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The last shots in the foggy, frozen Kuriles, 80 years ago this week

Posted on August 28, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

While the sweeping battle between the shell of the once mighty Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria and Korea, reduced to some 600,000 second-rate troops, and the 1.5 million strong Soviet Far East Command, had officially ended on 16 August after just nine days of fighting, the Reds nonetheless kept pushing to seize territory right up to 2 September, meeting isolated pockets of resistance.

Meanwhile, in the Kurile Islands, a line of 56 volcanic islands stretching from north of Japanese Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s home islands, to just off the tip of the Soviet Kamchatka peninsula, was still very much in play after 16 August.

The battle for the Japanese island of Shumshu, just six miles south of Kamchatka’s Cape Lopatka, raged for a solid week, 18 to 23 August, and cost the Soviets somewhere in the region of 1,500 casualties (exceeding Japanese casualties by a ratio of 3:2) while five of the Soviet’s 16 Lend Leased LCI(L)s used for the landings were lost along with the minesweeper T-152 and torpedo boat TK-565.

A Soviet LCI landing on Shumshu Island, August 1945

The American-made Soviet landing craft DC-5 (former USS LCI-525), hit by Japanese coastal artillery fire and sunk at the landing site at Shumshu.

DS-1 (former USS LCI-672) sunk at Shumshu

DS-43, (former USS LCI-943) sunk at Shumshu

DS-9, in the background, DS-43 ((former USS LCI-554) lying on the shore

Destroyed Japanese tanks (“Ha-Go”, type 95) of the 11th Tank Regiment on the slopes of Hill 171 on Shumshu Island (Kuril Islands).

Soviet troops, Shumshu, August 1945. Note the PTRD anti-tank rifle, which would be needed

Landing on the Kuril Islands. Artist A.I. Dense, 1948 year

Japanese Lt. Gen. Tsutsumi Fusaki arriving at the Soviet line to negotiate the surrender of his forces in the Northern Kuriles, 22 August 1945. He led 12,227 remaining men of his 91st Division into captivity. He was released to Japan in 1946 and died in his hometown of Kofu in 1959.

Likewise, starting on 11 August, 100,000 Soviet troops swept past the Karafuto line, which had divided the island of Sakhalin into a Russian north and Japanese south since 1905. This began a straight-line ground campaign– sped up by leapfrog amphibious landings, bypassing strong points– that swept up the 20,000 Japanese defenders by 25 August.

Soviet soldiers from the landing force and the minesweeper T-589 (USN type YMS, ex USS YMS-237) in the port of Maoka, Sakhalin. Late August 1945.

In the meantime, on 16 August, Stalin proposed to Truman that, in addition to seizing all of the Kurile Islands, his forces should also occupy northern Hokkaido along a line from Kushiro to Rumoi.

Truman pushed back, saying that Hokkaido would surrender to MacArthur, but that an American base in the future Russian Kuriles sounded like a good idea.

Stalin backed down on the 23rd (the day Shumshu finally fell, showing the Soviets just how hard amphibious warfare against Japanese defenders could be) and said he would stay out of Hokkaido, but that the Americans would not be welcome to a base in the Kuriles.

In the background of this, at least three small Russian Series XI/XIII-Leninist, or L class, submarines and two squadrons of torpedo-carrying Ilyushin Il-4 (DB-3T) twin-engine bombers from Petropavlovsk were running amok off the North coasts of Hokkaido and around Sakhalin.

A Soviet Leninist, or L class, submarine. Smallish (1,400 tons, 273 feet oal) minelaying boats reverse engineered from the raised HMS L55, which sank in the Baltic in 1919, 13 of the type were built and operated by the Soviet Pacific Fleet

The DB-3T, with a suspended 45-36 AV (high-altitude) or 45-36AN (low-altitude) torpedo, looked ungainly because it was ungainly, with a cruising speed hovering around 180 knots with both of its knock-off Gnome-Rhone 14K radial engines glowing. It nonetheless could be effective in the right circumstances and would remain in Soviet/Warsaw Pact use long enough into the 1950s to gain the NATO reporting name “Bob.” Alternatively, it could carry MAV-1 or AMG-type aircraft mines.

They bagged at least eight Japanese ships in the last part of August, even though the IJN Admiralty had passed word that there was a general ceasefire and the rest of the Western Allies had paused offensive operations. Notably, all were sunk outside of the general Kuriles area.

Cargo ship Daito Maru No. 49 sunk by an unknown submarine on 22 August
Cable layer Ogasawara Maru (2,774 tons) sunk by L-12 (Capt. Shelgancev) on 22 August
Coaster Taito Maru (880 tons) sunk by L-12 on 22 August
Cargo ship Notoro Maru (1229 grt) sunk by aircraft on 22 August
Coaster Sapporo Maru No. 11 sunk by submarine, likely L-19 (Capt. Kononenko), on 22 August
Freighter Tetsugo Maru (1403 grt) sunk by L-19 on 23 August
Sub chaser Giso Maru No. 40 GO (273 grt) sunk in a surface action on 24 August
Sub chaser CHa-77 sunk by aircraft of unknown origin on 28 August

Ogasawara Maru was perhaps the saddest of these. Built for the Japanese Ministry of Communications in 1905 and capable of 10 knots, the cable layer left Wakkanai on Sakhalin Island on the afternoon of 21 August, carrying 702 evacuees– elderly people, children, and women ordered off the island by the military government– headed to Funakawa.

She never made it, with L-12 sinking her in the predawn of the 22nd while three miles off Mashike, littering the coastline for miles with bodies. Only 62 survivors were recovered.

Ogasawara Maru

Likewise, Taito Maru, on the same evacuation route, went down with another 667 souls.

A ninth ship, attacked but not sunk, was the 5,886-ton freighter turned minelayer Shinko Maru No. 2 (former Toyo Kaiun, 2577grt). Crowded with some 3,600 civilians evacuating from Otomari on Sakhalin, she left alone on the night of 20-21 August heading for Otaru Port at a speed of 9 knots. Around 0500 on 22 August, she caught a torpedo in her No. 2 hold and replied with her 12cm and 25mm guns in a surface action in the predawn against an unidentified submarine, which broke contact.

