17 The impact of the war on
naval warfare
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Rotem Kowner1
From a naval point of view, the Russo-Japanese War was the most important
campaign since the Napoleonic Wars, and had a marked influence, albeit
brief, on the development of warfare at sea. Its greatest impact was obviously on the fleets of Russia and Japan. Whereas the former, the world’s
third largest, declined substantially after the war, the latter burgeoned into
one of the world’s mightiest. In addition, it was primarily the British Royal
Navy, the leading naval force at that time, that showed great interest in the
naval engagement of the war. The lessons learnt in the war played a significant role in the minor revolution in naval development and the subsequent
naval race that took place among the powers, Britain and Germany in
particular, in the decade before World War I.
The naval dimension had extreme importance in the Russo-Japanese War.
Several years before its outbreak, both Japan and Russia concluded that
domination of the seas in their vicinity would be crucial to any future conflict
between them. As soon as the war began the two combatants vied fiercely
for the control of the waters in the vicinity of Korea and Manchuria, knowing
that it would determine the conflict. They were absolutely right. Other naval
powers, however, expressed much interest in this naval struggle for other
reasons. Both navies were equipped with numerous modern warships, and
their unprecedented clash was supposed to yield invaluable information on
naval tactics and construction, as well as on subsequent weapon development. For this purpose, they dispatched scores of observers who impatiently
followed the great drama and sought to learn its lessons.
Since the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8 and the battle of the Yalu River
in 1894, the world had not witnessed any major naval engagement, and in
this interval the warship had undergone tremendous evolution. Accordingly,
avid observers had much to report on any naval engagement from the first
day of the war. The drama reached its climax with the epic voyage of the
Baltic Fleet and its ultimate demise at the battle of Tsushima. For many
months before the battle the fleet drew the attention of the entire world.
Not only were its position and objectives no secret, but also throughout the
journey the press reported on its progress and predicaments. As in a Greek
tragedy, the Russian armada slowly progressed toward its inevitable clash
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with the entire Japanese fleet. In the aftermath of the battle the expectation of significant lessons was entirely fulfilled. The war served as an overture to the great naval battles of World War I, and the strategic circumstances
at the outbreak of war even bring to mind the later fierce American–Japanese
clash during the Pacific War (1941–5). In technology the naval campaign
of the Russo-Japanese War signaled the end of an era in naval evolution,
yet it served as a precursor for the weapons systems and tactics that major
navies would adopt and the dilemmas they would face during the following
40 years.
The war and the fate of the battleship
The most immediate contribution of the war to naval warfare was its impact
on the development and virtually the destiny of the battleship in the
following decades. Following several radical developments, if not revolutions, in naval technology during the nineteenth century, the status of the
capital ship, a large steel-built vessel protected by thick armor and armed
with large guns, lay in doubt.2 During the 1880s the leading navies held
heated debates as to the role of this warship in the future naval arena. Some
of them, notably the French group known as La jeune école and headed by
Vice Admiral Théophile Aube, argued that the battleship was an outdated
and expensive vessel that had lost its advantage in view of the technological developments of the time. In the future, asserted the adherents of that
school, only relatively small and fast vessels such as the cruiser at most,
and perhaps just the small torpedo boat, would be able to cope with the
new threats such as the torpedo, rapid guns, and mines. Concerned by their
inability to compete with the accelerated pace of expansion of the Royal
Navy, other large fleets were drawn to this approach and began to equip
themselves with small torpedo boats and destroyers (which were intended
to combat torpedo boats) in ever growing numbers.3
Opposing this school were the proponents of the large battleship, arguing
that it had not lost its hegemony. Prominent among them was the leading
American naval historian and theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan. In two major
works published in 1890–2, Mahan asserted that naval power was a key to
international success and that whoever ruled the sea and seaborne commerce would win the war.4 Mahan’s views did not contain much that was
new, but they sounded the bell at the right time and reinforced widespread
tendencies that were already prevalent. His books won high acclaim
from naval circles of all the powers, as well as from advocates of imperialist expansion, and were soon translated into German, following the
personal initiative of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Russian, and Japanese. They
marked the beginning of a 15-year period known today as the pre-modern
age in the development of naval warfare (1890–1905). It was a brief but
intensive spell, which ended abruptly soon after the Russo-Japanese War.
It witnessed the introduction of smokeless gunpowder, armor-piercing shells,
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The impact of the war on naval warfare 271
and rapid-firing guns; significant improvements in torpedo engines that
turned them into efficient weapons; and slight improvements in firing control
that doubled the effective range of the big guns.
The most significant naval transformation in this short period, however,
took place in the construction of the battleship itself. In 1889, a year prior
to the publication of Mahan’s first book, the keel of the first ship of the
Royal Sovereign class was laid in Britain. Naval experts considered this
class the first of a new type of battleship that would be labeled 17 years
later as the Pre-Dreadnought. Compared with earlier battleships, it was characterized by a high turret in its prow that made it easier to withstand a
high sea and facilitated sailing at higher speeds. In addition, the use of steel
and nickel plates improved protection and saved weight. The outcome
was a stronger ship that became the prototype for most battleships built
throughout the world until the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The new
battleship also marked the beginning of a renewed naval arms race in
Europe, mainly between the Royal Navy and the French and Russian navies,
with the Imperial German Navy trailing behind them. In view of the impressive build-up of French naval power in the early 1880s, Britain declared a
“two-power standard” (in the 1889 Naval Defence Act) and adopted greater
expansion programs, with the intention of being able to face any combination of two of the other largest fleets. For this purpose Britain appropriated
large budgets that allowed the rapid construction of additional battleships,
ending by late 1905 with an unmatched force of 47 Pre-Dreadnought battleships. They all shared a similar design and had a primary battery placed on
two turrets, each with two barrels of the same caliber.5
On the eve of the Russo-Japanese War more than a hundred battleships
of Pre-Dreadnought design were sailing the seas, flying the flags of nine
navies.6 The construction of these warships involved enormous expenditure,
which placed a heavy burden on the defense budgets of their countries. This
financial burden was accompanied by serious doubts, for both military
and economic reasons. Without any naval battle since the onset of the PreDreadnought age, and with the constant improvements in the quality of the
torpedo, naval experts had strong reasons to question the ability of the ever
growing battleship to cope with the new threats in the naval arena. Quite
a few thought therefore that, like dinosaurs, they would become extinct at
the first encounter with smaller, cheaper, and more efficient warships.
The emergence of the Dreadnought
Doubts about the use of the battleship in general, and its primary armament
in particular, vanished altogether as a consequence of the battle of Tsushima.
