Battle of Tsushima

The Battle of Tsushima (Japanese: 対馬海戦, tsushima-kaisen, Russian: Цусимское сражѣніе, Tsusimskoye srazheniye), commonly known as the “Sea of Japan Naval Battle” (Japanese: 日本海海戦, nihonkai-kaisen) in Japan and the “Battle of Tsushima Strait”, was the major naval battle fought between Russia and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. This was naval history's only decisive sea battle fought by modern steel battleship fleets, the first naval battle in which wireless telegraphy played a critically important role, and has been characterized as the "dying echo of the old era – for the last time in the history of naval warfare ships of the line of a beaten fleet surrendered on the high seas."

It was fought on May 27–28, 1905 (May 14–15 in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia) in the Tsushima Strait between Korea and southern Japan. In this battle the Japanese fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō destroyed two-thirds of the Russian fleet, under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, which had traveled over 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km) to reach the Far East. In London in 1906, Sir George Sydenham Clarke wrote, "The battle of Tsu-shima is by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar"; decades later, historian Edmund Morris maintained that it remained the greatest naval battle since Trafalgar.

Prior to the Russo-Japanese War, countries constructed their battleships with mixed batteries of mainly 152 mm (6-inch), 203 mm (8-inch), 254 mm (10-inch) and 305 mm (12-inch) guns, with the intent that these battleships fight on the battle line in a close-quarter, decisive fleet action. The Battle of Tsushima demonstrated that battleship speed and big guns with longer ranges were more advantageous in naval battles than mixed batteries of different sizes.

The wireless telegraph was invented in the last half of the 1890s, and by the turn of the century all major navies were adopting this improved communications technology. Although Alexander Stepanovich Popov of the Naval Warfare Institute had built and demonstrated a wireless telegraphy set in 1900, equipment from the firm Telefunken in Germany was initially adopted by the Imperial Russian Navy. In Japan, Professor Shunkichi Kimura was commissioned into the Imperial Navy to develop their own wireless system, and this was in place on many of the Japanese warships before 1904. Although both sides had early wireless telegraphy, the Russians were using German sets and had difficulties in their use and maintenance, while the Japanese had the advantage of using their own equipment. It is recognized today that this battle was the beginning of electronic warfare.