The battle resumed approximately at 16.30, after the end Russian battleship "Poltava" from a distance of 32 cables (or so) gave a sighting shot at the flagship of H. Togo. The position of the squadrons by this time was as follows: the Russian battleships were moving in a wake column, to the left of them - cruisers and destroyers even to the left of the cruisers. At the moment the Poltava was fired, the Japanese commander was catching up with the Russians from the right and behind, and he was following a converging course, and the Mikasa was located abeam of the Poltava.
It must be said that such actions characterize Kh. Togo's naval talents not in the best way. Of course, his tactics made it possible to get closer to the lagging "Poltava" and again try to strike at the lagging Russian battleship from a relatively short distance. But even if this strike was successful, in the future H. Vitgeft. This method of rapprochement put the Japanese at an extremely disadvantageous position. But it was not difficult to avoid it if Kh. Togo had undertaken a different maneuver: the commander of the United Fleet could catch up with the Russian squadron on parallel courses, so that Mikasa would be abeam of the Tsesarevich, when the flagship battleships of Kh. Togo and V. K. Vitgeft was six miles apart, a little ahead of him, and only then lay down on converging courses.
In this case, the Russian squadron would not have received any advantages. Interestingly, this is what H. Togo did, approaching the Russian squadron a few hours earlier, in the middle of the 1st phase, when, after a battle on the counter-tack, his 1st combat detachment lagged behind the Russian squadron by 100 cables and was forced to catch up 1st Pacific Squadron. And suddenly - as if some obsession had suddenly clouded the mind of the Japanese admiral: H. Togo rushes in pursuit, extremely recklessly exposing his flagship battleship to the hurricane of Russian fire.
How so? In order to suggest the reasons for such a strange act, let's count a little. The Russian column kept an interval of 2 cables between the battleships, while the indicated number does not include the length of the battleships themselves, i.e. from the stem of one battleship to the sternpost of the ship in front of it, there should have been 2 cables. At the same time, "Poltava" lagged behind the next-to-last "Sevastopol" (by about 6-8 cables, according to the author's assumption), and in aggregate this meant that from "Poltava" to the leading "Tsarevich" there were about 18-19 cables. Approaching at short distances, H. Togo by 16.30 was able to bring his flagship just a traverse of "Poltava". Having a speed advantage of 2 knots and going on a parallel course, he would have overtaken a convoy of Russian ships for almost an hour. In other words, if the Japanese commander had moved according to the above scheme, without exposing Mikasa to fire, he would have stepped up the Tsesarevich's traverse at about 17.30, then, in order to get even slightly ahead, he would have needed another 15 minutes. 20, and only at 17.45-17.50 he would lay on the course of rapprochement with the Russian battleships. Then he would start a fight at a short distance already at the seventh hour - and this is in case the Russians did not try to change course, dodging the Japanese, and they could do so. At 20.00 it was already completely dark and the artillery battle would have to be stopped, and, most likely, twilight interrupted the battle even earlier.
Taken together, this meant that H. Togo could use a rational method of rapprochement with the enemy, but then, in order to defeat the Russians before dark, the commander of the United Fleet would have had an hour, at most an hour and a half. During this time, even operating at short distances, one could hardly hope to defeat the battleships of V. K. Vitgeft.
According to the author of this article, it was the lack of time that forced H. Togo to enter the battle from a position that was obviously unfavorable and extremely dangerous for him. This is how the tricks of the clever but overly cautious Japanese admiral ended - spending time trying to undermine V. K. Vitgefta with floating mines, to fight from long distances, to join the Yakumo, the commander of the United Fleet drove himself into a terrible time trouble. At the very beginning of the battle, when the main forces of the squadrons saw each other, H. Togo had an excellent position and an advantage over the Russian ships in speed. Now he was forced to bring his ships into a decisive battle from an extremely disadvantageous position - and all this in order to have the hope of defeating the Russians before dark!
But nevertheless, it should be noted that some advantages remained for H. Togo: the day was leaning towards evening, the sun changed its position on the horizon and now shone directly into the eyes of the Russian commandants. In addition, a strong wind was blowing in the direction from the Japanese towards the Russian squadron. It is difficult to say how much the evening sun's rays made it difficult to shoot, but the wind caused great inconvenience - after the shot, powder gases were carried directly into the towers, and in order to avoid poisoning, the Tsesarevich had to change the gunners of the towers after each (!) Shot. As a substitute, artillerymen of small-caliber guns were used, there was no shortage of them, but it is quite clear that such a practice could in no way contribute to either the rate of fire or the accuracy of the firing of the heavy guns of the Russian battleships.
