Alternate Russo-Japanese War

[Sea Skimmer]

I have been musing this a bit; historically many of the advisors to Tsar Nicholas II said he should not split the Russian fleet, but instead wait until roughly mid 1905 to dispatch the entire Baltic Fleet with all its new battleships to the far east as one unit. This force would be pretty damn overwhelming with a planned 16 of the most modern, some still fairly dated, battleships being sent. Against this Japanese strength would only rise to 8 battleships. However in the interim Japan can pretty much invade the Far East at will, and would be free to land much closer to Port Arthur which was not well defended upon the historical outbreak of war.

So if this happens, would Japan still attack, and if so how goes the war? A likely much more rapid Japanese victory on land balanced against near certain Russian victory after they sail the entire fleet around the world?

[K. A. Pital]

Russian fleet had serious tech problems. Tsushima was partly a consequence of inferior Russian shell technologies. The shells won't detonate upon piercing enemy armour. I'm not sure winning against Japan would be easy, although of course a bigger fleet would make it easier to achieve.

[Sea Skimmer]

Nobody on earth had shells which could detonate after piercing any serious armor in 1905. In fact a major reason for Japans success was that they did not even try; they fired large amounts of HE and common shells and simply blasted the Russian ships until they caught fire. But this also meant some Russian battleships were still afloat after anything from 130 to 200 hits of all calibers.

The technological problem with Russian shells was most were still filled with blackpowder rather then newer material like Lyddite as Japan adapted, but only for a fraction of its ammunition stocks. However as a brand new technology Lyddite shells had serious safety problems, and number of them burst inside Japanese guns at the Battle of the Yellow Sea due to friction inside the shells compressing the explosive enough to explode it. Lyddite filled shells would explode on contact with just about anything; its RN shells filled with this material which got such a bad reputation at Jutland. The only reliable way to pierce heavy armor in the period was with inert solid shot, which both sides had and made use of. Russian ships had other problems as well, such as firing guns by lanyard, but this was not a crippling problem and they did have fairly advanced range and order telegraph systems. Both sides used many of the same exact rangefinders, though the Japanese had more of the most recent type.

Even with the blackpowder a number of Japanese ships were heavily damaged in the major battles of the Russo-Japanese War, and the Russian fleet at Tsushima had a large proportion of very old ships, which were very slow among other problems. Leaving the Russian fleet together means that the worst battleships can easily stay in the Baltic, and the best ships all all grouped together instead of being defeated in detail. The Japanese speed advantage would vanish, the Russian fleet would be much better screened as well. Togo's ability to for example, twice cross the T of the Russian fleet would basically become impossible unless the Russians intentionally steamed in a circle. This is a huge difference on its own.

In addition in real life, at Tsushima almost all the Japanese ships had already seen action in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, as well in bombardments of the Russians at anchor, and scattered other actions, while in this scenario the Japanese would for the most part be just as green as the Russian crews (both sides had limited numbers of men who saw action in the Boxer rebellion). The Battle of the Yellow Sea itself didn't go that awesome for Japan when they faced only the better end of Russian firepower, Mikasa was forced out by line by Russian gunfire and generally the situation was not going well until a lucky hit on the bridge of battleship Tsesarevich killed Admiral Vitgeft and put the Russian line into disorder. If that hadn't happened its not out of the question that Togo would have been defeated in that battle, at least so far as the Russian fleet escaping Port Arthur.

Really the only thing I see heavily against the Russians is that with no less then sixteen battleships, it might actually be too cumbersome to fight them all in one battleline, the armored cruisers would be numerous enough to form a proper independent force. Two battlelines however would both each be as strong as the entire Japanese fleet, the cruiser line equal to the Japanese cruisers. I'm having a hard time seeing how Russia will loose. The biggest problem is making sure the land war lasts long enough to sail to the far east in the first place.

[Force Lord]

Skimmer, something akin to this was discussed back then. At that thread Duchess claimed that Russia could win without sending a fleet and rely entirely on its army, though I have a little doubt over her claim that the Trans-Siberian railroad (incomplete at the time) managed to supply 800,000 men successfully. Can you clarify this?

[StarSword]

Skimmer, something akin to this was discussed back then. At that thread Duchess claimed that Russia could win without sending a fleet and rely entirely on its army, though I have a little doubt over her claim that the Trans-Siberian railroad (incomplete at the time) managed to supply 800,000 men successfully. Can you clarify this?

I may be misinterpreting your point, but how does having 800,000 ground troops help when there's a fairly sizable body of water between you and your objective? It'd be some damp wheelin', as my mom would say.

[Force Lord]

Skimmer, something akin to this was discussed back then. At that thread Duchess claimed that Russia could win without sending a fleet and rely entirely on its army, though I have a little doubt over her claim that the Trans-Siberian railroad (incomplete at the time) managed to supply 800,000 men successfully. Can you clarify this?