In the eyes of the major navies, the outcome of this battle confirmed
Mahan’s theses regarding the decisive importance of the battleship. At the
same time, the battle left no doubt about the necessity for further improvements that would make the battleship more resistant and powerful. First and
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272 Rotem Kowner
foremost, the lessons of the naval engagements of the Russo-Japanese War
concerned the armament of the battleship. Until 1905 the leading navies
equipped their battleships with a primary and a secondary battery. The purpose of the primary battery was to engage primarily other battleships and
it usually relied on four guns in two turrets, front and rear—usually 305millimeter caliber (12 inches in bore diameter).7 The secondary battery
was intended for assisting the primary battery against capital ships, but also
for engaging smaller warships, mostly torpedo boats and destroyers, and
included scores of guns with calibers ranging between 76 and 152 millimeters (3–6 inches).8
Analyses of the battle of Tsushima emphasized the decisive, but not
necessarily exclusive, importance of the primary battery in an engagement
between battleships. In Tsushima, and even more so in the battle in the
Yellow Sea nine months earlier, fire was opened at distances previously
unknown.9 The fact that only guns of large caliber were used in such a
long-distance engagement had dramatic repercussions. First, the development of armor, in thickness and quality, made it possible only for guns of
especially large caliber to cause any significant damage and even to sink
battleships or armored cruisers; second, only ships with especially thick
armor were able to withstand a hit by those guns. The logical outcome
was evident. A well-protected battleship with eight or even a dozen big
guns could be equivalent to two or even three existing Pre-Dreadnought
battleships of the size of the Japanese flagship Mikasa.
One reason for the need for an efficient and drastic solution to the problem
of firepower was the wide variety of firing systems that had been created
over the years. This variety prevented the possibility of control and complicated the necessary uniformity.10 The other reason was the availability of
proper technology. The idea of arming a battleship with numerous big guns
and stripping it of its secondary battery began to take form even prior to
Tsushima. Already in 1903 the Royal Navy had conducted several successful
experiments in long-range fire and improved fire control. The promising
results induced experts such as Edward Harding to contend that additional
improvement in fire control and fire rate of the heavy guns, in several years’
time, might put engagement between battleships beyond the range of small
caliber guns and would keep them at a distance even beyond the efficient
range of torpedoes.11
The last but not least important reason for the need for a new type of
battleship was economic. At the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War the
budget of the Royal Navy was double its budget 15 years earlier, bringing
the burden on the empire to new limits.12 Appointed as First Sea Lord
in October 1904, Admiral John Fisher expressed his readiness for budget
cuts. Actually, he had no intention of either reducing the fleet’s firepower
or overstraining its budget, but he was willing to decommission over 150
obsolete vessels. At the same time, he was aware of the necessity to provide
high-quality replacements for the quantitative loss and to increase the fleet’s
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The impact of the war on naval warfare 273
firepower against the rising German competition. Fisher had in fact voiced
his readiness to cut the number of warships but not the firepower a few
years earlier, but the reports that the British naval observers sent from East
Asia left him no further room for doubt.13
In March 1905, two months before the battle of Tsushima, the Admiralty
approved plans for a revolutionary all-big-gun battleship. It was to be armed
with ten 305-millimeter (12-inch) guns, all capable of simultaneously aiming
at a single target under a central firing control. The decision did not require
the lessons of Tsushima, since already at the end of the battle in the Yellow
Sea in August 1904 the senior British naval observer, Captain William
Pakenham, composed an encomium to long-range fire. Stationed aboard the
Japanese battleship Asahi throughout most of the war, Pakenham suggested
it was possible to open fire at a distance of 20,000 meters (about 22,000
yards) and to consider a firing range of 10,000 meters as being at close
quarters. In the following months other British naval observers added their
support to this view and quoted the opinions of Japanese officers that heavy
guns were much more efficient than medium guns at the long ranges that
were expected in future naval battles. Pakenham himself wrote:
the effect of the fire of every gun is so much less than that of the next
larger size, that when 12-inch guns are firing, shots from 10-inch pass
unnoticed, while, for all the respect they instill, 8-inch or 6-inch guns
might then just as well be pea-shooters, and the 12 pr. [pounder guns]
simply does not count.14
The reports of the British naval observers soon reached the Admiralty,
and for years afterwards their conclusions were used in discussions within
the Royal Navy regarding the absorption of new technologies.15 In the fall
of 1905 Fisher conducted a new gunnery exercise in which the firing ranges
were from 4,500 to 6,300 meters (5,000 to 7,000 yards) instead of the 2,000
yards until then. The greater number of guns in the primary battery was
not the only factor in the firepower of the battleship, and in the following
years the Royal Navy sought also to increase the caliber of the guns and
improve the firing control system. Within a few years it increased the caliber
of the primary battery from 305 millimeters (12 inches) to 343 millimeters
(13.5 inches), and in 1912 it ordered the first class to be armed with 381millimeter (15-inch) guns. The Americans and the Japanese did not sit idly
by, but armed their own new capital ships with 356-millimeter (14-inch)
guns. Three decades later the gunnery race reached its peak, when the
Imperial Japanese Navy armed a pair of battleships, the Yamato and her
sister ship the Musashi, with 460-millimeter (18.1-inch) guns.
The conclusions derived from the battle of Tsushima supported greater
reliance on big guns but did not entirely solve the issue of the secondary
battery. Was it necessary at all? In 1905 some believed it was useless, and
supported the construction of an all-big-gun ship without a secondary
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battery. The idea of such a battleship had emerged before the war,16 and
even Fisher considered it earlier, but now the time was ripe.17 From then
on, British shipbuilders faithfully followed this conception, and eliminated
completely the use of the secondary battery in their subsequent designs. It
remained doubtful, however, to what extent the battle of Tsushima confirmed
this idea. Mahan, for example, was among those who stated that the battle
proved exactly the opposite. Except for certain decisive hits by the primary
battery, he argued, the victory was due to the rain of shells from medium
guns that, although they could not sink the ships, did cause critical damage
to human life and equipment. British opponents of the all-big-gun ship also
regarded the outcome of Tsushima as contradicting that concept. Admiral
Edmund Fremantle, for example, believed that the firing distances in the
battle in the Yellow Sea were an exception, and urged that the idea of
avoiding close range was alien to British naval traditions.18 The pressure
was fruitful, gradually eroding the intention of having a battleship with
virtually no secondary battery. From 1910 onward, new battleships were
rearmed with a secondary battery.19
The thickness and the quality of the ship’s armor became another
important target for improvement in the wake of the battle of Tsushima. In
the traditional duel between armor and armament, it seemed that the armor
had the upper hand in the Russo-Japanese War. After the battle of Tsushima,
for example, the Japanese counted about 40 hits by 305-millimeter gun
shells to their ships, similar to the number of hits they inflicted on Russian
ships.20 Yet not a single Japanese battleship was sunk in this engagement.
True, the Russian shells were of lesser power and some of them did not
explode, but the main reason that no Japanese ship was sunk was the quality
of British shipbuilding, the armor in particular. The Japanese ships were
built to the finest metallurgical technology of the time, were well compartmented, and were designed in the sturdiest fashion so that their resistance
to Russian shells was relatively high. Still, the Japanese gunnery too failed
in most cases to breach the armor of its rival’s battleships, even though
it did cause extensive damage that effectively put the ships out of action,
and often facilitated coups de grace delivered by torpedoes fired at close
range.21 These testimonies were unequivocal proof that thicker armor
plating amidships, but also on the decks and around the turrets, could provide
better defense against any type of shell, and ultimately might guarantee the
battleship’s survival.
