Wikipedia Tour: Major Battles of the 20th Century (1 of 20)

Wikipedia Tour: Major Battles of the 20th Century

Welcome to our Wikipedia Tour: Major Battles of the 20th Century. Each day we’ll send you a link to a new article about a major 20th century battle on Wikipedia. The introduction to each day’s article is included in the installment so you can choose to read just the introduction or the full article.

Happy reading!

Battle of Tsushima

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The Battle of Tsushima (Japanese: tsushima-kaisen, Russian: Цусимское сражение, Tsusimskoye srazheniye), commonly known as the “Sea of Japan Naval Battle” (Japanese: nihonkai-kaisen) in Japan and the “Battle of Tsushima Strait” elsewhere, was the last and most decisive sea battle of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. It was fought on May 27–28, 1905 (May 14–15 in the Julian calendar then in use in Russia) in the Tsushima Strait. In this battle the Japanese fleet under Admiral Heihachiro Togo destroyed two-thirds of the Russian fleet under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky. Historian Edmund Morris calls it the greatest naval battle since Trafalgar.^[1] It was the largest naval engagement of the pre-dreadnought battleship era.

The Battle of Tsushima was the only sea battle in history in which steel battleships fought a decisive fleet action. In addition, much to the Russian Navy's credit, Admiral Rozhestvensky's battleship fleet conducted a voyage of over 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km) to reach the Far East.

Prior to the Russo-Japanese War, countries constructed their battleships with mixed batteries of mainly 150 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 demonstrated that big guns with longer ranges were more advantageous during naval battles than mixed batteries of different sizes.

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Wikipedia Tour: Major Battles of the 20th Century (1 of 20)