Rozhestvensky halts at Danang, May 1905

The opening of this thread makes me think....

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=338793&highlight=tsushima

What if instead of sailing from FIC for Vladivostok in May 1905, Admiral Rozhestvensky is ordered to hold at Danang, FIC. This is a prudent move, as Port Arthur has already fallen to the Japanese, so there's no point in running the gauntlet to Vladivostok only to be stuck in the ice that coming autumn.

Instead, Rozhestvensky is ordered to refit and repair his ships at Danang, and to wait for further reinforcements of first rate ships. This extended stay requires help or at least a longer welcome provided by the French (this requires a diplomatic POD - suggestions welcome). The planned reinforcements would not be ready in time, but were planned to be the new battleships Slava, Potemkin, Evstafi and Ioann Zlatoust.

So, with a growing Russian naval force off FIC, what do Russia and Japan do? Can Russia consider re-taking Port Arthur with a summer army offensive, with the now refitted and rested Rozhestvensky harassing any IJN moves to support the city?
 
It fell before he left Madagascar. And as to his fleet, it was so bad and untrained and incompetant, that short of ASB intervention, there is no outcome that gives victory. The Russian fleet was such a collection of half trained demorilized mob that ahppened to be in uniform that they were doomed to failure the moment they left. BTW, read up on how many ships ran aground just leaving Russian ports to begin with. And the fact they barly sunk maybe one fishing vessel as to how bad their training and gunnery was.
 
The opening of this thread makes me think....

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=338793&highlight=tsushima

What if instead of sailing from FIC for Vladivostok in May 1905, Admiral Rozhestvensky is ordered to hold at Danang, FIC. This is a prudent move, as Port Arthur has already fallen to the Japanese, so there's no point in running the gauntlet to Vladivostok only to be stuck in the ice that coming autumn.

Instead, Rozhestvensky is ordered to refit and repair his ships at Danang, and to wait for further reinforcements of first rate ships. This extended stay requires help or at least a longer welcome provided by the French (this requires a diplomatic POD - suggestions welcome). The planned reinforcements would not be ready in time, but were planned to be the new battleships Slava, Potemkin, Evstafi and Ioann Zlatoust.

So, with a growing Russian naval force off FIC, what do Russia and Japan do? Can Russia consider re-taking Port Arthur with a summer army offensive, with the now refitted and rested Rozhestvensky harassing any IJN moves to support the city?

The problem is this would compromise French neutrality it is not simply diplomacy that needs to change but the entire rulebook. If France is seen as coming in this among other things activates the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Article 3.
 
Could Russia put enough political pressure on Portugal to allow the Second Fleet to shelter at Macau for the necessary time instead of Danang? The Portugal government certainly wasn't nearly as big a force as France.

Macau is close to the Japanese controlled Taiwan, but did Japan have much military presence there since they had taken it from China only 10 years earlier? Would naval bombardments or landing parties on the Taiwanese ports be enough of a distraction to the Japanese to make a difference?

Of course it would be interesting for the Russian Second Fleet to look across Zhujiang Bay and see the British China Squadron.
 
Manilia might be the best bet, tho 'best' here is a relative term. The US & Russia had long a friendly relationship, however Roosevelt was already plotting the US position as a peace broker. He would have had some serious concessions demanded from the Russians as the price of saving their waterlogged fleet.

Note the one surviving cruiser of the Russian fleet did find shelter at Manilia post battle. The US finessed the rules for harboring belligerents warships, the Japanese made some protest, but everyone was more interested in moving towards peace negotiations & the matter was overlooked until the ship refitted & departed.

In the case of the entire fleet it would be trickier. Perhaps the US could make a token internment of the Russian fleet. Or buy the entire fleet (for scrap prices?) & contract the Russians to man & repair it? Lots of clever options here. Bottom line is the Japanese might be inclined to accept the US sanctuary since it is less likely the Russian fleet will attempt to anoy them.
 
The Russian fleet was such a collection of half trained demorilized mob that ahppened to be in uniform that they were doomed to failure the moment they left.
Then we must focus on the other half. Pull the best officers and men to create a credible fighting force. This would be:

6 x 1st class (commissioned post-1900) battleships - Borodino, Imp. Alexander III, Knyaz Suvorov, Oryol, Oslyabya, and newly arrived Slava.
4 x modern (post-1900) protected cruisers - Zhemchug, Izumrud, Oleg and Aurora

We may place 1905's IJN on a supernatural pedestal today, but I'd have to think Japan would have been worried about ten well played warships off their coast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order...leet_.28Second_.26_Third_Pacific_Squadrons.29

In addition to Slava, are there other 1st class warships that could be sent?

What happens to Tsesarevich, interned in Tsingtao?
 
