AHC: Russo-Japanese war not a total Russian failure

[Shtudmuffin]

Ok, so your challenge is, with a PoD anytime in the Russo-Japanese war, to have the Russians not be so decisively crushed in the war. There must be no Tsushima or an equivalent, and the Russians must hold Port Arthur for as long as necessary and succeed in a battle against the Japanese. The war cannot be a total defeat for Russia and the IRN's Pacific and Baltic fleets must survive to a degree. So how can it be done?

[Catspoke]

Can the Baltic fleet arrive before Port Arthur falls? Seems like it would be enough to relieve the port.

[sharlin]

The reinforcements from the Baltic would have had to have left a lot sooner but really they were still inadequate, four modern but very badly built battleships with utterly untested crews and a gaggle of largely obsolete vessels might have been enough to tip the scales against the IJN if they reinforced the 1st Pacific Squadron.

[Tongera]

How about the Trans-Siberian-Railway having two-tracks, so that supplies and wounded men can go both ways?

[RGB]

The Pacific squadrons lost Petropavlovsk to a mine, and its other top commander to a lucky hit. The naval war wasn't as one-sided as all that until both of those things happened. Finally, the Japanese first strike on PA could have been less successful, too.

But Port Arthur was a deathtrap. It was very hard to defend it properly. Every wargame prior to the actual war reached the conclusion of focusing on on Vladivostok until either PA or Dalny are ready to receive the full squadron and the rail reaches them...but pride/optimism lead to the OTL situation anyway.

[carlton_bach]

The Baltic Fleet plan is nixed at the admiralty when prevailing opinion turns against such a prolonged cruise through tropical waters. Instead, the Russians deploy additional infantry and artillery and advance against Mukden come summer. Japanese peace overtures are refused because the emperor decides a victory is needed. The exhausted Japanese troops, filled up with second-line reservists, are pushed back in the battle of Somtainihamlet and withdraw towards the coast. St Petersburg now comes to the peace table with the (semi-credible) threat of retaking Port Arthur and gets slightly better terms (OTL's were felt insulting to the Japanese, given the scope of their victory).

The naval plan was idiotic. The advantage the Russians had was on land.

[33k7]

I'm working on a alternate history right now that has Alexander the Peacemaker living until 1907 delaying the war until 1912 Russia would be better prepared to counter the Japanese sneak attack by this point
Leading to not a total Russian defeat in the mainland but navaly still loses substantially

[sharlin]

I'll look forwards to reading that

[ModernKiwi]

There were a number of land battles when the Russians came close to inflicting defeats upon the Japanese. Mostly undone by the cautious nature of the Russian commanders. You could easily have a few of these go the Russians way to completely change the nature of the war.

[PoeFacedKilla]

If russia just build some gott verdamntt traintracks, in a way resembling the american transcontinental railway, then Japan would (most likely) get curb stomped.

[Simon]

Might not be exactly what you're looking for but tukk323's Not By a Mine has as its original point of departure the Petropavlovsk avoiding being hit and sunk by mines, although the Poltava pretty much takes her place, so that Admiral Makarov survives and the naval war goes much better for the Russians, with the linked land battles likewise being affected by this. From there things really start to diverge after a while.

[MarshalBraginsky]

The Russians could have drawn the Japanese Army into a war of attrition if it could, though the Russian Army of 1905 was really poor compared to the newly trained Japanese Army.

[Lee-Sensei]

IIRC, the Russian army was significantly larger. If they had continued to fight, the Japanese would have to give up eventually.

[Simon]

Not just eventually, IIRC by the time that hostilities ended in our timeline the Japanese economy was pretty much on the edge. If the Russians had been able to keep things going for a while longer Japan's economy would of run off a cliff and they would not of been able to continue.

[sharlin]

Simon's very right, the Japanese were out of money at the end of the war and really were lucky it ended when it did, but in reality the Russians had no real way of making the fight continue. They had been crushed in almost every battle, morale amongst civilians and the military was rock bottom.