Even in the sources and memoirs of eyewitnesses, the fact is repeatedly mentioned that the Russian squadron was forced to fight on the starboard side, which in the 1st phase of the battle was mainly exposed to Japanese shells, while the Japanese after 16.30 fought with relatively little injured left side. This is only half true, because during the 1st phase, the Japanese ships, sadly, practically did not suffer and H. Togo did not care which board to fight with. At the same time, the Russian squadron really, before the resumption of the battle, received damage mainly from the starboard side, and there was not a single reason why the Japanese commander should attack the Russians from the left side. In this case, the sun would have already blinded the gunners of the 1st combat detachment and the wind would have blown gases into the Japanese barbet installations: it is clear that H. Togo would have had no use at all.
With the beginning of the battle, V. K. Vitgeft turned 2 rumba (22.5 degrees) to the left in order to increase the time during which H. Togo would overtake his column and thereby give his gunners maximum opportunities to defeat Mikasa. Some sources also indicate that V. K. Vitgeft ordered to increase the stroke to 15 knots, but this seems doubtful. Most likely, there was some confusion here, and it was about an attempt to increase speed even before H. Togo again caught up with the Russian squadron, but after the resumption of the battle, not a single evidence from the "Tsarevich" about an attempt to increase the speed was found by the author of this article.
In pursuance of the order of the Russian commander, the battleships struck the flagship of the United Fleet and the Mikasa disappeared behind the bursts from the falling shells. But it was almost impossible to distinguish the falls of their shells, so other methods were used. For example, the senior artillerymen of Retvizan and Peresvet switched to volley fire: they fired a volley of 6-inch guns and, knowing the distance and time of the shells' flight, determined the fall of their volley by the stopwatch. Another way was chosen by the commander of the "Sevastopol", captain 1st rank von Essen:
“According to the admiral's order, we concentrated our fire on the enemy's lead ship, Mikasa, but since it was impossible to distinguish the fall of our volleys from those of others and it was difficult to adjust the shooting, I ordered the 6-inch tower No. 3 to shoot and shoot at the third ship in the convoy (it was "Fuji" - author's note) and, after taking aim, give the rest of the guns the distance to the head one."
At the same time, the Japanese were distributing their own fire - first, Poltava came under their attack, but then the ships gradually overtaking the Russian column focused their fire on the battleship Peresvet (which received a number of hits already at 04.40-16.45). This target was of much greater interest to the Japanese - after all, "Peresvet" flew under the flag of the junior flagship, but, apparently, the concentration of fire from the head Japanese battleships on "Peresvet" began to interfere with zeroing and some of the Japanese ships transferred fire to "Sevastopol".
And, apparently, the same thing happened further. When "Mikasa" approached enough to the head Russian "Tsarevich", he transferred fire to the Russian flagship and after him the battleships following the "Mikasa" did the same, but some of the Japanese ships fired at the "Retvizan". In other words, the Japanese concentrated the main force of their fire on the flagship Tsarevich and Peresvet, but they acted without the slightest fanaticism - if a ship could not distinguish between the falls of its shells on the flagships, it transferred the fire to other Russian battleships. As a result, the Russians had almost no non-fired ships, with the exception of Pobeda, which received surprisingly few hits, but the Japanese, except for Mikasa, almost no one suffered damage from Russian fire.
Fuji was never hit by a single shell in the entire battle, and Asahi and Yakumo received no damage after the battle resumed at 16.30. The armored cruiser "Kasuga" received 3 hits of unknown caliber: most likely, these were six-inch shells, but it is not even known whether this happened in the 1st or 2nd phase of the battle, although it is probably still in the 2nd. One or two small shells hit the stern of the Sikishima, and at 18:25 a twelve-inch shell hit the Nissin.
Thus, during the entire second phase of the battle in the Yellow Sea, of the seven armored Japanese ships in the line, three did not suffer any damage at all, and three more received from one to three hits each. It can be stated that Russian battleships nevertheless sometimes transferred fire from Mikasa to other targets, but it is obvious: either the fire on Sikishima, Nissin and Kasuga was conducted for an extremely short time, or the firing of Russian ships was very inaccurate.
Half an hour after the start of the battle, the distance between the Russian and Japanese columns was reduced to 23 cables, and at about the same time the flagship V. K. Vitgefta: already at 17.00 "Tsarevich" got the first hit after the fight resumed. "Mikasa" came out on the traverse of the "Tsarevich" at about 17.30 - by this time the Russian squadron had completely lost its positional advantage, which it had before 16.30, and now the 1st combat detachment was overtaking the head of the Russian column, and the "Tsarevich" was under heavy fire. And yet, the Russians' case had not yet been lost: on the ships of V. K. Vitgefta believed that the Japanese also suffered greatly from the Russian fire, and Mikasa especially suffered. For example, the senior artilleryman of "Peresvet", Lieutenant V. N. Cherkasov later wrote:
"Several fires were noticed on Mikas, both towers ceased fire and did not turn, and only one of the middle casemates fired from 6-inch battery cannons."