The importance of speed for battleship action also gained significant
support during the war. Admiral Tøgø Heihachirø’s ability to execute his
famous maneuvers at Tsushima, allowing him to move parallel with
the Russian main force, was attributed to his ships’ advantage of speed.
By contrast, the lack of such an advantage in the Battle of the Yellow Sea
prevented Tøgø from bridging the gap with its opponent, and, were it not
for a lucky strike at the Russian flagship Tsesarevich, the battle would have
been lost. British observers emphasized in their reports the speed factor and
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The impact of the war on naval warfare 275
saw it as second in importance only to firepower. They argued that greater
speed would allow not only a quick entry into an effective firing range against
enemy ships but also a quick exit from the danger range. It could also enable
the battleship to avoid torpedo attacks and contact with submarines. Fisher
himself used to say that speed “is armor,” but the question was at what
price.22 Even a small increase in the speed of the battleship required bigger
engines, bigger fuel tanks, and consequently heavier armor to protect
them. In turn, they increased the weight of the ship and lowered its speed.
Thus, the balance between thick armor and higher speed demanded vast
resources in a period of budgetary cutbacks. Only a new propulsion system,
the steam turbine, was able to break this vicious circle, but this technology
had never been used to propel a warship on the scale of a capital ship.
Its eventual utilization in the new British battleship soon after the war
increased its speed drastically as compared with other naval vessels of similar
displacement.23
Overall, the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War confirmed the convictions of British supporters for a future all-big-gun battleship with stronger
armor and higher speed. In October 1905, four months after the battle of
Tsushima, the Royal Navy started constructing a battleship that included
substantial improvements in armament, armor, and speed. The project was
completed with great effort in exactly a year, and the new ship, named
Dreadnought, was an immediate sensation. It was superior to any contemporary battleship in each of the three cardinal yardsticks for battleships.
Its ten 305-millimeter guns constituted an unprecedented primary battery;
it had an extremely thick armor plating of 280 millimeters (11 inches) under
the water line; and its maximum speed was 39 kilometers an hour (21 knots),
almost 4 kilometers an hour (2 knots) faster than its fastest competitor.24
Until the Dreadnought, the 15-year period of rapid development of the
battleship had witnessed a gradual improvement in all these features, but no
ship could claim a significant improvement in all three at once. Hence,
the Dreadnought was nothing short of a revolution, at least in the short
evolution of the modern battleship. It was, however, a conceptual rather than
a technological revolution, since by and large the technology already existed
and the Admiralty merely required Fisher’s forceful leadership to utilize
it in concert.
Taking place after the decision to build the Dreadnought, the battle of
Tsushima served as a catalyst for the construction, but not as its underlying
cause. Paradoxically, with the launching of the Dreadnought the following
year, all battleships that had taken part in the battle became outdated at one
fell swoop, along, of course, with over 100 battleships of seven other navies.
The Royal Navy, which had led naval technology throughout the nineteenth
century, won a new edge, and forced other major fleets to reconsider their
expansion programs. In this sense, British lessons learned from the RussoJapanese War had a lingering effect on the construction of capital ships at
least until the end of World War II. The Dreadnought itself soon became
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a generic name for all new battleships with large numbers of heavy guns,
and the enormous sums invested in the construction of the latest PreDreadnought classes were virtually wasted.
The development of battleships did not end with the birth of the Dreadnought. By 1911 the Royal Navy completed ten new battleships of five
consecutive classes, each bigger than its predecessor, and within five years
from the completion of the Dreadnought it developed a second generation
of battleships known as Super-Dreadnought. Every new class boasted a slight
improvement in armament, armor, and speed, at a rate that astonished the
naval experts. World War I accelerated the rapid evolution of the battleship
and, during the 1930s, when the International Conferences on Naval Limitation lost their influence, the pace of development increased even further.
Together with the Dreadnought, the Russo-Japanese War was associated
also with the birth of the battlecruiser. This mutation between the battleship and the cruiser was born in the fading pre-war debate over the fate of
the battleship. Unlike the Dreadnought, however, it did not fit the new
naval circumstances Britain faced after the war and proved less successful
and more short-lived. The battlecruiser was entirely the brainchild of
Fisher. Although his term as First Sea Lord coincided with the golden age
of the battleship, he himself was an enthusiastic supporter of fast vessels,
and envisioned the development of a new capital ship similar to the
Dreadnought in firepower, but with much greater speed as a result of more
powerful engines and thinner armor.25 His vision was based on a pre-war
scenario that emphasized defense of imperial trade routes and engagements
against inferior Russian and French cruisers.26 Fisher’s new warship was
supposed to be fast enough to avoid torpedo attacks and to use its heavy
guns against enemy warships of any size. His vision did not alter much
during the Russo-Japanese War. He believed that greater firing range and
improved armor-piercing shells would ensure that the difference between
the armament of the battleship and of the battlecruiser would prove insignificant. Moreover, Fisher estimated that a fleet composed of battlecruisers
would be more economical and efficient than a fleet combining battleships
and ordinary cruisers.27 Consistent with this approach, he authorized in 1905
the first three British battlecruisers of the Invincible class, which were
completed three years later.28
Nevertheless, the Russo-Japanese War was detrimental to the concept of
the battlecruiser. More than anything, it was the change in Britain’s naval
adversaries that affected the destiny of this warship. As Russia ceased to
be a genuine menace, and France became an ally, German naval aspirations
and expansion programs suddenly seemed much more threatening than
before. Concern with the nearby German threat required solid battleships
rather than fast long-range cruisers. The rude awakening from Fisher’s
dream did not take long. The Royal Navy’s original plan had been for only
one battleship of the Dreadnought class and three battlecruisers of the
Invincible class, but at the outbreak of World War I it had three times more
The impact of the war on naval warfare 277
battleships than battlecruisers. Furthermore, as a result of the lessons of the
Russo-Japanese War and the strong support for the Dreadnought, the
Invincible class bore ultimately greater resemblance to a battleship than to
a cruiser. During the construction of the Dreadnought Fisher fought against
the widespread tendencies in the Royal Navy to prefer this warship over
battlecruisers, but was unsuccessful. In this case, at least, his opponents
proved right.29
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Repercussions on the major fleets