Shinko Maru No. 2, post torpedo hit

Brushing off a further attack by a torpedo-carrying plane once the sun came up that morning, she limped into Rumoi Port in Hokkaido with 298 bodies aboard and at least 100 known missing.

While Shinko Maru No. 2 was eventually repaired and, returning to commercial service, was still around as late as 1992, her likely attacker, L-19, disappeared on or around 24 August near the La Perouse Strait, thought to have either sunk from damage incurred in the battle or lost to a Japanese minefield (which ironically may have been laid by Shinko Maru No. 2). Her broken hull and the 64 crewmen were the Red fleet’s final loss of WWII.

L-12 returned to Petropavlovsk to honors, having logged two attacks and fired six torpedoes. Converted to a training hulk in 1959, the Russians only retired her fully in 1983.

Sistership L-18 (Capt. Tsvetko) was underway in late August in the area and landed 61 marines and three 45mm guns at Maoka (now Kholmsk), in the then Japanese-held south Sakhalin, the latter secured behind the fence constructed on the rear of the conning tower. She did not document any attacks on shipping. Tsvetkov was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and would later retire as an admiral.

Today, the Japanese government considers the three refugee-packed emergency evacuation ships (Ogasawara Maru, Shinko Maru No. 2, and Taito Maru) to have been attacked post-ceasefire by submarines and aircraft of “kokuseki fumei” (“unknown nationality”), and numerous memorials dot Hokkaido to those vulnerable civilians lost on the ships.

Meanwhile, no Japanese government has recognized the Russian sovereignty over four of the southernmost Kurile Islands (Kunashiri, Etorofu, Shikotan, and Habomai) occupied in 1945, and only marked the end of the state of war between the Soviet Union and Japan in 1956.

Warship Wednesday, August 13, 2025: A Long-Lived Tyne Built Ship

Posted on August 13, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday, August 13, 2025: A Long-Lived Tyne Built Ship

Photo: Naval History and Heritage Command NH 58988

Above, we see the fine Armstrong-built Asama-class armored cruiser Tokiwa of the Imperial Japanese Navy photographed in 1899 with a bone in her teeth.

Amazingly, this indomitable warship would serve nearly a half-century and be lost during her fifth war for the emperor, some 80 years ago this week.

The Asamas

The late 19th/early century Imperial Japanese Navy was very European in construction. Ten out of ten battlewagons carrying the Rising Sun flag against the Russians in 1904 were built in the yards of Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Vickers in Britain.

Of the Emperor’s armored cruisers, Izumo and her sister Iwate came from Armstrong, Yakumo hailed from the German yard of AG Vulcan, Kasuga and Nisshin from Ansaldo in Genoa, and Azuma from Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire in France. Ordered in 1897 alongside these six cruisers were another pair based on an improved design of the Chilean O’Higgins.

The Chilean armored cruiser O’Higgins was built in 1896-98 at Armstrong to the design of Sir Philip Watts for £700,000. The 8,500-ton 412-foot long three-piper could make 21.6 knots on a 30-boiler (16,250 ihp) plant and carried four 8″/40s and 10 6″/40s. She had a Harvey nickel steel armor belt that ranged from 5 to 7 inches, while her conning tower was protected with 8. She remained in Chilean service until 1933.

Sir Philip tweaked the one-off O’Higgins design to add more armor protection (2,100 tons all told) and horsepower to carry it all. Instead of a belt that maxed out at seven inches and the eight-inch CT, this new design rocked as much as 14 inches. It also used extensive compartmentalization with 163 watertight compartments, 32 of which were in the double bottom. This added 1,200 tons to the displacement and stretched the hull to 442 feet. The powerplant dropped the forest of 30 boilers seen on the Chilean ship for a dozen larger single-side cylindrical boilers and upped the ihp to 18,000 to keep the same (or better) speed.

Paid for out of a Chinese indemnity given to Japan as part of the spoils of the 1895 war, these two ships would be named Asama and Tokiwa, after traditional regions in the Empire.

The weaponry would also be stepped up a bit from O’Higgins.

While the Chilean ship carried four EOC 8″/40 Pattern T guns in single mounts, the new Asamas would carry two pairs of improved EOC 8″/45 Pattern U (41st Year Type in Japanese service) guns, the same type which would go on to be carried by the rest of Japan’s armored cruisers as well as the post Russo-Japanese War domestically built Ibuki-class armored cruisers. These were protected by six inches of armor over their gun houses and were serviced by electric hoists from the magazines.

Asama photographed during a visit to an American port between the wars. Note her 8″/45 forward turret. 80-G-188753

Asama photographed during a visit to an American port between the wars. Note her 8″/45 stern turret. 80-G-188754

The secondaries on the Asamas were also beefed up, from the 10 6″/40 QF EOCs on O’Higgins in five-inch turrets and casemates to 14 guns with 10 in casemates and four in single shielded mounts. Tertiary anti-boat armament included a dozen 3″/40 Armstrongs and seven 47/30 2.5-pounder Hotchkiss (Yamauchi) guns. Torpedo batteries included a 450mm tube in the bow and four on the beam. Likewise, two of her steam punts could be equipped with spar torpedoes.

The Asama class, 1914 Janes listing.

Meet Tokiwa

Laid down on 6 January 1898 at Elswick as Yard No. 662/armored cruiser No. 4 (her sister Asama was No. 661), Tokiwa took to the water on 6 July 1898 and was commissioned on 19 May 1899. She made a mean 23 knots on her speed trials.

Tokiwa conducting full power trials, Spring 1899, North Sea off Sunderland

On 19 May 1899, with Captain (later Admiral) Dewa Shigeto in command, Tokiwa left Britain for Yokosuka, completing the 11,000nm voyage in a handy 57 days– a heck of a shakedown cruise.

IJN Tokiwa Navy and Army Illustrated Feb. 10 1900

War (with China)!

Rated as a first-class cruiser, Tokiwa was dispatched on 19 June 1900 to join the Eight-Nation Alliance naval forces in Chinese waters during the Boxer Rebellion. While arriving around the time of the assault against the Taku Forts, she was not used in the assault there, standing by offshore with a dozen other large, allied vessels as smaller gunboats closed in for the work.