It must be said that the fire of the Japanese and in fact weakened to a certain extent, although not through the "fault" of the Russian artillerymen. At 17.00 on the battleship "Sikishima" the barrel of one of the 12-inch guns tore apart, and the second one had a compressor out of order, and it lost its ability to fight for about half an hour. Literally 15 minutes later (at 17.15) a similar incident occurred on the Mikasa - the right barrel of the stern barbet was torn apart, while the left 12-inch gun also failed and did not fire until the end of the battle. Less than 10 minutes (5:25 pm) - and now the Asahi suffers - charges spontaneously ignited in both guns of its 12-inch aft mount, causing both guns to fail. Thus, in less than half an hour, the 1st combat detachment lost 5 12-inch guns out of 16, and thus its firepower was seriously weakened.
The Japanese claim that all 5 of their twelve-inch guns that failed were damaged as a result of various kinds of emergencies, but it cannot be ruled out that some of the guns were still damaged by Russian fire - the fact is that an enemy shell hit the barrel and the shell burst in the trunk can give very similar damage that is not so easy to identify. But here nothing can be said for sure, and the Japanese, as already mentioned, categorically deny the combat damage of their guns.
The Russian losses of the main caliber artillery were much more modest: at the beginning of the battle, the ships of the squadron had 15 12-inch cannons (on the Sevastopol one 12-inch gun was out of order even before the battle on July 28, 1904), with which the squadron entered the battle, with At that, one of the cannons of the Retvizan's bow tower could not fight beyond 30 kb, so during most of the 1st phase, only 14 12-inch guns could fire at the Japanese. But soon after 16.30 the damaged gun of the Retvizan again entered the battle, since the distance for it became quite suitable.
However, at 17.20 the bow turret of the Retvizan was hit by a Japanese high-explosive projectile - the armor was not pierced, but the turret was jammed, and one of the guns was damaged - as a result, it was possible to fire only if some Japanese ship accidentally turned out to be opposite barrel - until the end of the battle, this tower was able to fire only 3 shots. As for the main artillery of the battleships "Pobeda" and "Peresvet", on the first of them in the aft turret, on the 21st shot, one 254-mm gun went out of action, unfortunately, the exact time of this event is unknown. As for the "Peresvet", as early as 4:40 pm its bow tower was jammed, but, however, not completely - the possibility of manual rotation was preserved, but extremely slowly, and this required the efforts of 10 people. Nevertheless, the guns of this tower continued to shoot at the enemy.
Thus, by 17.40 the Russian squadron was firing from 13 305-mm guns and from 5 or 6 254-mm, and another 2254-mm guns were "of limited use." The Japanese, on the other hand, were able to respond from 11 305-mm, 1254-mm and 6 203-mm guns, so that the overall superiority in heavy guns remained with the battleships of V. K. Vitgeft. At the same time, none of the Russian ships suffered critical damage - all squadron battleships were capable of continuing the battle.
But at 17.37-17.40 "Tsarevich" received two hits from twelve-inch shells, the first of which hit the foremast between the 1st and 2nd tiers of the bow bridge, and the second, passing two meters from the first, landed in the telegraph cabin. Their breaks decapitated the Russian squadron - Rear Admiral Wilhelm Karlovich Vitgeft died, the flagship navigator and the junior flag officer fell with him, and the chief of staff N. A. Matusevich and the senior flag officer were wounded. The commander of the "Tsesarevich" Captain 1st Rank N. M. Ivanov 2nd was only knocked down, but survived.
Let's digress a little from the battle in order to assess the actions of the Russian admiral from the resumption of the battle to his very death. In the second phase of the battle, V. K. Vitgeft barely maneuvered. He did not rush to the Japanese with the formation of the front, although he had such an opportunity, because the wake formation he had chosen did not in the least interfere with this.
In essence, his only action after the battle resumed was to turn 2 rumba to the left. Why?
We will never know the answer to this question. But we can assume the following: as we said earlier, turning "all of a sudden" and throwing at the Japanese would have led to a dump and the formation of Russian ships would have collapsed, and a fierce battle at a short distance led to heavy damage, which V. K. Vitgefta could no longer go to Vladivostok. At the same time, Kh. Togo's maneuvering, as a result of which he exposed his flagship to concentrated Russian fire, gave the Russians excellent hope, if not drown, then at least knock Mikasa out of action, and who knows what could happen after that? VC. Vitgeft did not need much, he just had to hold out until darkness without receiving serious injuries. And if Mikasa could not continue the battle, being knocked out of the line, say, at the beginning of the sixth hour, then the Japanese would have to waste time on rebuilding: either Vice Admiral S. Misa would have to lead the Japanese column, holding his flag on battleship "Sikishima" (fourth in the ranks), or even S. Kataoka on "Nissin" (sixth in the ranks). Until the point is, time would have passed, and then the Japanese would again have to catch up with the Russians, acting from an unfavorable position for them.