For a few years after the Russo-Japanese War, the Royal Navy stood in an
unprecedented position. With the demise of two of Russia’s fleets, and with
the emergence of the Dreadnought and the Invincible classes, it gained the
both qualitative and quantitative lead it had not had during the previous two
decades. Still, Britain followed the naval campaign off Manchuria closely
not only for technological reasons.30 The rapprochement with France, the
world’s second naval power, and notably the massive losses of the Russian
navy, allowed Britain to reconsider the need for the costly two-power
standard it had set since 1889. By late 1905, Britain maintained, in fact, a
three-power standard in Europe!31
The alliance with Japan signed in 1902, and subsequently the diminished
Russian threat as a result of the war, allowed the Royal Navy to accelerate
the process of replacing most of its outdated cruisers and gunboats, and
concentrate its build-up on the German threat in the Atlantic.32 The British
choice of a lean, high-standard fleet rather than a multi-vessel one was
sharply criticized at home.33 Critics too pointed to the war and its lessons
to prove that old vessels could be useful. In particular, they argued, the
inability of Japan to stop assaults on its shipping lanes by Russian cruisers
during the first half of the war proved that a limited number of British
battlecruisers, however superb, were insufficient to defend the shipping
lanes of the vast empire and locate enemy warships. Old cruisers, they
further maintained, were better than no cruisers at all. Another warship that
the war proved to be useful, in their eyes, was the slow gunboat that used
to guard diplomatic missions in foreign ports. The sinking of the Russianprotected cruiser Variag and the gunship Koreets in Chemulpo at the
outbreak of the war was an example of the risk such vessels faced, resulting
in the British decision to reduce their presence. On the other hand, the
assistance two British gunships provided during the riots in Shanghai in
December 1905 demonstrated that the decision was appropriate perhaps
in times of war, but in times of peace and for “police duties” in colonial
ports there was still room even for such obsolete vessels.34
The minor revolution Fisher initiated was followed closely by the other
major navies. With the completion of the Dreadnought they were forced to
reconsider their plans and even to halt actual construction of their suddenly
outdated battleships and large cruisers. The Imperial German Navy, under
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the dynamic command of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, was the first to be
affected. While starting its expansion program (the first Flottengesetz) in
1898, during the decade of 1904–14 it shot up meteorically from being
the world’s sixth largest navy to being second only to the Royal Navy. With
the enthusiastic encouragement of the kaiser, it responded to the Dreadnought challenge with an interval of two years. Initially, the development
of the Dreadnought was a significant blow, as Germany was forced to stop
the construction of the new Nassau class for a year and to widen the
Kiel Canal to allow the passage of larger warships.35 German industrial
capability, however, could face the challenge, and its accelerated pace of
warship construction caused great concern (known as the “naval crisis”) in
Britain during 1908–9, but less in the Admiralty. In turn, Britain reacted
by increasing its own naval allocations and accelerating naval construction
while simultaneously proposing means to win the naval race.36
After the Russo-Japanese War Britain identified the Imperial German
Navy as its main rival. In October 1906 Fisher acknowledged that Germany
was the only plausible foe, and to deter it Britain should maintain a fleet
double Germany’s in power.37 Fisher did all he could to maintain this
lead by keeping control over the navy budgets. To this end he overstated
the power of the German navy and emphasized only the shrinking gap
between the two navies regarding the Dreadnought-class battleship, while
disregarding the enormous surplus of Pre-Dreadnought ships at the disposal
of the Royal Navy. Accordingly, the official announcement of the cancellation of the two-power standard was postponed until 1912, two years after
the replacement of Fisher, when the standard was altered to an advantage
of 60 percent in the number of Dreadnought-class battleships over those of
Germany.38
In the naval race that began between the two navies, the British had a
slight edge for constructing the first Dreadnought battleship, but they virtually lost the enormous advantage they had held in Pre-Dreadnought classes
before the war.39 The confrontation turned into a two-headed race between
Britain and Germany because the battleship had become the pinnacle of
technological capability, and only extremely wealthy nations could afford
to finance its construction. By the time World War I broke out Germany
had 15 Dreadnought-class battleships, only seven less than Britain.40 Still,
the inability of the German navy to compete with its British rival in both
quantitative and qualitative terms in the first two years of the war pushed
Germany into accelerated construction of submarines in an attempt to
compromise the blockade and disrupt the Allies’ supply lines.
After 1904, the French navy witnessed a rapid decline, notably in relative terms. With the conclusion of the Entente Cordiale, France literally
abandoned the naval race with Britain and started appropriating a greater
portion of its defense budget to the development of massive land forces
to face the German menace.41 With diminished allocations and changing
priorities (starting partly in 1902), the French navy did not counteract aptly
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The impact of the war on naval warfare 279
the challenge set by the emergence of HMS Dreadnought.42 This inability
notwithstanding, in the aftermath of Tsushima, the French navy abandoned
completely its attraction to the warfare of small vessels, and in 1909 became
committed to a battleship navy.43 This move was too late and indecisive.
Within two years of the war, not only did the French navy lose its position as the world’s second naval power, but its ships were increasingly
regarded as obsolete.44 The new runner-up was momentarily the US Navy.
Completing the expansion program envisioned by President Theodore
Roosevelt, the US Navy posed a challenge but not a genuine threat to the
hegemony of the Royal Navy. Roosevelt wanted a stong navy that could
deter and face any threat, and after the war he regarded the Japanese
navy as the foremost likely opponent. While attempting to calm the tensions
with Japan, he acted vigorously to obtain greater budgets for naval construction. In spite of Mahan’s opposition, the navy entered the Dreadnought
age aggressively, but without the full support of Congress. When Roosevelt
left office in 1909, the US Navy remained with neither a close friend in
the Oval Office nor an accepted policy, and it gradually lost it strength, one
it would regain only after World War I.45
In terms of sheer size and motivation, the Russo-Japanese War most
affected the Russians’ naval power, the world’s third largest force before
the war. It marked its eclipse, dropping to sixth place and virtual marginality. The Imperial Japanese Navy was affected less adversely, and retained
the fifth place it held before the war.46 In absolute terms, however, the
Japanese navy increased its size substantially by incorporating several
Russian battleships, and newly built capital ships, whereas the Russian navy
was the only naval force among the powers that dwindled considerably.
