alt-Tsushima

Admiral Rozdestwensky (of Tsushima "fame") had been asked what would happen if in 1905 Russian squadron had dreadnoughts instead of the pre-dreadnought battleships? His answer was: the result would be the same.

Was he right?
 
Probably. It was a bad day for the Russians.

Best chance might be to use their speed advantage to disengage from the battle and flee to Vladivostok. But they might lose some knots from their on paper speed due to poor quality coal and slow shoveling from crew exhaustion.
 
Last edited:
It was a textbook trap. I don't think anyone could have gotten out of that situation without heavy losses, including the British.

The Russians did the equivalent of walking into a box canyon when your enemy controls the heights with machine guns and artillery emplaced.
 
What era of dreadnoughts are we talking about? First generation or something along the lines of a Standard or Revenge class vessel?
Aha, I assumed OP meant literally HMS Dreadnought clones. Which wouldn't really be that much different from what Japan deployed besides turbines. Much better armor than the Russian Borodinos however.
 

RousseauX

Donor
It was a textbook trap. I don't think anyone could have gotten out of that situation without heavy losses, including the British.

The Russians did the equivalent of walking into a box canyon when your enemy controls the heights with machine guns and artillery emplaced.
Were the Japanese ships/guns capable of taking out British Dreadnoughts even in an advantageous position?
 
Russian gunnery was pathetic, while Japanese casualties might rise by the number of shells flying, I don't think Russia could turn the tide of the battle.
 
In other words, how much of what went wrong for the Russians can be blamed on the material and how much on the personnel- including of course Rozhestvensky himself?

I could certainly see Togo playing it very differently if confronted by the Gangut and Imperatritsiya Mariya classes, much more mine and torpedo work, and the Izmails with nine knots in hand would have been a real potential game changer- but given what actually happened, would material have been enough?

The case that he was wrong is that, like Medina Sidonia, he was so deeply affected by the defeat that he lost all sense of boldness and optimism, becoming a morally defeated man, no longer capable of seeing what could have been possible. Unfortunately that also seems to have been the state he and most of his fleet were in on the morning of 27 May 1905.

The long journey had crushed them, by most accounts, the fact that they were sent off with untrialled new and broken down old ships with precious little in between, conscript crews some of whom had already picked up revolutionary ideals, no support, no friends en route, one improvisation after another, inadequate training-

in similar circumstances, Pierre de Villenueve took a sailing fleet to the other side of the Atlantic and back- expecting the experience to train and toughen his men, and come back better and more battleworthy for some sea time; it didn't work then, either. Far from it, the raw crews were overwhelmed by their problems and actually got worse.

How would the Voyage of the Damned have been improved by having dreadnoughts? Chances are the old junkers would have been sent along anyway, magnifying the supply problems for no gain in speed- see; Third Pacific Squadron- and the dreadnoughts would have been effectively on their shakedown cruise. Around the world with raw crews.

It was nigh unto a miracle that they made it at all; which was part of the problem, Rozhestvensky and the handful of real professionals in the fleet were exhausted getting that far and had no more to give when it came to the fight, and the vast majority of deadweight that made up the wardrooms of the Tsar's navy froze in the headlights.

It wasn't that bad a mismatch on paper anyway; what the Russian navy needed were friends on the world stage, make the voyage easier, and a much more professional and energetic officer and noncommissioned officer corps.
 
Are we just replacing the Borodinos, or all of their battleships? The older ships actually fought quite well and survived longer - if there are dreadnoughts instead of Sissoi Veliki, Navarin etc then its possible the night action would have inflicted heavy damage on the Japanese.
 
Were the Japanese ships/guns capable of taking out British Dreadnoughts even in an advantageous position?
Yes and No. Despite being capable of punching through a 12" belt at 4800 yards, no Japanese AP shell penetrated more than 6" of armor during the whole Russo-Japanese War. The real damage the Japanese shells did was either penetrating less armored sections causing flooding the undertrained Russians crews were ill prepared to fight, or in HE starting fires which given the layer of flammable dust from deck loading coal quickly got out of hand. British crews would be better at dealing with fires and flooding, but British crews would have won with the Pre-Dreads the Russians had OTL, Russian crewed British Dreadnoughts would be just as vulnerable to flooding and fire as the pre dreads
 
Yes and No. Despite being capable of punching through a 12" belt at 4800 yards, no Japanese AP shell penetrated more than 6" of armor during the whole Russo-Japanese War. The real damage the Japanese shells did was either penetrating less armored sections causing flooding the undertrained Russians crews were ill prepared to fight, or in HE starting fires which given the layer of flammable dust from deck loading coal quickly got out of hand.

IIRC, the OTL Russian ships involved had a lot of the exposed wood, which of course was burning. As far as I can tell, these parts were above the water line so the main problem was not flooding but a heavy black smoke produced by the fires and Japanese shells.

Also, again IIRC, the construction of the most modern Russian battleships had serious faults (top heavy) so that they were reasonably easy to sunk. While Japanese HE explosive shells were doing mostly "superficial" damage, Russians had been using the new and not well-tested armor-piercing shells which quite often failed to explode and basically were just producing the holes.
 
IIRC, the OTL Russian ships involved had a lot of the exposed wood, which of course was burning. As far as I can tell, these parts were above the water line so the main problem was not flooding but a heavy black smoke produced by the fires and Japanese shells.

Also, again IIRC, the construction of the most modern Russian battleships had serious faults (top heavy) so that they were reasonably easy to sunk. While Japanese HE explosive shells were doing mostly "superficial" damage, Russians had been using the new and not well-tested armor-piercing shells which quite often failed to explode and basically were just producing the holes.
Everybody's battleships of the day had exposed wood, it's just the Russians were covered in a layer of coal dust from deck loading it, the Japanese ships were not

Imperator Aleksandr III, Oslyabya, and Navarin, ultimately sunk from holes made at or below the waterline and resulting flooding. Borodino had a shell hit a 6" magazine causing a chain reaction of explosions and Sissoi Veliky and Admiral Nakimov were lost due to flooding from torpedo hits. Black smoke alone is not going to cause a ship to sink, you need to compromise its buoyancy either gradually (flooding) or suddenly (magazine explosion). Only Knyaz Suvorov and Borodino were lost suddenly ergo flooding was the problems. Admittedly Russian ships were top heavy and more vulnerable to flooding than most, made worse by carrying extra supplies, but progressive flooding from penetrating lightly/unarmored areas would eventually sink anything without "proper" All or Nothing Armor
 
Everybody's battleships of the day had exposed wood, it's just the Russians were covered in a layer of coal dust from deck loading it, the Japanese ships were not

Imperator Aleksandr III, Oslyabya, and Navarin, ultimately sunk from holes made at or below the waterline and resulting flooding. [/QUOTE]

The heavy fires had been reported on the ships of Port Arthur squadron as well and they hardly had more coal dust than their Japanese counterparts. However the shells used by the Russian artillery had, as a I said, serious faults while Japanese HE shells had been exploding at a simple contact with pretty much any surface, hence more fires.

It is probably worth noticing that by that time a theory of flooding the undamaged sections to compensate for the flooding had been already developed by general Krylow but not taken into consideration by the Russian Admiralty.

Borodino had a shell hit a 6" magazine causing a chain reaction of explosions and Sissoi Veliky and Admiral Nakimov were lost due to flooding from torpedo hits. Black smoke alone is not going to cause a ship to sink,

I did not say that it did, just that it was creating a lot of problems.
 
Last edited:
Top