I may be misinterpreting your point, but how does having 800,000 ground troops help when there's a fairly sizable body of water between you and your objective? It'd be some damp wheelin', as my mom would say.

Well, Russia had no plans to invade Japan. Too much distance involved, and Manchuria (the real battlefield), accessible by land, is pretty far away as it is.

My point is that I doubt Duchess's claim that the Trans-Siberian railroad (not completed until the middle of WWI!) would be able to supply 800,000 men campaigning in Manchuria. I know there are other railroads around, but I bet they are not plentiful.

EDIT: And Skimmer, considering how the war with Russia depleted Japan's treasury quickly in OTL, if the Tsar decides to take his time sending his fleet, Japan may not be able to fund the land war for long (if they do attack), and try to seek peace. Also, does the Tsar still end up ordering his troops to massacre the striking workers in front of the Winter Palace in 1905?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The Trans-Siberian was a standard Russian railroad of the period with reasonably advanced signalling technology comparable to American railroads of the period. It was single-tracked with passing sidings and had a single break in it at Irkutsk, on the southern shore of the Lake Baikal. Track could and was laid across the ice in winter and there were steamers to bridge the gap once the ice broke. Service disruption between the collapse of the ice track and the commencement of ice-reinforced steamer operation could be a few days at most with aggressive clearing efforts. There were two such icebreaker ferries, the Baikal and Angara and both could tow barges for additional cargo capacity, which could directly haul railroad cars. Barges and smaller regular steamers could haul breakbulk cargo to be loaded onto cars on the far eastern side of the line. Except for this break the line was complete, and wagons could further be supported to the south of the lake to supplement capacity.

Using a figure for a similar single-track mainline with a similar loading gauge and signalling apparatus, Tehachapi Pass in southern California the Second World War with extensive crews of brakemen and support personnel could handle at maximum achieved capacity 56 trains a day in each direction. The Russians historically rain about only 28 trains a day in each direction on the line (with difficulty, but "well in excess of three times the original planned number" is cited in official documents, which was 7 - 8 trains a day), but the limit of tonnage per train with old-style buffer-and-chain couplers used by Russia in the period is 3,000 tonnes including cargo. In practice this wold not be achieved, so we may conservatively assume that each train is hauling only 1,000 tonnes of cargo, not unusual for American railways of the period either, and the engines they had were certainly capable of it. Proper organisation of trains to allow them to stack in yards while a series of opposite-direction trains passes will guarantee this frequency is sustainable. This means that 28,000 tons of cargo can be delivered on the trans-Siberian a day at theoretical maximum capacity, or around 70 kilogrammes per soldier per day. The two limits are capacity at Lake Baikal and the fact additional troops must be sent to the front, bringing down this figure. Conversely however food is easily obtainable in Manchuria since the interests of the local population are not important and it can be requisitioned at will, so this is primarily ammunition, uniforms, medical supplies, and other equipment.

A German infantry division in WW2 could require up to 1,100 tonnes of supplies a day, including food, to operate against the enemy in heavy combat. This would set a limit of around 430,000 Russian troops in the Far East, more if the food was being obtained from local sources beyond the rail line bottleneck. This example is extreme, however, as it involves vehicle parts and fuel and replacements and constant heavy combat for all 800,000 troops, which is deeply implausible, for far more materiale-intensive combat than the Russo-Japanese War. US figures in 1944 were 650 tons for an infantry division.

From the US Army Handbook 1939-1945, a division required:

1,100 tons of dry cargo
475 tons of petroleum
25 tons of vehicles

to be delivered daily during combat, but this was broken down to:

595 tons to ground troops in the combat zone
65 tons to the air forces
365 tons to the divisional area for dry goods.

Amnerican forces were considered overequiped by any standard, and the Far East was not completely undeveloped. Coal and wood for trains was in ready supply there and in Manchuria in addition to food resources. The Amur river is navigable for part of the year for prepositioning of bulk supplies. Again, we really only need to worry about daily combat operations. German infantry divisions fighting in 1944 on their home soil required only 200 tons a day of supplies to be delivered. This is probably closer to what the Russians would need without any motorized transport in 1905, but we will be more cautious, as this figure would result in 2,400,000 troops being able to be sustained in Manchuria.