Moreover, the Russian navy not only lost a great part of its able officer
cadre but also the remnants of its credibility faded with the decision makers
in St Petersburg. The Japanese navy, by contrast, gained much combat
experience and self-confidence, which affected its ambitions overseas and
its conduct in subsequent interservice competition at home.47
For the Russian navy, indeed, the war was a total disaster. It lost about
two-thirds of its capital ships, but also much of its fighting spirit and selfconfidence.48 Thereafter, it experienced a continuous decline that reached
its nadir in the 1920s. In the intervening years naval officers who returned
from Japanese captivity underwent a series of interrogations and courtmartials, and until 1907 the Duma objected to granting the navy any
construction budgets. It was only five years after the war that the Russian
navy began building battleships again, and two more years passed until its
construction budget showed any significant shift upward. After the war the
Russian naval presence in the Pacific Ocean became symbolic, and the Baltic
Fleet began its reorganization only a few years before World War I, although
as a combat unit it never regained its former strength. The Black Sea Fleet
was the only naval force to remain intact, and during World War I it played
an inglorious role in the war against Turkish and German forces. Another
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factor in the decline of the Russian navy was the revolutionary activity
among its men. During the revolution of 1905 the navy had become an
ideological hotbed, manifested in local mutinies, the most famous of them
being the mutiny aboard the battleship Kniaz Potemkin Tavritcheskii. This
radical activity did not cease even after the Bolshevik Revolution, and in
March 1921 it culminated in a large-scale mutiny at the naval base of
Kronstadt. The suppression of the mutiny and the execution of thousands
of navy personnel caused serious damage to the navy as a whole and the
Baltic Fleet in particular, resulting in a lingering distrust and limited allocations for many years to come. After 1921, the Soviet navy entered into
an extended period of relative paralysis and decline, from which it reemerged as a considerable naval power only in the 1960s and 1970s.49
For the Japanese navy, the experience of the war had a conspicuous effect
in four spheres that lingered until its disbanding in 1945. These were the
view of the decisive naval battle as a single engagement determined by
large capital ships armed with heavy guns; the preference for high-quality
ships and armament over quantity; the emphasis on night torpedo strikes;
and the concept of a war of attrition against an enemy with numerical advantage.50 The perception of a huge decisive naval battle was undoubtedly the
main legacy from the battle of Tsushima. Thereafter, all naval plans for war
against a future enemy, the US Navy in particular, anticipated a decisive
battle near the shores of Japan. According to this conception, one large
engagement such as the battle of Tsushima could determine the naval
campaign, but also the entire war. Even in December 1941, on the eve of
the attack on Pearl Harbor, large surface battles still held a central place in
the strategic plans of the Japanese navy and its construction plans. The
attack on Pearl Harbor was not a refutation of this view, but a gamble
intended to realize it. Anticipating American recovery and the regrouping
of its naval forces, the principal Japanese scenario for the Pacific War
foresaw a decisive naval battle that would lead to the final victory.51
The impact on the development of naval weaponry
The insights and experience of the Russo-Japanese War led to further technological development in virtually every naval weapon, such as the gun,
the torpedo, and the naval mine. The impact of this development on naval
warfare was felt throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The first
field in which significant innovations were made was naval artillery. Despite
the relatively short fire range of the primary battery in the battle of Tsushima,
the accuracy rate of both belligerents remained low—less than 10 percent,
and probably far less.52 Moreover, the need to keep battleships out of range
of medium- or small-caliber guns resulted in the increased use of long-range
fire, hence even lower accuracy. The deficiencies of naval artillery revealed
at Tsushima called for urgent improvements. In the next decade all major
navies made considerable efforts to improve fire control. Still in the lead,
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the Royal Navy had begun to put greater emphasis on naval artillery before
the turn of the century, but in the post-war years it made a special effort
in this realm. Improvements in fire control kept the heavy guns as the main
naval weapon and led to a rapid increase in the effective fire range and
weight of the shell.53
As a promising naval weapon, the torpedo was perhaps the greatest technological disappointment of the war, due to its very low accuracy.54
Nonetheless, the fear of an enemy using torpedoes shaped to some extent
the style of combat on both sides. They avoided approaching each other
and were afraid of night warfare, in which small torpedo boats could gain
the upper hand. Other navies did not underestimate the torpedo, and, despite
its limited effectiveness in the war, the pre-war momentum of its development was not checked. An ardent advocate of torpedo use, Fisher regarded
it as a weapon of the future. In May 1904 he received a report about another
technical improvement that increased the range of the torpedo to about 2,700
meters (about 3,000 yards). With such progress it was obvious that in a
short time the range of the torpedo could be longer than the effective range
of gunfire from the ships against which it was to be launched. Fisher’s forecast was correct, and was realized probably sooner than he imagined. Within
a decade the torpedo range, which stood at about 4,000 meters (about 4,400
yards) in 1905, increased to about 10,000 meters (about 11,000 yards), while
its speed more than doubled.55 Ten years later the torpedo emerged as a
reliable weapon, and during World War I it proved to be relatively accurate,
especially when launched at close range from submarines.56
Another naval weapon that made its virtual debut in the Russo-Japanese
War was the naval mine. Mines were used unsuccessfully against warships
as early as the seventeenth century, but the spring of 1904 marked the beginning of massive use of this inexpensive and unsophisticated weapon, which
was nevertheless far more efficient than the torpedo. Both sides used mines
extensively, and both lacked suitable means to counter them. In those
circumstances their effect was highly destructive. Mining of the coastal area
off Port Arthur caused the sinking of three battleships, five cruisers, and
three destroyers, and the loss of thousands of crewmen on both sides.57 All
the Japanese capital ships lost in the war were sunk by mines. Critically,
mines had strategic significance as evident from the sinking of the two
Japanese battleships Hatsuse and Yashima—a third of Japan’s battleships—
in one day. For Russia, mines had even greater repercussions because of
the loss of the charismatic commander of the Pacific Fleet, Vice Admiral
Stepan Makarov, aboard the battleship Petropavlovsk. His death due to a
mine hit brought the Russian naval initiative to a halt, and condemned the
Port Arthur squadron to a slow death in the harbor.
In the aftermath of the war the naval powers recognized the threat of the
mine and attempted to ban its use at the Hague Convention of 1907. Rather
than being atrocious it was simply a novel weapon, and the world, to paraphrase Basil Henry Liddell Hart’s view on the introduction of chlorine gas
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in warfare a decade later, condones abuses but abhors novelty.58 Eventually,
the mine’s murderous effectiveness kept it operational, and instead of
banning it all major navies endeavored to develop minesweepers to locate
and neutralize it.59 It comes as no surprise that the Russian navy was the
first to recognize this need, and in 1910 it built a vessel intended specifically for minesweeping. Initially, the Royal Navy did not regard the mine
as a valid weapon, but due to Fisher’s strong impressions of its effect in
the war it was finally included in the war plans of 1913 with the support
of the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill.60 During World
War I, mines continued to be the primary means of sinking warships, as
the German navy demonstrated with the sinking of the British battleship
Odysseus at the onset of hostilities.61
The epic voyage of the Baltic Fleet, and the inconvenient use of coal
in particular, provided much food for thought in the field of logistics.
Compared with the lengthy and precious time it required to coal ships at
sea, oil seemed promising. Fueling with it was relatively quick and could
be done in motion. Eventually, it was the success in obtaining reliable
sources of oil in the years after the war, rather than the ordeal of the Baltic
Fleet, that spurred a gradual shift to using it for military purposes. In 1909
the Royal Navy decided that all its future destroyers would be powered by
oil, and within three years this decision was implemented also in regard to
the new class of battleships, the Queen Elizabeth.62 The transition to the
use of oil by the major navies was also associated with the development of
naval diesel engines, but nonetheless the ability to utilize this relatively new
source of energy was more geopolitical than technical.63 European powers
went in quest of it to distant locations such as the Middle East and the
Persian Gulf, and so began a bitter struggle for influence over those areas
that has never ceased since. Similarly, the Russo-Japanese War did not result
in the construction of auxiliary and coaling ships specifically built for supply
and refueling. For the British the logistic constraints that hampered the
Russian navy were less problematic, since Britain controlled many ports
along the main routes of its empire. Eventually, only the vast and continuous needs of World War I speeded up the development and the use of
special navy ships for these purposes.64
The war and the advent of a true naval revolution
While heralding a new age in the development of the battleship, the RussoJapanese War missed out on the submarine and the airplane, the two most
crucial developments in naval warfare in the twentieth century. Their
absence does not necessarily mean that the war did not assist in promoting
their development. On the contrary, operational requirements during the war
increased awareness of these new technologies and the pressure to further
develop them for full operational use.