However, landing forces from the Japanese ships sent 329 armed sailors ashore to help storm and garrison the forts.

While 54 Japanese marines were dispatched as part of Admiral Seymour’s overland relief expedition to Peking, I can’t say whether any of those came from Tokiwa.

Admiral Seymour’s expedition: Japanese troops on the march by H. M. Koekkoch

Tokiwa returned to Kure on 20 August.

War (with Russia)!

Clustered with the armored cruisers Izumo, Iwate, Azuma, Yakumo, and Asama, along with the dispatch boat Chihaya, Tokiwa formed the 2nd Squadron under VADM Kamimura in 1903. This force proved a key left hook to the right cross of Togo’s 1st Squadron during the war against the Tsar.

Captain Shigetaro Yoshimatsu became Tokiwa’s eighth skipper on 19 January 1904. A professional officer who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1880, he had studied in France and England and fought as a gunnery officer on the second-class cruiser Yoshino during the 1894 war with China. He had been XO on Tokiwa’s sister Asama when she took part in the 1902 Spithead naval review celebrating the coronation of King Edward VII.

Tokiwa. Copied from “War Vessels of Japan,” circa 1905. NH 74381

Three Meiji-era armored cruisers at work. Iwate (left), Tokiwa (center), and Yakumo (right), from the 2nd Fleet during the late Russo-Japanese War. Of note, the 9,500-ton Yakumo was the only large German-built warship in the Japanese Navy, delivered in 1900 by AG Vulcan Stettin. Both Iwate and Tokiwa were built at Armstrong on the Tyne.

Offshore for the initial torpedo boat attack on the sleeping Russian anchorage at Port Arthur on 8 February 1904, she managed a few 8-inch shells lofted when the Russians sortied out the following morning, and thus began the blockade and later siege of that fortress city that would prove the hub on which the conflict revolved.

IJN Tokiwa in 1904

It was off that port that Tokiwa almost captured the Russian destroyer Steregushchiy in March and participated in rebuffing Marakov’s 13 April sortie that ended in his death upon the sinking of his flagship via mines.

Japanese destroyer IJN Sazanami, attempting to tow a sinking Steregushchiy, was lost in action against two Japanese cruisers, while Reshitel‘nyi managed to escape. In the fight, Reshitel‘nyi lost one killed and 16 injured– a third of her crew. William Lionel Wylie painting.

The Russian battleship Petropavlovsk sinks as Adm. Makarov stands bravely on deck. Tokiwa witnessed the scene. Japanese woodblock print

Relieved from the Port Arthur blockade in the summer 1904 to chase down a raiding trio of Russian armored cruisers (Rossia, Gromoboi, and Rurik) out of Vladivostok, Tokiwa, along with the armored cruisers Iwate, Izumo, and Azuma and protected cruisers Takachiho and Naniwa, finally clashed with the Russian cruisers off Ulsan on the early morning of 14 August. With the Russians outnumbered six hulls to three, the six-hour swirling artillery duel turned brutal, and Rurik was sunk, taking some 200 of her crew with her, while the severely damaged Rossia and Gromoboi managed to limp away.

Tokiwa landed some blows against Rossia and was slightly damaged by return fire, with three of her crew injured.

Rossia at Vladivostok after the Battle off Ulsan in August 1904. She suffered nearly 200 casualties from 28 hits delivered by the Japanese squadron, with a few of these coming from Tokiwa. Knocked out of the war for two months, her raiding career was capped.

Then, following the collapse of Port Arthur, came the Valkyrie ride of VADM Rozhestvensky’s 2nd Pacific (1st Baltic) Squadron through the straits of Tsushima. Tokiwa was there.

Battle of Tsushima. May 27, 1905, North of Oki Island. Following the 1st Squadron under the flag of Togo on Mikasa, a photograph was taken from the 2nd Squadron flagship Izumo, showing Azuma, Tokiwa, Yakumo, Asama, and Iwate turning to port at 15 knots.

During the battle, Tokiwa and her squadron engaged the Russians several times, most notably in the destruction of the 14,000-ton Peresvet-class battleship Oslyabya.

Death of the battleship Oslyabya in the Battle of Tsushima. (by Vasily Katrushenko)

When the smoke cleared, Tokiwa had suffered eight hits, mostly from smaller caliber shells, resulting in 15 casualties.

Post-war, she was a darling of the fleet, being chosen to escort Crown Prince Yoshihito (later Emperor Taisho) on his tour of Yamaguchi and Tokushima Prefectures in 1908.

IJN Tokiwa postcard 1908

The same year, she participated in the 1908 Kobe Fleet Review.

The 1908 Kobe Fleet Review (November 18th). From the left of the image: battleships Katori and Kashima, armored cruisers Izumo, Iwate, and Tokiwa, protected cruisers Soya (ex-Russian Varyag), Kasagi, and Chitose; from the right of the image: battleships Mikasa, Fuji, Asahi, Sagami (ex-Russian Peresvet), and Shikishima. A fleet review of the grand maneuvers attended by 48 warships, 52 destroyers, and 11 torpedo boats.

In 1910, both Asama and Tokiwa had their well-worn set of British boilers replaced with 16 more efficient 16 Miyabara boilers as part of a general mid-life refit.

War (with the Kaiser)!

When the Great War kicked off, British-allied Japan soon got involved in the rush to capture (and keep) Germany’s overseas colonies. As part of this, on 18 August 1914, she was assigned to the 4th Squadron along with Iwate and Yakumo, part of VADM Sadakichi Kato’s 2nd Fleet, detailed to blockade and seize the German treaty port of Tsingtao, an operation that began on the 27th of that month and stretched into early November.

A Japanese lithograph, showing the Japanese fighting German troops during the conquest of the German colony Tsingtao (today Qingdao) in China between 13 September and 7 November 1914. Via National Archives.

She was then dispatched to scour the West Pacific– along with other allied assets– in the attempt to run down Graf Spee’s East Asiatic Squadron. Once Spee was sent to the bottom along with most of his squadron in December and the last of his cruisers (SMS Dresden and the Hilfkruezer Prinz Eitel Friederich) were accounted for the following March 1915, the pressure eased and our aging cruiser was allowed to spend the rest of the war in a series of more pedestrian tasks, including a series of Grand Maneuvers.