If we instead take the figure that 595 tons are being delivered to the predominantly teeth-only infantry divisions of the day and assume a straightforward organisation we get a requirement of 33,400 tonnes of supplies a day to maintain the entire army in continuous combat operations. One tonne of rations however is enough food for 100 men a day by US Army Quartermasters of the period regulations; therefore rations comprise 8,000 tonnes of cargo a day. If we subtract that from 33,400 tonnes we get 25,400 tonnes of materiale that must be supplied to the army per day if they are obtaining rations locally. This is less than the 28,000 tonne maximum capacity of the railway, and lets us in fact send three trains a day of infantry replacements to the front. Civil War troop trains could regularly handle 1,000 troops; we shall not assume the Russian rail service to be less capable 45 years later, so we are talking about sending enough supplies and replacement troops to the front each day for an army of 800,000 to see the entire force being in continuous constant combat while losing 3,000 effectives a day and having them fully replaced. This means the army may more than 1.1 million casualties a year, or almost half again its original strength, and yet be constantly kept at 800,000 personnel with full supply.

The only bottleneck is lake Baikal. About 10% of the army could be supported by wagon trains around Lake Baikal based on pre-modern logistics limits of armies to sub-100,000 personnel. This means that, since replacement troops could be marched around the lake or simply packed in around cargo, accepting some overloading on the steamers, the lake Baikal vessels must be able to transport 22,500 tonnes in a 24-hour period of operation for an 800,000 man army to be feasable. The rail ferries could transport a total, between the two, of six fully loaded trains across the lake each day, so that is 16,500 tonnes of cargo that must be handled otherwise. Six steamers making three trips a day were historically hired to augment the two rail ferries and each could also make three trips a day. This means that each one needs to only have a capacity of 1,000 tonnes of cargo (for remember, the big rail ferries had to carry the weight of the cars in addition to their 1,000 tonnes of cargo each--so there was much more capacity on them for breakbulk goods, making this conservative if cars were not transferred) for the rail link to be essentially complete, and this completely ignores the hundreds of small sailing vessels on the lake which could carry a few dozen tonnes of cargo each day back and forth across the lake as well!

Then you have a mildly bigger problem, for I was humouring you and pretending your statement about the railway not being finished was factual. It isn't; Prince Khilkov, the Minister of Ways and Communications who had been trained in railway operations on the Pennsylvania Railroad in the United States, supervised with extreme speed and precision in the American style the building of the Circum-Baikal railway to complete the link around the lake. It was completed by September 26th of 1904, well before the war was over. At that point, 21 trains each day, each way, were being accommodated on the Circum-Baikal line, and of course in winter-time tracks could be laid across the ice and the cargo of additional trains could still be accommodated on the lake steamers and rail ferries across Lake Baikal to circumvent the admittedly lightly built and very rough Circum-Baikal emergency line. The 1916 figure was for the upgrade of the Circum-Baikal line to permanent modern standards and the completion of a new line entirely in Russian territory because the Japanese won, as part of the war, control of the Trans-Manchurian line to Vladivostok which in 1904 was of course under Russian control and one of the reasons for the war! The 1916 date is deceptive and moronic.

It should be brutally straightforward by these very conservative calculations--for it is HIGHLY unlikely that the ENTIRE army will be in heavy combat EVERY SINGLE DAY (this is basically unheard of), let alone that a Russian Army in 1905 will need the dry goods of a US army in 1944 (!), that it is easily possible for an 800,000 man army to be supported in Russia...

...And that was actually the figure the Russians themselves believed possible during the war. The loss of the war was essentially because of the humiliation of the loss of the fleet helping trigger the 1905 revolutions, not because Russia lacked an ability to fight on with an excellent chance of victory. It was a political, not a military-logistical figure. The Russian army could have fought on until the Japanese were bankrupt and then counterattacked on a large scale; that is simply objective fact.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Skimmer, something akin to this was discussed back then. At that thread Duchess claimed that Russia could win without sending a fleet and rely entirely on its army, though I have a little doubt over her claim that the Trans-Siberian railroad (incomplete at the time) managed to supply 800,000 men successfully. Can you clarify this?

I may be misinterpreting your point, but how does having 800,000 ground troops help when there's a fairly sizable body of water between you and your objective? It'd be some damp wheelin', as my mom would say.

What large body of water is there between Russia and Korea? This was a cabinet war, not some kind of moronic 20th century conception of Total War yet. Russia never intended to conquer Japan. The goal of the Tsar and his ministers was to drive the Japanese out of Korea at most and simply secure total control of Manchuria at the least. The ne plus ultra of Russian Imperial ambitions was Pusan.

[Coop D'etat]

If your analysis of the strategic situation visa vi Russia and Japan is correct, which I have no particular reason to doubt, I wonder if that was an influence on Japanese strategic thinking in WWII. That they could surprise a materially superior enemy and inflict a number of humilating defeats upon then whilst conquering the areas in dispute before a real response could be materialised. Thus presenting their enemy with a fait accompli that would be a major task for the opposing power to reverse and thus bring them to the negotiating table.