The battle resumed at 16.30, and only at about 17.30 Mikasa reached the traverse of the Tsarevich - for an hour the gunners of the 1st Pacific Squadron had to destroy the head Japanese battleship! Alas, they could not take advantage of their chance - the absence of intensive training firing from the very autumn of 1903 affected. After all, what would have happened if an amazing miracle had happened and were in the place of the 1st Pacific squadron of the battleships of Zinovy Petrovich Rozhdestvensky?
In the Battle of Tsushima, his lead ships of the "Borodino" type were forced to shoot from much worse advantageous positions than the ships of V. K. Vitgeft. The wind also blew in the face of the Russian gunners, but there was still a strong excitement that made it difficult to aim the guns - the battleships of the 2nd Pacific Squadron in the Tsushima Strait rocked by far more than the ships of V. K. Vitgefta 28 July. At the same time, the course angle on the Mikasa was less convenient, probably even that some of the aft guns of the battleships could not fire at it. Japanese ships, completing the turn, immediately opened fire on the heads of the Russian squadron, while in the battle in the Yellow Sea the Japanese were forced to shoot primarily at the end. And yet, in Tsushima, within a quarter of an hour, Mikasa received 5 12-inch and 14 6-inch shells! Nineteen shells in 15 minutes, and for the entire battle in the Yellow Sea, the flagship of H. Togo received only 24 hits … But what would have happened to the Mikasa if the gunners had the 1st Pacific level of gunners ZP. Rozhestvensky - after all, then closer to 17.30 it would be quite possible to expect about 60 (!) Hits in the Japanese flagship, or even more? Even Russian shells with their scanty content of explosives in such quantities could well have inflicted decisive damage on the Japanese battleship.
In order to understand the decision of the Russian admiral, one should also take into account the fact that in battle it always seems that the enemy is suffering much greater losses than it actually is: the overwhelming majority of eyewitnesses believed that the Japanese received significant damage during the first phase of the battle, although in fact the Japanese squadron was almost unharmed. Therefore, it can be assumed that V. K. Vitgeft was sincerely convinced that his gunners were shooting better than they really were. Thus, at 16.30, when the battle resumed, V. K. Vitgeft faced a choice - to give up on the order of the governor and the Sovereign Emperor, refuse to break through to Vladivostok and try, drawing closer to the Japanese, to inflict heavy damage on them. Alternatively, continue executing the order and try to knock out "Mikasa", taking advantage of the fact that H. Togo strongly set himself up, catching up with the Russian ships. Wilhelm Karlovich chose the second option - and turned 2 points to the left in order to ensure the maximum duration of fire on the Japanese flagship.
Later, in an article devoted to the analysis of various alternative scenarios that V. K. Vitgeft, we will try to understand whether the Russian Rear Admiral was right in choosing the tactics of the battle after 16.30. Now we will only note that Wilhelm Karlovich had the most serious reasons to act exactly as he did, and the reason for his seeming passivity may well lie not in indifference or obedience to fate, but in sober calculation. He chose a tactic that was fully consistent with the task of breaking through to Vladivostok set before him, and at the same time had certain chances of success.
Contrary to popular belief, the death of V. K. Vitgefta has not yet led to disaster. In a number of sources, one often hears reproaches to the commanders of Russian ships for passivity and inability to make independent decisions, but this is what the Tsesarevich commander did: he led the squadron forward, as if the commander was alive and nothing happened to him. Subsequently N. M. Ivanov 2nd reported:
“I decided that since the chief of staff was not killed, then, in order to avoid a disorder that could happen in the squadron, if I report the death of Admiral Vitgeft, I will continue the battle myself. I had a lot of data to suppose this disorder, knowing that the command was being transferred to Admiral Prince Ukhtomsky, and remembering a similar situation after the explosion of Petropavlovsk, when the squadron was in hell."
On the one hand, N. M. Ivanov 2nd had no right to do this, but if you approach the issue creatively, then the matter was as follows: if the admiral was killed, then the right to lead the squadron passed to his chief of staff, and only after his death - to the junior flagship. Chief of Staff N. A. Matusevich was wounded and could not command the squadron, and therefore the commander of the "Tsarevich" should have transferred command to Prince Ukhtomsky, but after all, N. A. Matusevich was alive! Therefore, N. M. Ivanov 2nd had formal grounds not to transfer command - that is exactly what he did. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to lead the squadron for long …