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The impact of the war on naval warfare 283
The submarine missed the war by several months. In late 1904 both
belligerents had submarines, but they did not regard them as ready for operational deployment. By the end of the war the Russian navy transferred 14
small submarines to Vladivostok by means of the Trans-Siberian Railway,
too late for any effective use. All the major navies shared their distrust
of the submarine, even though it had a relatively long history. Beginning
with David Bushnell’s famous Turtle, which failed to sink a British warship
during the American War of Independence, the subsequent century witnessed numerous attempts to construct submarines for military purposes.65
Significant steps toward this objective were made only in the last decade
of the nineteenth century. In 1892 a submarine was armed for the first time
with a tube for launching torpedoes, and six years later this new weapon
was launched successfully under water.66 The Royal Navy began the
construction of submarines in 1901, and a year later the Russian navy
followed suit.67 By the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War all the large
navies except the German had acquired submarines. Nevertheless, in 1904
all still defined the submarine as an experimental vessel and did not put it
into operational use.68
The difficulties the Japanese navy faced in sinking the Russian warships
hiding in the safe haven of Port Arthur aroused special interest in submarines. Believing a submarine could penetrate the port and sink the Russian
ships, Fisher began to view it as a plausible offensive weapon. Two months
after the war broke out, he wrote to a friend: “my beloved submarines . . .
are not only going to increase the naval power of England seven times
more than present . . . but they are going to bring the income tax down.”69
A month later he referred to the submarine in a longer letter, lamenting its
absence in the fleets of the two belligerents. This time Fisher proved almost
prophetic, stating that submarines on offensive missions would revolutionize
the war at sea.70
On January 24, 1905, three weeks after the fall of Port Arthur,
Fisher sent Prime Minister Arthur Balfour two “rough papers” (entitled
“Submarines Used Defensively” and “Submarines Used Offensively”), in
which he formulated his concept of “flotilla defense.”71 Fisher proposed
to abandon the traditional dependence on battleships for deterrence and
defense of the British Isles, and rely instead on the flotilla, that is destroyers
and submarines, which can also be used offensively in the Channel and the
Mediterranean. This vision of the submarine faced great opposition at
the Admiralty, but Fisher’s foresight was realized within a decade. Unfortunately, in his case, it was grasped by Britain’s arch rival, the German navy.
Fisher, however, was reacting to, rather than causing, a change. While the
war provided him with the strategic insights, certain technological improvements at the same time enabled the submarine to play the role it was intended
to. During the war the French navy, followed by the Royal Navy, developed diesel engines that replaced gasoline engines for surface power,
and in 1908 the Royal Navy completed the first submarine that could sail
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relatively long distances.72 Fisher’s vision of the submarine, however, won
firm opposition, and after his retirement, and more so between 1912 and
1914, the production of submarines for operational purposes in Britain was
reduced to a trickle.73 The first submarines were used for intelligence gathering and for assault on merchant shipping, but with further development
of the torpedo they soon emerged as an efficient weapon against warships
as well. In 1912 a Greek submarine conducted an instructive demonstration
of the submarine’s offensive capacity when it attacked a Turkish cruiser
with torpedoes. It missed its target, but during the first months of World
War I German submarines did sink a number of capital ships, thereby
displaying painfully the extent to which this vessel had advanced since the
Russo-Japanese War.74
The airplane was totally absent from naval use in 1904–5, for the simple
reason that the first flight of a powered machine took place less than two
months before the outbreak of the war.75 The Russo-Japanese War was the
first military conflict after the pioneering flight of the Wright brothers, and
it demonstrated the necessity of adopting such a technology for military
use. On land, improvements in artillery range required means to locate
enemy positions. Both the Russians and the Japanese solved the problem
by flying balloons tied to the ground for lookout purposes. In the naval
arena too, gunnery range had more than doubled compared with previous
wars, but both sides continued to depend on observation posts on ships.
Two years after the war the Wright brothers approached the Royal Navy
with an offer to sell them a plane. The British rejected the offer, but the
US Navy showed some interest in the new technology. By late 1910,
the Americans had taken the lead in the development of the airplane for
military use, as Eugene Ely took off from an inclined platform on the deck
of the cruiser Birmingham; in a subsequent exercise two months later he
landed on similar platform at sea.76 Another direction in the development
of naval aviation in the decade after the Russo-Japanese War was the transformation of merchant ships into mother ships for amphibious seaplanes.
During the two years that preceded World War I the French, the British,
and the Japanese began to make use of such airplanes for scouting and
naval assault, and in September 1914 Japanese amphibian airplanes executed
the first ground assault from the sea as they bombed the German base in
Tsingtao, China.77 In the following decade the specifically designed aircraft
carrier emerged, to begin its long evolution via Taranto, Pearl Harbor, and
Midway until it wholly succeeded the battleship as the centerpiece of the
fleets of the foremost naval powers.
Conclusions
Twelve years after the Russo-Japanese War the submarine became an effective weapon of strategic value, although the battleship with its multiple
heavy guns still epitomized naval power. Three decades later there was no
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The impact of the war on naval warfare 285
longer any doubt that the battleship had become an anachronism. German
U-boats in the Atlantic Ocean almost choked Britain, and airplanes taking
off from Japanese carriers struck at American battleships in Pearl Harbor
and sank in minutes the imposing British battleship Prince of Wales and
its battlecruiser consort Repulse on their way to Singapore. The lessons
of the naval campaign during the Russo-Japanese War gave no inkling of
that outcome, nor a model for future naval engagements. Instead, it served
as a catalyst for developing ever larger capital ships. The example of the
battle of Tsushima did not recur, however. The battle of Jutland in 1916
was momentous and demonstrated the ultimate failure of Tirpitz’s strategic
concept, but in terms of losses it was far from decisive. Without a dramatic
climax, World War I was characterized, especially after Jutland, by a long
war of attrition and a struggle over supply routes, where the submarines,
destroyers, and even Q-ships enjoyed unprecedented importance.78
Although the Royal Navy under the command of the charismatic and
visionary Admiral Fisher seemed to draw the most forthright conclusions
from the Russo-Japanese War, it was these conclusions that contained
the seeds of its downfall. In the short run, the war intensified the need for
a revolutionary battleship, and the Royal Navy was able to apply the data
its observers faithfully gathered and construct a ship of unmatched quality.