Basically that they thought they could get away with Pearl Harbour and taking SE Asia against the Americans because they already did the same in miniature with Port Arthur and Korea against the Russians.

Not that anyone could answer this question for certain but in wondering is it something that gets discussed in the literature.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If your analysis of the strategic situation visa vi Russia and Japan is correct, which I have no particular reason to doubt, I wonder if that was an influence on Japanese strategic thinking in WWII. That they could surprise a materially superior enemy and inflict a number of humilating defeats upon then whilst conquering the areas in dispute before a real response could be materialised. Thus presenting their enemy with a fait accompli that would be a major task for the opposing power to reverse and thus bring them to the negotiating table.

Basically that they thought they could get away with Pearl Harbour and taking SE Asia against the Americans because they already did the same in miniature with Port Arthur and Korea against the Russians.

Not that anyone could answer this question for certain but in wondering is it something that gets discussed in the literature.

If it does, it would be Japanese sources, as western sources have never really treated the subject of Prince Khilkov's logistical response to the Japanese invasion and the Russian feat of building up to 800,000 troops in the field in Manchuria properly along a rail-line which was completed while they were rushing supplies down as properly as they should. This means most people don't realize that had the Russian will to fight not been crushed by Tsushima that the Empire could have counterattacked in Manchuria on a broad front later in the year and driven the forces of a bankrupt Empire of Japan backwards very decisively.

More directly related to the thread topic, Skimmer's proposal raises the prospect of an immensely overpowering Russian navy steaming forth to do battle in relatively good order and with tactical homogeneity while hundreds of thousands of well-supplied troops launch a stern counterattack from the Harbin area against a Japanese army which doesn't have the money to pay for bullets anymore.

[StarSword]

What large body of water is there between Russia and Korea? This was a cabinet war, not some kind of moronic 20th century conception of Total War yet. Russia never intended to conquer Japan. The goal of the Tsar and his ministers was to drive the Japanese out of Korea at most and simply secure total control of Manchuria at the least. The ne plus ultra of Russian Imperial ambitions was Pusan.

All I really knew about the Russo-Japanese War was that the Russian Navy got the shit kicked out of it. I withdraw the question.

[Sea Skimmer]

Japan for its part was not only running out of money by the end of the historical war, its army had also been short of horses the whole time, Japanese horses being on average small as well, and the situation was fast becoming critical once the troops besieging Port Arthur were also sent into mobile action at Mukden. Importing more horses would get expensive, though I am willing to bet Japan could have and would have just begun seizing them from the Koreans and Chinese.

On the land front; Japan actually estimated Russia only had 100,000 men in the Far East when it launched the war, and no more then 60,000 in 1903 when planning began, which shows what a poor basis they were going in on. Its easy to see how they expected they could just sweep the Russians from the field in one or two months, overrun the incomplete defenses of Port Arthur by storm, which by nature would have had to be much less strongly held and quickly brought about a sweeping Russian defeat. Problem was Russia started out with 225,000 poorly handled men; while Japan thought that the most men the railway could ever support was 200,000; European estimates placed the number at 250,000. Japan did not expect to face more then 150,000 men before Aug 1904.

Its worth mentioning though that Lake Baikal is not the only railway bottleneck, just about every major bridge on the line had very serious speed restrictions, but this doesn't seem to have much mattered most likely by arranging for trains to stop for coal and water besides the bridges in the first place, so no real time is being lost slowing down and accelerating at each end. Average speed on the line as a whole was only about 6mph from Moscow to the Far East, but this included entire days in which trains would be stopped to give the men time to rest and repairs to be carried out.

As for capacity, even if Russia must send all its food to the far east the demand isn't that overwhelming. One train of 30 wagons was reckoned at the time as holding 600,000 rations. Russia did have problems feeding its men in the far east, in large part this was because of shortages of horse drawn transport and local Chinese labor to help work the supply depots in-between the railhead and the field forces. Over time this could have been improved steadily. The further north Russian forces were pushed, the easier the situation got, Harbin had huge supply stocks throughout the war.

[Sea Skimmer]

For lack of a better place or any good reason to make a new thread, after much on and off searching I finally found decent diagrams of the famed and rather obsolete upon design forts and batteries of Port Arthur which so successfully butchered tens of thousands of Japanese. Its damn easy to find maps of the general locations, not so easy to find diagrmas like this, all the more so if you want more then a 100 x 100 pixel image in Russian. Not all of these were directly attacked, I've lost track of which is which for the moment, but the first one Erhlungshan was the number one Japanese target and which only fell after mining blew apart the defenses, three major attacks failed though some saw Japanese enter the fort. Electric Battery was the heaviest of the coastal batteries and the only one with modern high caliber guns, 10 inch, but could train to fire inland and at times did so.



























These last couple show some of the Japanese mine results siege works and tools