The Borodino class ships left Libau ass soon as they were built. There was almost no training, shakedown or nothing. The best in the fleet were in the first pacific squadron. Once the Japaneses navy blockaded Port Arthur, that was it. Read an account of the Second Pacific Fleet's marshaling at Libau to fully understand just how rotten the fleet was. When you read the near comedic mistakes made just leaving port, you realize just how mindless the entire affair appeared. Another tidbit was the the first real gunnery practice the four battleships performed other then "attacking" ships in the Dogger bank incident. In Madagascar, the battleships missed their targets towed by the destroyers in the gunnery practice with one battleship hitting the destroyer towing the target, not the target. The ships were built with new sights that the gunnery offecers never practiced on. They sent a fleet into a mission using a weapon system they never practiced on. Let that little fact sink in. Can you imagine sending an Aegis destroyer into combat full of men who never once trained on an Arleigh Burke class destroyer against a trained crew say against an Spruance class destroyer. It might be modern, but with almost zero training, modern does not help. And the mindset that sends a non trained crew and ship into combat. Another window into the Russian Navy is the torpedoes test, the first time the destroyers practiced firing torpedoes was actually in Madagascar, something like 14 out of 15 fired had major errors in them. The fleet commander forcing a command given to never fire the torpedoes again accept during combat. To conclude, the best were in the 1st Pacific Squadron and look how they ended up. It would not make much difference if the best were transferred back to the 2nd Pacific Squadron because there was simply nothing to really work with. The Russian Navy's transition from sail to steam was a disaster. Simply put, the Navy lacked the technical competence to be anything more then a Navy in being. Any POD would have to be before that would improve the technical skills of the officers and naval ratings. But there were inherent institutional faults in the Russian Empire that would need to be fixed to deliver a different outcome. A very good account of the fleet can be found in the excellent book "The Fleet That Had to Die." class
 
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The Borodino class ships left Libau ass soon as they were built. There was almost no training, shakedown or nothing. The best in the fleet were in the first pacific squadron. Once the Japaneses navy blockaded Port Arthur, that was it. Read an account of the Second Pacific Fleet's marshaling at Libau to fully understand just how rotten the fleet was. When you read the near comedic mistakes made just leaving port, you realize just how mindless the entire affair appeared. Another tidbit was the the first real gunnery practice the four battleships performed other then "attacking" ships in the Dogger bank incident. In Madagascar, the battleships missed their targets towed by the destroyers in the gunnery practice with one battleship hitting the destroyer towing the target, not the target. As to the torpedoes test, the first time the destroyers practiced firing torpedoes, something like 14 out of 15 fired had major errors in them. Forcing a command given to never fire the torpedoes again accept during combat. To conclude, the best were in the 1st Pacific Squadron and look how they ended up. It would not make much difference if the best were transferred back to the 2nd Pacific Squadron because there was simply nothing to really work with. The Russian Navy's transition from sail to steam was a disaster. Simply put, the Navy lacked the technical competence to be anything more then a Navy in being. Any POD would have to be before that would improve the technical skills of the officers and naval ratings. But there were inherent institutional faults in the Russian Empire that would need to be fixed to deliver a different outcome. A very good account of the fleet can be found in the excellent book "The Fleet That HAd to Die."


One has to wonder about the fleet that thought that this was a good idea.
 
To be fair to Admiral Beez the finding some place to train is the Russians' best bet. Yes their fleet made comedy level errors. That however is not proof of incompetence, it is precisely the sort of thing that happens when you have crews that have not worked together aboard ships that have not worked together. Training would have fixed all of these problems.

A quick point on internment though: it is only for the duration of hostilities, you do get your boat and your crew back after the war. Some posters seem to think that neutrals seize the vessels as prizes which would be an act of aggression.

The issue of course is that no one can host an active fleet and remain neutral. It might not have been codified until 1907 but it was already understood.
 
To conclude, the best were in the 1st Pacific Squadron and look how they ended up.
So, assuming we're not going any further, what happens to the Russian fleet we've now concentrated in Danang? Can they survive the trip back the way they came? Or, wait until peace is signed, and then sail everything to Vladivostok, keeping the good ships active and scrap the rest, sending crews home via the trans-Siberian?
 
Purely on a diplomatic PoD, France could maybe say its ports are open to whoever. That would obviously favour the Russians over the Japanese but that would be some measure of neutrality.

The French were extremely anxious to secure a Russian alliance so maybe some clandestine resupply? The French give secret order to the Emperor of Annam to accept the Russian into their port and when the English catch up to it, the French send a formal diplomatic note about how he's a very bad emperor and that's totally not the right thing that was to be done. Bold Emperor.
 
Yup, once Port Arthur fell and the 1st Pacific Squadron was destroyed, the fleet became a political and not military tool. It is fairly questionable that even if the managed to link up, the result would be different. Lets say cooler heads prevail and this fleet is not pissed away but survives to fight another day....like in WWI, what happens? What happens if The Battle of Tsushima never happens? Send the good ships back, and send some of the junk to Vladivostok after the peace treaty. The good ships maybe end up in the Black Sea. The point is that they might shake things up by survive, everything else leads to the same result if they try to fight.

So, assuming we're not going any further, what happens to the Russian fleet we've now concentrated in Danang? Can they survive the trip back the way they came? Or, wait until peace is signed, and then sail everything to Vladivostok, keeping the good ships active and scrap the rest, sending crews home via the trans-Siberian?
 
What happens if The Battle of Tsushima never happens? Send the good ships back, and send some of the junk to Vladivostok after the peace treaty.
The Russians should have sent the junk to Port Arthur for arrival in 1900 (along with an earlier arrival of Vice-Admiral Makarov), and then pulled the guns for port defences, their crews for the garrison and sunk the hulls as blockships and defensive works.

But as they say on the Riverbank, that's another story....
 

BooNZ

Banned
The Russians should have...

Negotiated with the Japanese in good faith and abandoned any Russian aspirations in Korea. This would have provided the time to enable Russia to further develop its rail infrastructure (TSR etc) and secure a better grip on Manchuria. To clarify, avoid war in the first instance.
 
Negotiated with the Japanese in good faith and abandoned any Russian aspirations in Korea.
This! There's no better opportunity for Russia to poke Britain in the eye than to sign an agreement with Japan, ideally before the Anglo-Japan alliance of 1902 is signed. The agreement between Russia and Japan could have included Japanese support of a rail link with western Europe.
 
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