Ch 32 - The Russo-Japanese War

Going Up Country

Russia's senior military commanders badly underestimated Japan's military strength and clashed over long term strategies to deal with a war while working to establish a defensive, rather than an offensive posture in Manchuria.

In 1896, shortly after the Sino-Japanese War, Russian strategists conducted a war game at the Nicholas Naval Academy in St. Petersburg to simulate a war between Russia and Japan. The result was the complete defeat of the Russian Fleet. A second war game of the same situation was played in 1900, but never finished.

Between 1902 and 1903, yet another war game was set up by the Minister of Marine to simulate a Russo-Japanese war in 1905, the year when the buildup of the Russian fleet was expected to be completed. Admiral Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky played a lead role in this game, which assumed that Japan would open hostilities without a declaration of war and that reinforcements could not be expected from the Mediterranean or the Baltic Sea. The results were the same as before;  the complete defeat of the Russian Fleet.

Russian strategists concluded from these war games that their naval forces in the Far East were not up to the task of taking on the Japanese. Port Arthur, Dairen and Vladivostok were insufficiently equipped to support naval operations and there was a strong need for an intermediate base at Masanpo in Korea. They also learned of the danger posed by anchoring ships at Port Arthur in the outer roadstead and of the need to deploy booms and torpedo nets to protect the fleet. Finally, they concluded that Vladivostok was the only possible site for the Pacific Fleet's main base of operations. In a remarkable collapse of strategic planning, the Russians did not use a single conclusion drawn from their war games to protect or defend their position in the Far East. Instead, the results were filed away as little more than interesting material for the records in the Far Eastern Staff Plans of Naval Operations.

On the surface, Russia appeared to be a major military power, but its army was under-trained and poorly equipped and its navy , despite efforts to match the size of other European powers, remained third rate. As the Russian Naval Academy war games showed, the war started badly for Russia and there was little evidence to suggest a Russian victory anywhere on the horizon.

Tsar Nicholas II did not view the Russo-Japanese War as an unwelcome event, which he hoped would help unite a country beginning to show signs of unrest. The timing of the attack came as a surprise, but not the fact that Japan would eventually go to war. Japan's rapid offensive and dominance in the Yellow Sea shocked Tsar Nicholas ll and his government, who feared losing face and prestige in the eyes of the world.

The Russian Navy was divided among three major areas of operation:  the Far East, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. Several international treaties hindered Russian fleet size and operations in the Black Sea. The only possible source of reinforcements for the beleaguered 1st Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur would have to come from the Baltic Fleet based at Libau (modern Liepaja, Latvia), Russia's westernmost ice-free harbor. By April 1904, Tsar Nicholas ll decided on a bold plan he hoped would not only rescue Port Arthur, but would eventually master the seas in Asia. He ordered the Baltic Fleet to meet Vice Admiral Togo Heihachiro in the Yellow Sea.

The tsar appointed the "frightfully imposing" and "savage" Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky to command the newly created fleet. Assembling and outfitting the Second Pacific Squadron became a major challenge. Admiral Rozhestvensky not only had to closely supervise the refitting of his most modern ships, but had to fend off attempts to add unsuitable coast defense battleships and older, ineffective vessels to the fleet. The admiral apparently had little faith in sending a relief force from the Baltic Sea half way around the world to rescue Port Arthur, but orders were orders.

The tsar's audacious plan called for the Second Pacific Squadron to sail from Libau in July 1904 on a voyage that would take it nearly three-quarters of the way around the world, a journey that cast greatly deserved credit on the Russian sailors and commanders that undertook the task. The very orders that reflected a desperate attempt to tip the balance of power against Japan condemned the fleet by sending it into action against the Japanese.

Japanese intelligence learned in early March 1904 that Russia was planning to dispatch a fleet of warships from the Baltic Sea to East Asia. Japan clearly understood that, above all else, it could not afford to lose control of the seas. Fearing the potential threat from increasing the size of Russia's Far East naval force, the only chance for a Japanese victory was either to destroy the Russian 1st Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur or reduce it to such a state of ineffectiveness that reinforcements would be of little use. The only way to achieve this with certainty was to seize Port Arthur, which became Japan's primary military goal. Simultaneous with tightening grip its on Korea and its government, Japan moved its military forces into position to challenge the Russians in Manchuria.

The Imperial Army General Staff in Tokyo planned for the 1st Army to land near Inchon on the Korean Peninsula then advance north to Manchuria. The 2nd Army would land on the southern coast of the Liaotung Peninsula and move toward Manchuria in coordination with the 1st Army's advance. The 3rd Army would also land on southern coast of the Liaotung Peninsula, secure the peninsula and capture Port Arthur. The 4th Army would land on the northeastern coast of Bo-Hai Bay and proceed northeast to Liaoyang in coordination with the 2nd Army. The military planners estimated that large-scale winter operations would be difficult during severe Manchurian winter and expected that by late autumn all the armies would bivouac for the winter of 1904-1905, north of Liaoyang.