Battleships Mikasa, Hizen, Shikishima, armored cruisers Izumo, Tokiwa, Azuma, and Nisshin during the Taisho 4 Grand Maneuvers in the Hyuga Nada Sea on October 25, 1915

Tokiwa photographed sometime after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and 1920.Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1986. NH 101759

NH 58987

NH 58681

Note the “mum” on her bow as she is clustered near U.S. Naval vessels. NH 58679

IJN Tokiwa, French postcard

She became active in a series of globetrotting training cruises, carrying naval academy cadets. This included the 44th class cadet training cruise to the U.S. with Yakumo from 5 April to 17 August 1917. A second cadet training cruise for the 46th class with Azuma from 1 March to 26 July 1919 jogged south to Australia. Azuma and Tokiwa teamed up for a third cruise with the 47th class that roamed to the Mediterranean from 24 November 1919-20 May 1920.

Montage, Practice Squadron with cruisers Tokiwa and Yakumo, 1917, during the cadet training cruise to the U.S. R.A. Iwamura. NH 111677

Ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Katori, Izumo, Iwate, Tokiwa, Asama, 1919, with HIH Crown Prince Hirohito aboard Katori off Korea. San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive.

Treaty rebuild

By 1921, both Asama and her sister Tokiwa, too slow for fleet operations, were reclassified as coast defense vessels. At the same time, many of Japan’s old armored cruisers were disarmed as part of the Naval Limitation Treaties, and their weapons were reduced.

The 8″/45s removed from Tokiwa and her fellow armored cruisers in the 1920s were recycled for use as coastal artillery, including two twin turrets at Tokyo Bay, four single guns mounted at Tarawa, and another four at Wake Island.

Between 30 September 1922 and 31 March 1923, Tokiwa was converted to a cruiser minelayer. In this, she landed her rear 8″/45 turret, her torpedo tubes, six of her 6″/40s, and all her obsolete 3-inch and 2.5-pounders. She then picked up accommodation for 300 mines on deck tracks for over stern sowing. A similar conversion was done to the old armored cruiser Aso (ex-Russian Bayan).

It was in this mine role that, on 1 August 1927, while training with mines in Saeki Bay, Kyushu, after returning from overseas service in China during the Shandong Intervention, Tokiwa suffered from an explosion that left 35 dead and another 65 injured. Through a combination of magazine flooding and assistance from nearby vessels, a complete disaster was avoided, and she was quickly repaired and returned to service.

The incident led to the redesign of the No. 5 Kai-1 mine to install safety features and a further redesign of several classes of new Japanese light and heavy cruisers to better handle damage.

October 1928, Kure. View from the stern of the battleship Nagato shows the Fuso directly ahead, with the mast and funnel of the Tokiwa, then a mine layer, visible in the background. To the left, the cruiser Nagara is moored in the foreground, with the Furutaka behind it

War (with China, again)!

Once repaired, Tokiwa spent most of the next decade in Chinese waters and frequently landed her sailors and marines for strongarmed use ashore, especially after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

Cruiser Tokiwa Rikusentai 2nd Co Cmd Plat in front of the Japanese Middle School (their HQ) on Range Rd, Shanghai, February 11th, 1932, photo by Austin Adachi

CM Tokiwa. View taken at Shanghai, China, 1932, by G.J. Freret, Jr., probably from USS Houston (CA-30). NH 51896

Cruiser minelayer Tokiwa. Passing USS Houston (CA-30), at Shanghai, China, on the Whangpoo River. Photographed by G.J. Freret, Jr., in February 1932. Note the ship’s boat being hoisted aboard by crane. NH 51877

She returned home in 1937 to have her 16 Miyabara boilers, which had been installed in 1910, replaced by 8 Kampon boilers, reducing her speed to 16 knots. During this refit, she hung up the pretext of being a cruiser, and remaining 8″/40s and 6″/40s were removed. This allowed for her mine storage to be bumped to 500 “eggs”, and she had a couple of 40mm and 10 twin 25mm AAA guns installed. Likewise, by this time, her sister Asama had been converted into a training ship.

Tokiwa was on hand in Yokohama Bay with 98 other IJN ships in October 1940 for the largest (and last) grand fleet review in Japanese history.

Battleship Yamashiro and the Type 97 flying boat Yamashiro firing the Imperial salute at the 2,600th Anniversary Fleet Review are the heavy cruiser Suzuya, the armored cruiser Tokiwa, and the seaplane tender Chiyoda.

War (with the Allies)!

On 29 November 1941, Tokiwa sailed from Truk as part of Operation “GI,” the invasion of the British Gilbert Islands, which began on 8 December (Japan time).

The following January, Tokiwa was part of Operation “R,” -the Invasions of Rabaul, New Britain, and Kavieng.

She felt her first Allied sting in a carrier raid at Kwajalein in February from USS Enterprise. Damaged in four near misses from 500-pound bombs, she suffered eight killed and 15 wounded. This sent her to Sasebo for three months of repairs.

Dispatched to respond to the Marine Raiders’ sweep of Makin Island in August 1942, she managed to pull quieter duty for (most of) the rest of the war, narrowly avoiding torpedoes from USS Salmon (SS-182) in 1943 on her way back to the Home Islands. There, she led a minelaying squadron (the 18th Sentai) that sowed over 6,000 mines.

Striking a mine off the Hesaki lighthouse in the Kanmon Strait in April 1945, Tokiwa put into Sasebo again for repairs and added another 10 25mm guns, giving her a final fit of 30 of these weapons (some reports state 37). She also had depth charge racks and throwers installed along with a Type 3 sonar and was fitted with primitive (2-shiki 2-go and 3-shiki 1-go) radars.

After laying minefields in her old 1905 stomping grounds in the Tsushima Strait, she was ironically damaged by a B-29-sown aerial mine on 3 June 1945 off Maizuru harbor. The damage was slight, and she left Maizuru after makeshift repairs for Ominato. In all, between 24 January 1944 and 30 June 1945, she laid 17 series of anti-submarine minefields in Japanese waters.

