Battle of Tsushima - Contributing Factors

Contributing Factors

The Japanese fleets had practised gunnery regularly since the beginning of the war, using sub-calibre adapters for their cannon. The Japanese had experienced gunners. Furthermore, the Japanese used mostly high-explosive shells with shimose (melinite), which was designed to explode on contact and wreck the upper structures of ships. The Russians used armour-piercing rounds with small guncotton bursting charges and unreliable fuses. Japanese hits caused more damage to Russian ships relative to Russian hits on Japanese ships, setting the superstructures, the paintwork and the large quantities of coal stored on the decks on fire. (The Russian fleet often bought low-quality coal at sea from merchant vessels on most of their long voyage due to the lack of friendly fuelling ports).

Japanese fire was also more accurate because they were using the latest issued (1903) Barr & Stroud FA3 coincidence rangefinder, which had a range of 6,000 yards (5,500 m), while the Russian battleships were equipped with Liuzhol rangefinders from the 1880s, which only had a range of about 4,000 yards (3,700 m). And finally, by 27 May 1905, Admiral Tōgō and his men had two battleship fleet actions under their belts, which amounted to over 4 hours of combat experience in battleship to battleship combat at Port Arthur and the Yellow Sea—experience which would eliminate the miscalculations and rash decisions made during those battles, while applying the learned lessons from those sea engagements with both finesse and ruthlessness at Tsushima.