Mahan, however, was aware of the risks inherent in too simplistic conclusions regarding the war. A year after the battle of Tsushima he argued
against concentrating the resources of a navy around a small number of
warships of massive power, and warned that the construction of ships of
ever increasing size would be financially destructive.79
Initially, the Dreadnought yielded a significant advantage for the Royal
Navy over its German rival; but it sparked a naval race that forced
Fisher to allocate much of his resources to the construction of ever bigger
capital ships. Other navies that were less aware of the lessons of the war,
or unable to compete with the British, devoted a more significant portion
of their budgets to more revolutionary solutions, such as the submarine and
subsequently the aircraft carrier. Within a decade after the Russo-Japanese
War Germany began to depend on submarines, and a decade later still, the
American and Japanese navies started constructing modern aircraft carriers,
which were to transform warfare at sea. The Russo-Japanese War preceded
the onset of this new era by a few years. It nonetheless marked the sudden
death of the pre-modern stage and served as a preface to a brief but fascinating period in which the modern battleship ruled the waves.
Notes
1 The author thanks Cord Eberspaecher, Felix Brenner, and Yigal Sheffy for their
insightful comments on early drafts of this chapter.
2 These revolutions included the introduction of the steam engine, the screw
propeller, armor, shell guns, and rifle ordnance. See Hobson, 2002: 24–57.
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3 On the French school, see Bueb, 1971; Ropp, 1987: 155–80; and Walser, 1992:
58–90, 180–200. On the German attraction to the French school during the
1880s, see Lambi, 1984: 7–9.
4 See Mahan, 1890, 1892. On Mahan’s influence on naval thought at the end of
the nineteenth century, see Gough, 1988; and St John, 1971. Mahan’s dictum
was echoed, for example, in two speeches Kaiser Wilhelm II delivered in 1895
before members of the Reichstag and officers of the Prussian Royal Military
Academy. See Lambi, 1984: 34.
5 On the European naval race in the 1880–90s, see Kennedy, 1983: 165–71.
6 During this 15-year period, other European navies also built a large number of
battleships with similar features. France had twenty battleships of the first line,
Germany twenty-five, Italy nine, Austria three, and Spain one. On the other
side of the Atlantic the US Navy had twenty-four ships of five different classes
before the end of the Russo-Japanese War; Russia and Japan also joined this
exclusive club. The Imperial Russian Navy began building a Pre-Dreadnought
battleship in 1892 and completed the construction of twenty ships during this
period. The Imperial Japanese Navy ordered two of its first battleships from
Britain based on the Royal Sovereign class in 1893, and three years later another
four based on the Majestic class. See George, 1998: 78; and Neudeck and
Schröder, 1904.
7 The caliber of the main battery ranged between 280 and 343 millimeters
(11–13.5 inches), although 305-millimeter (12-inch) caliber was nearly the
standard for most of the Pre-Dreadnought classes.
8 Completed in Britain in 1902, the Japanese flagship Mikasa, for example, was
armed with four 305-millimeter (12-inch) guns, fourteen 152-millimeter (6-inch)
guns, and twenty 76.2-millimeter (3-inch) guns.
9 The range for opening fire at the battle of Tsushima was approximately 6,400
meters (about 7,000 yards).
10 For example, King Edward the Seventh, the last class of battleship constructed
in Britain before the war, was armed with four 305-millimeter (12-inch) guns,
four 234-millimeter (9.2-inch) guns, and ten 152 millimeter (6-inch) guns.
11 On the British experiments in long-range fire, see Marder, 1961: 35.
12 On the governmental pressures to cut naval budgets in Britain, see Fairbanks,
1991: 262.
13 On Fisher’s decision, see Grove, 1995: 47.
14 Cited in Marder, 1940: 531.
15 The observers’ reports served as a reference for Corbett’s classified book on
the naval campaign during the Russo-Japanese War. See Corbett and Slade,
1914. Fisher himself mentioned Pakenham’s report in a letter to Edward Grey
in 1908; in Marder, 1956: 156.
16 In an article published in Jane’s Fighting Ships in 1903 entitled “An Ideal
Battleship for the British Fleet,” the chief constructor of the Royal Italian Navy,
Vittorio Emanuel Cuniberti, proposed a battleship of 17,000 tons armed with a
dozen 305-millimeter (12-inch) guns and entirely without a secondary battery.
In 1904 it was announced that the US Navy was planning a battleship (the
South Carolina class) with eight 12-inch guns. On Cuniberti’s article, see
George, 1998: 91.
17 Fisher himself stated years later that the idea of a ship with guns of uniform
caliber had been on his mind as far back as 1900 in Malta in a discussion with
the chief engineer of the Royal Navy. Some attribute the idea of a battleship
based on a primary battery alone to a conversation Fisher held as early as 1882.
See, for example, Houge, 1964: 15–16.
18 Admiral Fremantle is quoted in Towle, 1977: 69.
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19 Completed in Britain in 1910, the Orion class was armed with sixteen 102millimeter (4-inch) guns, and five years later the Queen Elizabeth class was
armed with a dozen 152-millimeter (6-inch) guns.
20 The number of hits suffered by Japanese ships should come as no surprise since
the Russians had 41 guns of 254-millimeter (10-inch) and larger caliber,
compared with only 17 guns of similar caliber on the Japanese side.
21 On the invulnerability of Russian battleship armor in Tsushima, see Evans and
Peattie, 1997: 125.
22 Fisher’s view on speed is quoted in Marder, 1961: 59.
23 For the discussion on the importance of speed in the Royal Navy, see Towle,
1977: 72–3.
24 For the Dreadnought’s specifications, see Parkes, 1990: 447.
25 On Fisher’s support of the battlecruiser, see Sumida, 1993: 37–61.
26 For Fisher’s warning against a Russo-French combined threat and surprise attack
on Malta and Egypt during 1900–1, see Chapman, 2004.
27 Fisher’s attraction to the battlecruiser concept is relevant to a current thesis
suggesting that, when he was appointed First Sea Lord in 1904, he was not
concerned with the German navy. Most elements of his reform plan, this thesis
holds, emerged when France and Russia were still perceived as the major threat
to Britain and even later on his early plans did not alter much. Fisher’s persistence in viewing the battlecruiser as a main element in any future struggle was
therefore related to identifying Britain’s chief adversaries. See, for example,
Lambert, 1999; 2001a: 70–2.
28 Having 96 percent of the displacement of the Dreadnought, the Invincible class
was armed with eight 305-millimeter (12-inch) guns, and enjoyed an exceptionally long operational range and an unprecedented speed of 50 kilometers
per hour (27 knots). These performances were obtained at the cost of having
one turret less than the Dreadnought, and armor whose maximum thickness
was only 152 millimeters (6 inches), half that of the Dreadnought.
29 Other navies did not overlook the gamble involved in the investment in this
type of warship. Until World War I only three navies (of Britain, Germany,
and Japan) were equipped with battlecruisers. Fear of the battlecruiser’s inability
to face battleships was confirmed a decade later in the battle of Jutland (1916)
when the Royal Navy lost three battlecruisers and only one battleship, even
though most of the warships in that clash were battleships.
30 On Fisher’s interest in the war, see Mackay, 1973: 307.
31 In terms of battleships, for example, Britain had 47, whereas Germany had 17,
France 18, and Russia 5. (O’Brien mentions 46 battleships.) In O’Brien, 1998:
31.