Five elderly (and mostly disarmed) Russo-Japanese war era cruisers were still afloat in Japanese home waters in the last days of the war: the everlasting sisters Asama and Tokiwa, along with Yakumo, Izumo, and Iwate. All were pummeled by American and British carrier-borne aircraft strikes in late July and early August 1945, with three of the five damaged so extensively they bottomed out in shallow water.

Japanese cruiser Iwate seen sunk off Kure in October 1945. She had been sunk by air attacks on 24 July. Photo by USS Siboney (CVE-112). 80-G-351365

It was at Ominato that Tokiwa was caught by aircraft from USS Essex and Randolph on the afternoon of 9 August. She suffered at least four direct bomb hits and at least that many near misses, crippling the ship and killing or wounding half of her crew. Towed to shallow water off Cape Ashizaki, she was beached, and her crew attempted repairs.

With the end of hostilities, her crew was relieved on 20 September, and she was removed from the Naval List on 30 November.

All these battered old bruisers were unceremoniously scrapped shortly after the war, and only one, Tsushima veteran Yakumo, ever sailed again under her own power– as an unarmed repatriation transport to bring 9,000 Japanese troops home from KMT-occupied Formosa in 1946.

Asama (Japanese training ship, ex-CA) at Kure, circa October 1945. She was scrapped along with her sister and the rest of Japan’s legacy armored cruisers by 1947. Collection of Captain D.L. Madeira, 1978. NH 86279

Epilogue

Today, there are few remains of Tokiwa despite her nearly 50 years (okay, 46 years, 11 months, 17 days) of service.

She is remembered in a variety of scale models

Between 3 October 1898 and 20 September 1945, she had 52 skippers. At least seven of these became admirals.

These included her Russo-Japanese War skipper, Capt. Shigetaro Yoshimatsu, who went on to become a full admiral and the sixth commander of the Combined Fleet (Rengo Kantaishireichokan) in November 1915, a post he held through October 1917.

Shigetaro Yoshimatsu, seen as the skipper of Tokiwa in 1904 and then as Admiral of the Navy in 1915. He passed in 1935, at age 75, having spent 37 of those years in uniform.

Another was Naoma Taniguchi, who, after serving as Tokiwa’s skipper in 1916-17, rose to become a full admiral and commander of the Combined Fleet, then Chief of the Naval General Staff in the early 1930s. Head of one of the IJN’s more rational factions, he was instrumental in the ratification of the Treaty of London and later refused to send ships to respond to the Manchurian Incident. For this, he and his deputy officers were forced into retirement in 1933, leaving more hawkish officers in charge. He passed soon after.

Then there was the Viscount Ogasawara, who translated Mahan into Japanese in 1899, served as Togo’s aide, and wrote several popular works on the Russo-Japanese war at sea, one of which was turned into a movie in 1930. Ogasawara later served as the director of the school that educated then Crown Prince Hirohito and, moving to the retired list in 1921 as a vice admiral, became a naval advisor to the throne through November 1945.

VADM Viscount Naganari Ogasawara was Togo’s aide and Hirohito’s teacher and advisor, taking a break between the two to command Tokiwa in 1912. He passed in 1958, aged 90, having spent 56 years in service. He was one of the last surviving Tsushima vets.

In 1989, the Japanese government recycled the name of the old cruiser for a new Towada-class replenishment ship (AOE-423). The Hitachi SC built vessel almost immediately clocked in on one of modern Japan’s first overseas naval deployments– Desert Shield/Storm, now some 35 years in the rearview. The oiler delivered non-combatant material to Saudi Arabia as part of Japan’s contribution to the coalition effort and has been a familiar consort to allied vessels underway in the WestPac in the past few decades.

A starboard bow view of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force fleet support ship Tokiwa (AOE-423) as she pulls away from the destroyer USS Decatur (DDG 73) (not shown) after an underway replenishment 15 March 2006. CTR3 Ryan C. Finkle, USN, Photo 330-CFD-DN-SD-06-16313 via NARA

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Swashbuckling Baltic Baron of Boxer Fame

Posted on August 1, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Some 125 years ago this month, this guy was the biggest hero in Russia, having recently picked up not only the St. George Cross but also five foreign orders “in recognition of exemplary bravery and selflessness.’

I give you 37-year-old Lieutenant Baron Ferdinand (Vladimirovich) Arthur Lionel Gotthard von Rahden, of the Tsar’s Navy, who commanded the Russian naval infantry unit drawn from the crews of the battleships Navarin and Sisoy the Great during the defense of the Peking Legation Quarter during its 55-day siege in the Boxer Rebellion.

Hailing from a family of hereditary Baltic barons (he inherited the title from his late father, Vladimir, the former vice-governor of Estonia, in 1881), Ferdinand graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1886 and from 1889 onward held down spots on Russian warships drifting further and further East. From the Black Sea Fleet to the Caspian Flotilla and the cruiser Admiral Kornilov in the Indian Ocean. By 1891, he was a navigator on the cruiser Vladimir Monomakh in Vladivostok. By the time of the Boxer Rebellion, he was head of the 01 Division on Navarin and was selected to lead the 71-member company to Peking.

Of the 445 foreign soldiers, sailors, and Marines holding the Legation wall, the Russians had the third-largest force, just behind the only slightly larger British (79 Marines) and the French (75 sailors) contingents.

Russian sailors on a barricade before the Peking Legation Boxer Uprising, Niva magazine, No. 43, 1900

During the siege of Pekin, Baron von Rahden received several wounds, including a contusion of the cranial bone, but, importantly, his force captured four guns from the besieging Boxers, which were of great use to the defenders.

“Peking, China. 1900. A Russian officer, Baron Randen [sic], and four armed soldiers behind a barricade, probably at the Russian Legation, during the Boxer Rebellion.” Note he appears armed with a Steyr M.95, which may have been borrowed from Austrian Marines in the Legation, while his men have Mosin M.91s (AWM A05909)

Baron von Rahden, as portrayed in 55 Days at Peking, albeit in a much nicer costume, complete with sword belt sash, than the uniform he actually wore

After the Boxer Rebellion, Von Rahden, promoted to Captain (2nd rank), rode a wave of good assignments, including XO of the gunboat Koreets and command of the destroyer Ryany, which operated out of Vladivostok during the Russo-Japanese War. A scouting mission with his greyhound along the Korean peninsula during the conflict earned him an Order of St. Stanislav and a promotion to Captain (1st rank).

