The battle of Tsushima, fought between 27 and 28 May 1905, was the first major naval battle of the twentieth century and saw the Russian and Japanese navies opposed. The clash resolved with the complete annihilation of the Tsarist fleet by the Japanese imperial navy and, in fact, led to the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese war that began in 1904.
When the Sino-Japanese war ended in 1895, Japan found itself in possession of many already Chinese territories on the continent, and among these was the important naval base of Port Arthur and the Japanese intended to keep what they had conquered. The problems came when the clauses of the peace treaty were known, in fact Russia protested the sale of the naval base of Port Arthur and so did other nations; finally the Japanese empire was forced to revise the clauses of the treaty and returned Port Arthur to the Chinese. Later the tsarist empire asked and obtained the possibility of building a railway through Manchuria and garrison Port Arthur to be used as a naval base. In all this the European nations remained silent, while Japan was secretly and actively reorganizing its fleet.
In February 1904 the Japanese acted and without a formal declaration of war their fleet attacked and annihilated the Russian ships that were in the harbor of Port Arthur. Japanese people "they exploited this first success by occupying the hills around the Russian base and bombing the ships at anchor there"1.
The Tsarist fleet of the East was now in tragic conditions and a rescue mission was prepared in Russia. A naval team consisting of 42 ships was organized, among these 11 battleships, and the command was entrusted to Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky; the fleet sailed from the Baltic naval bases on 15 October 1904.
The mission was really complicated also because, in the meantime, Port Arthur surrendered to the Japanese forces in January 1905. As there was no longer anyone to help, the new mission was to reach Vladivostok to try to put together a new fleet with to try to try the rescue. A very difficult undertaking. To get to Vladivostok, Admiral Rozhestvensky chose the shortest route, that of continuing the journey on the road that passed through the Tsushima strait (between Korea and Japan).
Eventually after eight months of sailing the Tsarist and Japanese fleets met in the Tsushima strait and the battle began at dawn on May 27, 1905, when a Japanese cruiser spotted the lights of a Russian ship and, later, the rest of the fleet. Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky had, among its main units, 11 battleships, 9 cruisers, 10 destroyers, while the Japanese admiral Heihachiro Togo had 4 battleships, 24 cruisers and 60 "minor" units between destroyers and torpedo boats.
Admiral Togo had the objective of parading in front of the Russian ranks by doing what in naval tactics of the time was defined the cut of the T, "or the insertion of its formation, in line, perpendicular to the enemy fleet, concentrating all the ships' fire on a few opposing units, forced to respond to the fire with a limited number of cannons"2. In fact, this tactic gave the Japanese victory. Although at the beginning of the fighting, the ships of the Russian fleet managed to damage various opposing units, including the flagship Mikasa, after there was no game and for the Russians it was the beginning of a nightmare. From the start until the end of the hostilities (May 28, 1905) the Tsarist fleet managed to lose more than 4000 men and about 5000 were captured, furthermore during the battle 7 battleships, 5 destroyers, 4 cruisers and other minor units were sunk. The Japanese had only 117 dead and 3 torpedo boats sunk.
Tsushima was among the worst military defeats in Russian history.
The victory of the Japanese empire was sanctioned, on September 5, 1905, by the peace of Portsmouth thanks to the mediation of the President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt. According to the Portsmouth treaty, the Japanese empire obtained the protectorate of Korea and received from Russia the concession of the peninsula of Liaotung, of Port Arthur, the maintenance of the Kuril islands (object of dispute between the two states still today) and control of the southern part of the island of Sakhalin while the Russians continued to occupy the northern area.
As already mentioned, the Kuril islands are disputed by Russia and Japan even now. This begins with the entry into the war of the Soviet Union against the Japanese empire in August 1945, after which the Red Army occupied the Kuril islands. Exactly there are four: Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan, Habomai.
In fact, since the end of the second world war, the two nations (despite treaties and references to other past Shimoda 1855), have not yet managed to get out of this stalemate. Japan claims them as hers while the Russian Federation has no intention of giving them up, also because these islands are very important from a geopolitical and strategic point of view. For example, one of the fears of the Russians could be that in the event of a transfer, Tokyo would grant authorization to the United States to install military bases.
These islands, in addition to possessing natural resources (such as Rhenium a metal that both nations consider precious), in fact represent easy access to the Pacific Ocean via the Okhotsk sea.
1 O. Warner, World history of naval conflicts. 1571-1944. From Lepanto to the American reconquest of the Pacific, Res Gestae, Milan, 2014, p. 243
2 S. Masini - R. Masini, The battles that changed the world, Rusconi, Santarcangelo di Romagna, 2018, p. 558
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