
The 2TOE hike took 220 days. Taking into account all the preparatory measures, the long-awaited help arrived after just a year and three months. This was the time of the deployment of the military-bureaucratic machine of the Russian Empire.
Let me remind you that we are talking about the heyday of steam engines. When passenger liners in the struggle for the "blue ribbon of the Atlantic" made transoceanic crossings in a week. And between India and Europe, a steamship route was established.
Here are the military sailors. The beauty and power of the Imperial Navy. Hundreds of millions of gold rubles. To give credit for the fact that not one of the 15,000-ton battleships (and even the destroyers are not so small against the background of civilian scows) for 7 months of the campaign, using numerous stops, did not sink on the way to the Far East, is an attempt to hide one simple fact. The imperial fleet was so incapable of combat that it even moved across the sea with great difficulty.