Then came a position as port captain of Vladivostok, followed by what would be the pinnacle of his naval career, that of skipper of the cruiser Askold in 1910.

Russian cruiser Askold in Vladivostok

At that point, Von Rahden’s star burned out.

Dismissed from his post on embezzlement charges, the Vladivostok Naval Court handed down a sentence of 3.5 years in the brig and the removal of all ranks, orders, and privileges. After serving 22 months, the Tsar commuted his sentence in light of his past record, and he was dismissed from the Navy, ending his 26 years in the fleet with a squish.

When Russia marched to war again in 1914, Von Rahden repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, applied to return to service.

It was only after the twin seismic military disasters of 1914 and 1915 that, on Valentine’s Day 1916, Von Rahden was appointed from ignoble retirement to become a colonel and second in command of the 205th (Shemakha) Infantry Regiment, then part of the 52nd Division on the mud of the Austrian front. In January 1917, he was made commander of the 82nd Infantry (Dagestan) Regiment, on the Romanian front. In April 1917, he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 3rd degree with swords, one of the last issuances of that decoration.

Von Rahden, somewhat redeemed, was the 85th’s final colonel, and on 23 November 1917, he was promoted to major general, setting him up for command of a division. It was a position he held only briefly, being cashiered at the end of the year, following directives from the new Bolshevik military commissars who were eager to separate from the service any nobles still in uniform.

Returning home to Estonia in 1918, Von Raden soon fell in with the German-allied Baltic Landeswehr, a proto-Freikorps-style force led by his fellow Couronian and Livonian nobility. Leading a company in that force, he fought with the Landeswehr against the Reds at Windau, Tukkum, and Mitau.

Once Riga was captured, with the Landeswehr being strongly disfavored by the recently arrived British and French military missions to the Baltic, he and his company moved over to General Yudenich’s White Russian Northwestern Army during what had become the full-blown Russian Civil War.

Leading the battalion-sized 17th Libau Regiment of the 5th Division during Yudenich’s failed push on Petrograd, Baron Von Rahden, formerly of the Tsar’s Navy, was killed in action in the village of Russkoye Koporye on 25 October 1919, aged 56 hard years.

Warship Wednesday, June 25, 2025: Rozhestvensky’s Pirates

Posted on June 25, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, June 25, 2025: Rozhestvensky’s Pirates

Above we see the Imperial Russian Navy’s auxiliary cruiser (vspomogatel’nyy kreyser) Terek, formerly the Royal Spanish Navy’s cruiser Rapido, formerly the Hamburg America Line steamer SS Columbia,

Terek just narrowly avoided combat in 1898 under the yellow and red Pabellon de la Armada, but some 120 years ago this week, she would land the final Tsarist Russian blows against the Empire of Japan at sea.

Kinda

The Tsar’s auxiliary cruisers

When war broke out with Japan in February 1904, the Russian admiralty activated its long-standing plans to cough up a series of armed merchant cruisers. Originally intended in the 1880s and 1890s to chase down British merchantmen should the “Great Game” turn hot, the Russians were able to activate nine large rakish steamers, all capable of making over 18.5 knots. Almost all (six of nine) were three-funnel liners, and all had been built as fine 1st class ships in the best German and British yards. In peacetime, they were operated by Dobroflot, the Russian state-controlled “Volunteer Fleet,” then switched to Navy crews during war.

These nine AMCs activated were generally named after rivers or Cossack hosts that lived along their banks, including: Angara (12,050 tons), Lena (10,675 t), Kuban (12,000 t), Don (10,500 t), Ural (10,500 t), Dnepr (9,500 t), Rion (14,614 t), Rus (8,600 t) and our Terek (10,000 t).

The main batteries typically consisted of a few 120mm/45 (4.7″) Pattern 1892 Canet guns augmented by a secondary of 75mm/50 (2.9″) Pattern 1892 Canet guns and a tertiary of 57mm/6-pdr, 47mm/3-pdr, or 37mm/1-pdr Hotchkiss counter-boat guns. Dedicated magazine space was set aside and rigged for emergency flooding if needed. As their promenade decks didn’t lend well to gun emplacements, most were arranged on the fore and aft well decks, with smaller guns on the poop and forecastle.

4.7-inch guns on auxiliary cruiser Lena

As the cruisers had at least two military masts complete with lookout tops, they would typically carry at least a 1-pounder in each. Two to four large searchlights were fitted as well.

The Illustrated London News on October 8, 1904, details the “Russian Menace to Neutral Shipping” during the Russo-Japanese War, focusing on converted cruisers in neutral waters, including Lena (Kherson), Terek, Peterburg (Dnepr), and Smolensk (Rion).

The presence of these Russian cruisers in neutral ports, particularly the well-armed Lena (35 guns in four diverse batteries), which called at San Francisco in late 1904, caused a huge surge in war risk insurances for vessels of all flags bound for Japan, threatening a general halt in shipments.

Fresno Bee, Sept 14, 1904

Russian auxiliary cruiser Lena in San Francisco, November 1904. Built in 1896 by Hawthorn Leslie, Newcastle– at the time the largest ship built on the Tyne– she sailed with the Volunteer Fleet in peacetime as Kherson. Activated in late 1903 as tensions with Japan grew, she operated out of Vladivostok until she arrived at San Francisco for repairs in September 1904 and was eventually interned for the rest of the war. She later served as Naval Transport N73 in the Black Sea Fleet, then, evacuating Russia with Wrangel’s White navy in 1920, had a short career with the London Steamship & Trading Co, then was broken up in Venice in 1925.

Besides acting as scouts and raiders, a role well-suited to the force due to their large ocean-crossing coal bunkers, they also had lots of spare room in their peacetime passenger cabins to accommodate troops for use as a fast transport, or captured enemy mariners. One, Rus, was used as a balloon aircraft carrier, toting nine Parseval-Sigsfeld kite balloons and making 186 controlled ascents from her deck.

Sailing as a scouting unit with Russian ADM Rozhestvensky’s 2nd Pacific Squadron on its way to its destiny at Tsushima, several also bagged some prizes.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. Let’s turn this story back a bit.

