User:Yiba/sandbox/Battle of Tsushima

Commander and crew experience
Admiral Rozhestvensky faced a more combat experienced battleship admiral in Admiral Tōgō. Admiral Tōgō had already killed two Russian admirals: Makarov outside of Port Arthur in the battleship Petropavlovsk in April 1904, then Vitgeft in his battleship Tzesarevich in August of the same year. Before those two deaths, Tōgō had chased Admiral Stark, also flying his flag in the Petropavlovsk, off the battlefield. Admiral Tōgō and his men had two battleship fleet action experiences, which amounted to over four hours of combat experience in battleship-to-battleship combat at Port Arthur and the Yellow Sea. The Japanese fleets had practiced gunnery regularly since the beginning of the war, using sub-calibre adapters in their guns, gaining more experience.

In contrast, Russian battleship Borodino, as an example, underwent builder's sea trials on 23 August 1904 as a brand new ship upon her completion, and the new crew did not have much time for training before she set sail for the Pacific on 15 October 1904. Borodino's sister ship, Knyaz Suvorov, was completed, the crew was assembled, and put in service even later in September 1904. As the Imperial Russian Navy planned on building 10 Borodino-class battleships with the requirement for thousands of additional crewmen, basic training, quality and experience of the crew and cadets were far less than those onboard the battleships in the seasoned Pacific Fleet.

Salvo firing director system
Up to the Battle of the Yellow Sea on 10 August 1904, naval guns were controlled locally by a gunnery officer assigned to that gun or a turret. He specified the elevation and deflection figures, gave the firing order while keeping his eyes on the artificial horizon gauge indicating the rolling and pitching angles of the ship, received the shell splash observation report from the spotter on the mast, calculated the new elevation and deflection to 'walk' the shots onto the target for the next round, without much means to discern or measure the movements of his own ship and the target. He typically had a view on the horizon, but with then-new 12" gun's range extended to over 8 mi, his vantage point was lower than desired.

The Chief Gunnery Officer of the Japanese battleship Asahi tried on centrally issuing the gun laying and salvo firing orders via voice communication during the Battle of the Yellow Sea that enabled the spotters to identify a salvo of distant shell splashes much more effectively than trying to identify a single splash among the many in the confusion of a fleet-to-fleet combat. Further, it reduced the spotter's reporting duty to just one officer on the bridge as opposed to reporting to several gunnery officers at each gun across the deck, and the directing officer on the bridge had the advantage of having a higher vantage point than in the gun turrets, in addition to being steps away from the ship commander giving orders to change the course and the speed in response to the incoming reports on target movements. This fire control 'director' system was introduced to other ships in the squadron, with the training and practice being carried out in the months waiting for the arrival of the Baltic Fleet while its progress was reported by the British intelligence from their naval stations in India, Singapore and Hong Kong, among other locations.

As a result, Japanese fire was more accurate in the far range(3-8 mi), on top of the advantage they held in the shorter distances using the latest issue (1903) Barr and Stroud FA3 coincidence rangefinder, which had a range of 6000 yd, while the Russian battleships were equipped with Liuzhol stadiametric rangefinders from the 1880s, which only had a range of about 4000 m.

Wireless telegraphy
The wireless telegraph (radio) had been invented during the last half of the 1890s, and by the turn of the century nearly all major navies were adopting this improved communications technology. Tsushima was "the first major sea battle in which wireless played any role whatsoever".

Lieutenant Akiyama Saneyuki had been sent to the United States as a naval attaché in 1897. He witnessed firsthand the capabilities of radio telegraphy and sent a memo to the Navy Ministry urging that they push ahead as rapidly as possible to acquire the new technology. The ministry became heavily interested in the technology; however it found the cost of the Marconi wireless system, which was then operating with the Royal Navy, to be exceedingly expensive. The Japanese therefore decided to create their own radio sets by setting up a radio research committee under Professor Shunkichi Kimura, which eventually produced an acceptable system. In 1901, having attained radio transmissions of up to 70 mi, the navy formally adopted radio telegraphy. Two years later, a laboratory and factory were set up at Yokosuka to produce the Type 36 (1903) radios, and these were quickly installed on every major warship in the Combined Fleet by the time the war started.

Alexander Stepanovich Popov of the Naval Warfare Institute had built and demonstrated a wireless telegraphy set in 1900, and equipment from the firm Telefunken in Germany was adopted by the Imperial Russian Navy. Although both sides had early wireless telegraphy, the Russians were using German sets and had difficulties in their use and maintenance, while the Japanese had the advantage of using their own equipment.

British support and fleet speed
In addition to building the battleships for IJN, Great Britain assisted Japan in intelligence, finance, technology, training and other areas for the war against Russia. At the time, Great Britain owned and controlled more harbor facilities in the world, specifically shipyards and coal stations, than Russia and the allies (France and to some extent, Germany) combined, and she prevented Russia from buying ships and coal as much as possible. This, not only limited the growth of the Russian Pacific and Baltic Fleets, but also created a major logistics problem for around the world deployment of the Baltic Fleet to the Pacific in procuring coal and supplies on the way. At Nosy Be in Madagascar and at Camranh Bay, French Indochina, the fleet was forced to be anchored for about two months each, seriously degrading morale of the crew. By the time it reached Sea of Japan after crossing the warm waters of the equator twice, not only the battleships but all the ships' hulls were heavily fouled in addition to carrying the extra coal otherwise not required on deck.

The Japanese ships, on the other hand, were well maintained in the ample time given by the intelligence, and were divided into fleets of as much uniform speed and gun range so that a fleet would not suffer a bottleneck in speed, and the range of guns would not render some ships useless within a fleet in an extended range combat.

High explosive and Cordite
The Japanese used mostly high-explosive shells filled with Shimose powder, which was a pure Picric Acid (as opposed to the French Melinite or the British Lyddite, which were Picric Acid mixed with Collodion (French) or with Dinitrobenzene and Vaseline (British) for stability). The IJN Engineer, Shimose Masachika (1860-1911) solved the instability problem of Picric Acid on contact with iron and other heavy metals by coating the inside of a shell with Japanese lacquer and further sealing with wax. Because it was undiluted, Shimose Powder had a stronger power in terms of detonation velocity and temperature than other high explosives known at the time. These shells had a sensitive fuse called the Ijuin Fuse (named for its inventor, Ijuin Goro) at the base as opposed to the tip of a shell that armed itself in flight, which were designed to explode on contact and wreck the upper structures of ships. The Japanese Navy imported Cordite from Great Britain as the smokeless propellant for these Shimose shells.

At the time of Russo-Japanese War, high explosive shells were not used by the Russian Navy, which continued to use the older armour-piercing rounds with small guncotton bursting charges and unreliable fuses, and brown powder or black powder as the propellant in the cartridge. Consequently, Japanese hits caused more damage to Russian ships than Russian hits on Japanese ships. Shimose blasts often set the superstructures, the paintwork and the large quantities of coal stored on the decks on fire, and the sight of the spotters on Russian ships were hindered by the large amount of smoke generated by the propellant on each firing.