[Grey Wolf]

Makaroff reinvigorated the Russian fleet, and could have led to a successful defence. The problem is that a successful defence can't be maintained by staying in port, so the fleet HAS to come out, and thus has to run the risk of mines, torpedoes etc. However, that does not equate with disaster; after all it does not have to be the flagship that hits a mine and blows up and other ships, eg Peresviet, hit mines and did not sink. One thing I've wondered is WHY Petropavlosk WAS the flagship when it was one of the oldest - why not the Retvisan or the Tsesarevitch?

Reinforcements from the Baltic did not have to go round the Horn; one squadron went through Suez with no problem. In addition, the ships were not THAT bad - Osliabia is the sister of Peresviet and Pobieda, Sissoi Veliki was a veteran of Far Eastern service, the cruiser Oleg was sister to the Bogatyr, and even the Borodino class are not that bad on their own, when not overloaded and exhausted.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

[sharlin]

I'd argue otherwise that the Borodino's were not that bad. They were designed to be fast battleships and thinned their armour of the basic prototype the Tsesarevitch to achive a higher speed. They had a narrower belt too which was much lower on the waterline. They became overweight in building, their turrets were way too heavy and additions to the officers quarters added more weight. This reduced their speed and negated any advantages offered by the weight saved by the thinned out armour.

The Osliabia is at best a 2nd class battleship, undergunned, under armoured and not as fast as designed or hoped (yet it still managed to cause the RN to panic and build the Duncan class as a reply to the Peresviet class) and really not a capable flagship as she's just fragile.

The Russian cruisers were adequate but there was not enough of them and there was still way too many very old ships including some former fully rigged cruisers.
The Sissoi was old and had inadequate secondary armament, which really was the ships of the times main guns.

I do have to wonder why Makaroff didn't choose the Retvisan or Tes as his flagship, they were the best of the ships out there, with the US built Retvisan probably being the best of the ships the Russians had in the Far East. You could wonder what if the Russians had put the armoured cruisers at Vladivostok with the Pacific squadron but then again they were old ships with a poor layout and thin armour and apart from their size had little going for them.

[Cook]

Originally Posted by Tongera

How about the Trans-Siberian-Railway having two-tracks, so that supplies and wounded men can go both ways?

People seem to be operation under a misapprehension with regard to the trans-Siberian railway and its limitations. A single rail line does not stop traffic from operating in both directions; that is what railway sidings are for. The limited Russian capacity to support their forces by rail was not caused by the rail line; it was imposed by limited rolling numbers of locomotives and carriages and by the fact that the line is 9,200 kilometres long! That means that a train traveling non-stop at the maximum allowed speed of just 20 km per hour (the restriction was imposed because of the risk of derailment) would take at least thirty-eight days to complete a round trip. But steam trains cannot travel non-stop, they need to stop and take on coal and water regularly along the way (at the sidings, during which, trains traveling in the other direction can pass them), pushing the journey out even longer, making travel time more like forty-five days. It took between a further two and twelve hours to load the train, so say an average of six hours, and half that to unload, so roughly nine hours to load and unload the trains, eighteen hours for them to be loaded and unloaded both ends both ways, or more realistically another day. So each train is going to be able to leave Moscow station with a load of men bound for Sevastopol not more often than once every forty-six days at least. And it took between 35 and 40 trains, each of fifty carriages, to transport a single infantry division of 15,000 men!

It gets worse; we haven’t even mentioned ammunition and ration trains. A single division needed something in the order of 150 tons of supplies per day! So a single 50 carriage train carrying 2500 tons of cargo is only going to be able to supply a single infantry division in the field for just over sixteen days; you need to have at least three trains operating continuously on the line just to keep a single division supplied in the field. So to transport a single division to Sevastopol and keep them supplied there is going to require at least 2,150 carriages and 43 locomotives.

And that doesn't even consider artillary!

[Grey Wolf]

I thought the Borodino's belt was under the water due to all the excess crap they were carrying. The Slava managed to fight quite effectively at Moon Sound, though I don't know how much retro-correction went on there.

A distinction needs to made between the ancient ships of the 3rd Squadron and the more modern ones that made up the original squadron.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

[sharlin]

Nah the Borodino's belt was narrow by design and 7 inches thinner at normal displacement it was damn near submerged and when overloaded as the Russians were it was utterly useless and the waterline was just protected by the upper belt which is about 3 inches.

And don't knock the 3rd squadron, totally outclassed they fought harder than many more modern ships.