Meet Columbia

Ordered in 1888, an express steamer of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG) line, the Doppelschrauben-Schnelldampfer Columbia was intended to compete with the fastest liners of the British shipping companies. Built to the same plans as her AG Vulcan-built sister, SS Augusta Victoria, who claimed the fastest maiden voyage across the Atlantic in an east-west direction in May 1889, Columbia was fast.

Some 480 feet overall with a narrow 55-foot beam and knife-like bow, she was HAPAG’s second twin-screw express steamer on the North Atlantic. Equipped with twin VTR engines fed by nine boilers good for 13,300 shp, she made 20.5 knots on trials.

From The Engineer, 8 Nov 1889:

Some 7,300 GRT, she had accommodations for 1,100 passengers (400 first-class, 120 second-class, and 580 third-class).

German maritime artist Alexander Kircher penned several illustrations aboard the Columbia for the publication Die Rudermaschine in 1890.

A series of interior and exterior views upon delivery is in the collection of the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University.

However, she and her sister were ready for war if needed. Following the government subsidy provided by the Imperial Postal Steamer agreement (Reichspostdampfervertrages), the Reich could use these steamers in the event of mobilization, and ships built for the service had to pass a Kaiserliche Marine inspection, including weight and space for deck guns and magazines. We saw how this played out with a host of German auxiliary cruisers in 1914 in past Warship Wednesdays.

Columbia was delivered to HAPAG in June 1889 and began her maiden voyage from Hamburg via Southampton to New York on 18 July. Importantly, in July 1895, Columbia and Augusta Victoria transported the guests of honor at the opening of the Kiel Canal.

Besides the American runs, the sisters would cruise in winter to the Mediterranean, in midsummer north to Spitsbergen, and from 1896 also to the West Indies.

It was postcard and poster worthy.

War! (under a Spanish banner)

With Madrid in dire need of modern ships for their looming clash with the U.S., three weeks before war was declared, on 8 April 1898, HAPAG sold the proud Columbia and the slightly larger Normannia to Spain. Normannia became the Spanish auxiliary cruiser Patriota, armed with four 12 cm/L40 Skoda rapid-firing guns and ten 47 mm/L44 QF guns, while the speedy Columbia would enter Spanish service as the auxiliary cruiser Rapido. Her skipper was Capt. Federico Campaño y Rosset.

In Spanish service, Columbia/Rapido would carry four 16.2cm/35s, two 14cm/35s, and six 47 mm/L44s. The conversion, no doubt easy due to the weight and space reserved for guns and shells in her design, only took 12 days.

Originally part of Gruppo E of the Reserve Squadron, intended for action against American lines of communication along the Atlantic coast, both Columbia/Rapido and Normannia/Patriota were reassigned to RADM Manuel de la Camara’s relief squadron for the Philippines six weeks after Dewey had destroyed RADM Patricio Montojo’s Spanish Pacific Squadron.

Sailing in line with the strongest Spanish ship in the fleet, the 11,000-ton 12-inch gunned battlewagon Pelayo; the armored cruiser Emperador Carlos V, destroyers Audaz, Osado, and Proserpina; and the troop-packed transports Buenos Aires and Panay, the force left Cadiz on 16 June 1898 and made Egypt ten days later, only to fight for coal with the English there for a week.

RADM Manuel de la Camara’s fleet under steam. Columbia/Rapido, with three masts and three stacks, is to the far left with Normannia/Patriota ahead of her. Original Location: Stanley Cohen, Images of the Spanish-American War (Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Pub. Co., 1997). Via NHHC.

Rapido, Spanish auxiliary cruiser, at Port Said, Egypt, 26 June – 4 July 1898, while serving with Rear Admiral Manuel de la Camara’s squadron, which had been sent to relieve the Philippines. Copied from the Office of Naval Intelligence Album of Foreign Warships. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. NH 88730

Camara’s squadron in the Suez Canal in 1898. Pelayo is in the foreground, with the rest of his fleet, Columbia/Rapido (visible between Pelayo’s masts) and Normannia/Patriota included. NHHC WHI.2014.36x

However, with Spanish VADM Pascual Cervera’s squadron’s defeat at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba on 3 July, and the fear that metropolitan Spain was left defenseless, Camara’s squadron was recalled home just as it made the Red Sea. Spending the rest of the war in European waters, Columbia/Rapido and Normannia/Patriota were later used as troop transport to help bring the defeated Spanish forces home from the lost colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico, shepherding (often towing) eight smaller, often derelict, vessels behind them back to Cadiz with stops in Martinique and the Canary Islands.

The Spanish admiralty having no further use for Columbia/Rapido, she was disarmed and sold back to HAPAG on 6 July 1899 for a nominal fee. Her career in Spanish service spanned just under 15 months and, as far as I can tell, she never fired a shot in anger during this period.

Meanwhile, Normannia/Patriota was given to the French government to resolve war debts. Renamed L’ Aquitaine, the former Normannia entered service with the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) line in December 1899, and, in poor condition, was scrapped in 1906.

Under a Russian flag

Following a refit and a fresh coat of paint, Columbia spent the next four years in a shuffle of commercial runs from Hamburg via Southampton and Cherbourg to New York.

It was while on a run to the Big Apple in May 1904 that HAPAG unceremoniously sold Columbia, along with her sister Auguste Victoria and the liner Furst Bismarck, for 7.5 million rubles to the Russian Navy, in need of hulls to take the fight to the Japanese. At the same time, NDL sold the Russians the fast little (6963 BRT) liner Kaiserin Maria Theresia.

Auguste Victoria became the Russian auxiliary cruiser Kuban, Furst Bismarck became the cruiser Don, and Kaiserin Maria Theresia the cruiser Ural.

Columbia departed New York after discharging her passengers for the Russian naval base at Libau (now Liepaja, Latvia) in the Baltic, joining Auguste Victoria, Furst Bismarck, and Kaiserin Maria Theresia, who had arrived earlier.