As early as 1903, Viceroy Admiral Evgenii Ivanovich Alekseev, Governor of Port Arthur, believed that the Japanese would spread their troops throughout Korea. He expected Japan to grab as much territory as possible, including Vladivostok, before the Russians could bring enough troops to the Far East from European Russia to block them. His 1903 defense plans called for securing the Liaodong Peninsula and Port Arthur by concentrating available Russian troops along the Yalu River to block the Japanese from entering Manchuria.

On February 20, 1904, the tsar appointed General Aleksei Nikolaevich Kuropatkin, the former Russian War Minister, to the post of Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's Manchurian Army, a position which placed Kuropatkin under the command of Viceroy Admiral Alekseev. General Kuropatkin, a brave, intelligent and thoroughly professional officer, was one of a handful of Russian leaders who fully understood the political and military realities in Manchuria. He believed that Manchuria wasn't worth a war and clearly realized that Russia's military force in the Far East was not up to the task of winning a quick victory against the Japanese.

General Kuropatkin's plans for the Japanese ran directly counter to those of the viceroy. Kuropatkin planned to employ the traditional Russian military strategy that had been used against Napoleon. He would execute a strategic withdrawal away from the Yalu River, drawing the Japanese ever deeper into Manchuria to an area where Russia had the advantage. Once Russian reinforcements built up to sufficient strength, he intended to strike a massive, decisive blow against the over-extended Japanese army. Kuropatkin, though still in St. Petersburg, knew that he and Viceroy Alekseev would clash over strategies before the first shot was fired at the Japanese.

Before departing St. Petersburg for the Far East, Kuropatkin gathered all the political support he could muster and continued to emphasize to the tsar and to the troops under his command the necessity of fighting a defensive war in the early stages. In a message to Tsar Nicholas II acknowledging his appointment as commander-in-chief, he wrote:

In the first phase of our campaign, our objective should be to prevent the destruction of our forces in detail. The very importance of any single locality or position, fortresses excepted, should not lead us into the great error of holding it in insufficient force which will bring about the very result we are so anxious to prevent. While gradually growing in numbers and preparing to take the offensive, we should move only when sufficiently strong and when supplied with everything necessary for an uninterrupted advance lasting over a fairly long period.

Unlike most of his junior commanders who overestimated Russian military power and grossly underestimated the Japanese military, Kuropatkin neither underestimated the Japanese Army nor its ability to wage war. Unfortunately, his voice of reason was dismissed by the tsar and others as Russia stumbled towards the Manchurian War. Based on insufficient knowledge about Japan, Russians had believed for years that Japan would never opt for a war against Russia regardless of its security concerns. Even if war should come, the Russian military felt it could easily defeat the weak and barbarous Japanese in the first encounter. As a result, the Russians had no integrated grand strategy and made little effort to study Japan or the Japanese people. Many Russians, including Tsar Nicholas II himself, referred to the Japanese as "Asian small yellow monkeys."

On February 20, 1904, two cavalry regiments and six horse-drawn artillery pieces of General Mitshenko's Transbaikal Cossack Brigade crossed the Yalu River on a ride toward Pyongyang through Anju. About 30 kilometers west of Anju, in the vicinity of Pakchon, the Russian horsemen made first contact with troops from Major General Asada's advance guard on March 23. The cossack patrol withdrew towards the west. Five days later, General Mitshenko's cavalry engaged a small unit of Japanese cavalrymen at Chongju, about ten kilometers west of Pakchon. After a brief ninety minute fire fight with minor losses on both sides, Mitshenko ordered a retreat when he learned that a Japanese battalion was moving in to the area.

General Mitshenko's cossack raids into northern Korea had a serious psychological impact on the Russians still residing along the southern shore of the river. Anxious to put the Yalu River between themselves and the approaching Japanese 1st Army, they abandoned Sinuiju and withdrew north across the river after destroying all their installations in the area. The plan was to concentrate their forces near Antung (modern Datong) in the hope that the broad river would prevent a further Japanese advance. After all, one of Germany's military attachés in Mukden had already expressed his belief that the Japanese would halt at the Yalu.

By the time General Kuropatkin arrived in Liaoyang on March 28 to assume command of Russian forces in Manchuria, intelligence reports indicated the Japanese were already advancing northward from their forward bases at Inchon and Namp'o to cross the Yalu River into Manchuria. In direct contradiction to Kuropatkin's orders, Viceroy Alekseev ordered his own plan into effect, stationing Russian troops on the Yalu River.