32 Following Fisher’s decision, 90 obsolete and small ships were sold off and a
further 64 were put into reserve.
33 Oblivious to Fisher’s intentions, some of the British observers, Captain
Pakenham in particular, emphasized the role of older vessels and the need to
preserve them, thereby providing ammunition for Fisher’s critics. Fisher,
however, considered these reports to support his idea of an all-big-gun ship on
which he was working at the time. See Towle, 1977: 74–5.
34 On the debate over the size of the Royal Navy during and following the war,
see Towle, 1977: 75–7.
35 On the effects of the war and the Dreadnought revolution on the German navy,
see Herwig, 1980: 33–68, 1991; Steltzer, 1989: 238–55; Weir, 1992; and
Woodward, 1935: 100–20.
36 On the naval crisis in Britain in 1908–9, see O’Brien, 1998: 33–44, 73–97.
37 Fisher’s position on the German fleet is presented in Herwig, 1980: 50.
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38 On the change of standard in the Royal Navy, see Marder, 1961: 182–3; and
O’Brien, 1998: 25–46.
39 On the British–German naval race after the war, see Goldrick, 1995.
40 On the eve of World War I, France had ten Dreadnoughts (as well as 21 PreDreadnoughts), Italy had three (15), Austro-Hungary had six (6), Russia had
four (11), Japan had two (8), and the United States had ten (25). In George,
1998: 99; Hough, 1998: 55.
41 Whereas the French defense expenditure reduced slightly in 1905, its army
expenditure increased. For the French defense expenditures in the early twentieth century, see Stevenson, 1996: 4; and Herrmann, 1996: 237.
42 On the reasons for the French technological inferiority, and the failure of the
Danton class in particular, in the naval race of 1906, see Halpern, 2001: 45–6;
and Walser, 1992: 141–8.
43 On the commitment for battleships in the French navy after Tsushima, see
Halpern, 2001: 46–7.
44 On the British estimation of French naval power in 1909, see O’Brien, 1998:
31–2.
45 On the post-war state of the US Navy, see O’Brien, 1998: 62–7.
46 In 1900 the Japanese navy was in sixth place, and rose to fifth place for a few
years before the war. It returned to sixth place during the war, and for the five
years that followed it went up to fifth place. For the relative naval standing
before, during, and after the war, see Evans and Peattie, 1997: 147.
47 On the growing role of the navy in Japanese politics after the war, see Masuda,
1982; Schencking, 2002, 2005.
48 During the war the Russian navy lost a total of 18 battleships (11 first-line and
7 second-line), 5 armored cruisers, 4 gunboats, and approximately 20 destroyers.
See Mitchell, 1974: 269.
49 On the evolution of the Russian navy until World War I, see Mitchell, 1974:
267–82.
50 Evans, 2001: 28–33; Evans and Peattie, 1997: 129.
51 See, for example, Admiral Nagumo Ch¥ichi’s statement three weeks before the
attack on Pearl Harbor. In Ike, 1967: 247.
52 For data on the accuracy rate, see Evans and Peattie, 1997: 125.
53 By 1904 the Royal Navy had developed the first targeting device. It also unified
the fire from all the gun turrets by remote control using analogous computing
machines to align the position of the ship with the target. On the improvement
in gunnery systems, see Padfield, 1972: 183–5; Sumida, 1993: chs 3–5.
54 On the Japanese side, for example, about 370 torpedoes were fired, but only
17 hit the target (a success rate of about 4 percent). See Marder, 1961: 329.
For reports on even lower success rates (about 2 percent), see Gray, 1975: 175;
Lambert, 2001a: 74. Experts did not attach much value to the partial success
of the Japanese torpedo attack in Port Arthur at the outbreak of the war since
it was conducted at very close range and against stationary targets with no
defense.
55 The speed of the torpedo increased from 35 kilometers per hour (19 knots)
when launched at the maximum distance, to 83 kilometers per hour (45 knots)
for almost double that distance.
56 For the evolution of torpedo range and speed, see Marder, 1961: 329.
57 For details of the losses both belligerents suffered, see Corbett, 1914, II: 446.
58 Liddell Hart, 1972: 145.
59 On the development of minesweepers before World War I (1914), see George,
1998: 230.
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60 On the attitude of the Royal Navy to the mine before World War I, see Marder,
1961: 328–9.
61 During World War I both sides laid about 240,000 mines, resulting in the sinking
of 216 warships and hundreds of merchant ships. See Hartmann and Truver,
1991: 15.
62 The need for new energy resources in the Royal Navy became evident in 1912
with the appointment of Fisher as chairman of a royal committee reviewing the
possibility of supplying oil to the fleet. See Churchill, 1923: 137–8.
63 Toward World War I the German navy also began to use oil as a secondary
fuel for its larger ships. It still relied on coal, however, for the fear of shortage
of a stable supply of oil, as well as the assumption that the ship’s coal storages served as additional shielding against torpedoes, particularly below the
water level. See Epkenhans, 2001: 61–2.
64 On the development of supply ships in the twentieth century, see Wildenberg,
1996.
65 For the early history of submarines, see Compton-Hall, 1983; Middleton, 1976:
ch. 1; Roland, 1978.
66 For the introduction of submarines into the Royal Navy, see Lambert, 1999:
38–72; Preston, 2001: 24–43.
67 On submarines in the Imperial Russian Navy, see Lambert, 1992: 148–9;
Spassky, 1998.
68 On the Russian use of submarines during the Russo-Japanese War, see Mitchell,
1974: 233.
69 In a letter to Arnold While, March 12, 1904. In Marder, 1952: 305.
70 In a letter of April 20, 1904. In Marder, 1952: 308–9.
71 Add. Mss 49710, reprinted in Lambert, 2001b: 109–12.
72 On the impact of the war on the advocates of the submarine within the French
navy, see Walser, 1992: 136.
73 Lambert, 1999: 234.
74 On September 22, 1914, the German submarine U-9 sank in less than an hour
three British armored cruisers: HMS Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy. During the
entire war, Germany built 332 submarines. In George, 1998: 159.
75 The Wright brothers are usually credited with the first controllable, powered,
heavier-than-air flight, which took place in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on
December 17, 1903.
76 On the early development of ships as airplane carriers, see Humble, 1982: 6–11;
Layman, 1989; Preston, 1979: 6–11; and Robbins, 2001: 11–67.
77 A year earlier it had again been the small Greek navy that had opened a stage
in the new era when one of its airplanes dropped four bombs on a Turkish
battleship during the Second Balkan War of 1913.
78 The last recorded incident of a battleship sinking another battleship took place
on October 25, 1944 when the USN Mississippi hit the IJN Yamashiro with a
salvo at 18,000 meters. Half a year later the world’s largest battleship Yamato
was also sunk by multiple hits of bombs and torpedoes dropped by about 380
airplanes.
79 Mahan, 1906: 142. See also Seager, 1977: 525–7.