The spring thaw and resulting muddy roads slowed the Japanese march north, but on April 8, the first patrols from Major General Asada's Japanese advance guard reached Sinuiju, just three-and-a-half miles south of Chieu-lien-cheng across the river. Troops continued to arrive over the next five days without incident until the entire brigade had assembled in town. By mid-April, the single brigade in Sinuiju represented no serious threat to the Russians and, in fact, was quite vulnerable.

The warming weather helped the Japanese. The ice on the Yalu River broke up just before the advance guard reached Sinuiju and, with no bridges across the river, the only way the Russians could have attacked Major General Asada was an amphibious assault. Major General Kashtalinski decided not to risk mounting an offensive against Asada's understrength and unsupported advance guard. Had he done so, the Russians could have easily destroyed the Japanese advance guard and set Tokyo's plans back by weeks. It would have been just the maneuver that could have bought some of the precious time General Kuropatkin so urgently needed.

On April 25, shortly after his arrival from Warsaw to take command of the Eastern Detachment, Lieutenant General M.I. Zasulitch received a stern warning from General Aleksei Kuropatkin;  not to engage the Japanese if outnumbered by a superior force, but to fight a delaying action, pulling back slowly and maintaining contact with the enemy. That same day, Kuropatkin's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Vladimir V. Sakarov, warned Zasulitch to "determine the Japanese form, disposition and line of march, and to retreat as slowly as possible before retreating again."

General Zasulitch commanded about 26,000 troops in two force units. One consisted of three battalions with 2,580 riflemen, two artillery batteries with 16 field guns and a machinegun company with 8 machineguns. The second force had 5,200 riflemen, 240 scouts, 16 artillery pieces, and no machineguns. Zasulitch's stationed his reserve force of 5,000 riflemen and 16 artillery pieces at Tien-tzu, deep in the Manchurian mountains about 4 miles from Antung on the Feng-huang-cheng road.

Zasulitch sent two of his regiments with a mountain artillery battery of 12 guns some 40 miles upriver to the northeast to prevent the Japanese from flanking his position in the east. General Mitshenko's Transbaikal Cossack Brigade, reinforced by an East Siberian Rifle Regiment, 8 field artillery pieces and 6 horse-drawn artillery guns, covered the coastline from the mouth of the Yalu River to Takushan.

The Russian front stretched 172 miles along the Yalu River. It was obvious to General Kuropatkin that there were insufficient forces to defend any single point against a determined push by three Japanese divisions. Viceroy Alekseev, who was on the other end of the telegraph line with General Zasulitch, saw the situation quite differently. After all, Zasulitch was not a man who would cut and run before those little "yellow monkeys."

Lieutenant General Zasulitch, a man filled with filled with prejudice and contempt for the Japanese, quickly dismissed any idea that the Japanese were to be regarded as the equals of European troops. The general was content to ignore Kuropatkin's phased withdrawal order. Zasulitch began deploying his troops on April 26 along a six mile front in what he considered the critical area between Antung and Chieu-lien-cheng on the lower reaches of the Yalu River.

The nearly 42,500 men in Major General Kuroki Tamemoto's advancing 1st Army consisted of elements from the 2nd, the 12th and the Guards divisions. Their approach into the area around Sinuiju was based largely on reports from forward scouts that detailed the exact location of Russian positions. Unlike the Japanese, the Russians made no attempt to conceal their presence or their activities. Troops wandering about along the skyline in their white winter uniforms were visible for miles.

The Japanese realized this would be their first battle against a European nation and were determined to show their prowess in war. General Kuroki's men carefully planned and concealed their activities in and around the town until they were fully prepared to strike. They carefully planned movements down to the smallest detail and carried out their orders with not only strict military discipline, but with remarkable ingenuity. No Japanese soldier appeared on the skyline. No activity took place in daylight that could be secretly done at night. The Japanese went so far as to plant full-sized fir trees along the one-and-a-quarter mile long road leading from Sinuiju to the river just to provide added cover. Millet screens were built to provide cover for troop and supply movements. Small, single trees, even clumps of trees, were moved about to provide cover as needed.

Peering across the Yalu River with binoculars, the puzzled Russians could never be quite sure that what they saw today was not there yesterday. The gently rolling hills overlooking the Yalu near Sinuiju revealed little to indicate the Japanese were preparing for an early attack. With construction on the Chinese Eastern Railway progressing slowly, the Russians displayed no sense of urgency about moving new units to the front and no ammunition resupply columns had arrived in Liaoyang. The general feeling among foreign military observers in Liaoyang seemed to be that the impending war with Japan would be a "walk in the park" for the Russians. Already provoked and angry, the Japanese soon proved the fallacy of their thinking.