Terek in Libau 1904. Note that the other auxiliary cruisers are in dark military livery

At Libau, Columbia’s German civil crew took trains for the frontier while dock workers began the conversion process. Her deck was additionally reinforced, magazines for ammunition and devices for feeding shells to the upper deck were equipped. Some of the rooms in the emigrant class cabins were adapted to accommodate additional supplies of coal, fresh water, and food. Hatches were cut out for coaling at sea, a task rarely performed by ocean liners. To protect the engines and boilers from enemy shells, additional steel sheets were installed. Columbia was also equipped with additional equipment: two combat searchlights, a powerful wireless telegraph station, etc.

Columbia’s armament was lighter than in Spanish service, consisting of just two 12 cm L/45s, four 7.5 cm L/50s, eight 5.7 cm Hotchkiss guns, and two Maxim machine guns. The Russian naval staff had initially intended for each of the three new-to-them German-made auxiliary cruisers to carry fourteen 6-inch guns, but the ordnance just wasn’t available.

Our subject was named Terek after the fierce Cossack host on the river of the same name in the Caucasus region.

Terek Cossacks

Terek’s inaugural Russian skipper was Capt. (2nd rank) Konstantin Aleksandrovich Panferov, a 44-year-old career officer who had joined the fleet as a 14-year-old midshipman and had earned sea legs on everything from schooners to armored cruisers. His father, Aleksandr Konstantinovich, was friends with Nakhimov, took part in the Siege of Sevastopol as a battery commander, and retired as a rear admiral.

The rest of the wardroom was light, just four lieutenants and a dozen or so warrant officers and midshipmen rushed into service. Her sole surgeon was seconded from a teaching position at a Petersburg university. The new (again) cruiser’s crew of just over 400 was drawn from depots all over Russia.

As described by a Russian Tsushima veteran, Capt. Vladimir Ivanovich Semenov, of this force, “The naivety is almost touching…”

While Auguste Victoria/Kuban and Furst Bismarck/Don were repainted from their commercial livery to a heavy grey/green scheme, there wasn’t either enough time or paint left to do the same for Terek, and she sailed as-is.

War (against Japan, kinda)

Sent out from Libau on 12 August 1904 to hunt for Japanese merchant ships (or those of other flags carrying Japan-related contraband), Terek sortied out into the Atlantic before making Las Palmas, Vigo, and Lisbon for resupply then haunted the approaches to Gibraltar before she arrived back in the Baltic on 8 October, covering 9,190nm and inspecting 15 suspect vessels with no prizes. She earned enough attention from harassing ships with Red Dusters to be shadowed by the British cruisers HMS St. George and Brilliant.

Terek overhauling the British merchant ship Derwen off Cape St. Vincent (Cabo de San Vicente) off southern Portugal, August 1904.

As noted by Patrick J. Rollins in the 1994 Naval War College Review: “In August 1904, the three largest shipping firms in England, including the great P&O Line, suspended service to Japan. By the end of August, insurance rates on British ships bound for the Far East stood at 20 shillings per hundred, or four times the rate charged to the French and Germans.”

Terek was selected, along with her sister Auguste Victoria/Kuban and the auxiliary cruiser Kaiserin Maria Theresia/Ural, to join VADM Zinoy Rozhestvensky’s “2nd” Pacific Squadron, which was just the Russian Baltic Fleet, on its ill-fated mission to relieve besieged Port Arthur in the Pacific.

However, due to the nature of Rozhestvensky’s straggling fleet, Terek was not released to join the squadron until 18 November, following Ural, which had left four days earlier, and Kuban, which had sailed a full three weeks prior. Sailing around the Cape of Good Hope via Dakar, Terek only managed to link up with Kuban and Ural off Madagascar in January 1905. Dnepr (ex-Petersburg) and Rion (ex-Smolensk), who had spent the summer harassing British shipping off the East Coast of Africa, joined them. The five ersatz cruisers formed the fleet’s Reconnaissance Detachment.

By that time, Port Arthur had fallen and, much like Camara’s squadron in 1898, you would expect Rozhestvensky to be recalled back home. However, this was not to be, and the force, after weeks in Madagascar, was ordered to attempt to run past the Japanese to Vladivostok.

Another of the nine Russian auxiliary cruisers, Angara, was lost in the fall of Port Arthur, pounded into the mud by Japanese heavy artillery.

Once in the Pacific, Rion and Dnepr were detailed to escort a group of transports to Shanghai, then break off for commerce raiding along Japan’s sea lanes in the southern part of the Yellow Sea.

Ural would accompany the main force and would soon end up on the bottom.

According to Rozhestvensky’s order No. 380 of 21 May, the Kuban and Terek were to sail ahead and feint around the east of Japan and work in the area between the island of Shikoku and Yokohama. The cruisers were ordered to “without hesitation sink” all steamships on which military contraband would be noticed, a plan surely designed to draw Japanese Admiral Togo’s forces away from the Tsushima straits.

As noted by Semenov at the time back with the main fleet on 22 May, five days before the run through Tsushima, “Yesterday, the Kuban, and today the Terek, separated from the squadron to cruise off the eastern shores of Japan. May God grant them more noise.”

Kuban spent three weeks off Japan, in terrible weather, and only managed to close with two freighters, the German steamer Surabaya, carrying a cargo of flour from Hamburg to Vladivostok of all places, and the unladen Austrian freighter Ladroma. Down to her last 1,800 tons of coal, and finding out about the destruction of the 2nd Pacific Squadron from the latest issue of the Singapore Free Press newspaper aboard Ladroma, Kuban’s skipper called it quits and sailed for Saigon for coal, then made it back to Libau alone on 3 August.

Rion was able to break a few eggs, so to speak, after the battle. On 30 May, some 60 miles from Cape Shantung, she detained the German steamship Tetartos (2409 GRT), heading from Otaru to Tianjin with railway sleepers and fish, and sank it the next morning. Four days later, while 80 miles from Wusung, she stopped the English steamship Cilurnum (2123 GRT), heading from Shanghai to Moji. The steamship was released after its cargo of beans and cotton was thrown over the side. Her war over, Rion sailed for home, arriving in Kronstadt on 30 July.

Dnepr came across the British steamer St Kilda (3519 GRT) off Hong Kong on 5 June with a cargo that included rice, sugar, and gunnies bound for Yokohama. She then sent said steamer to Davy Jones and landed the crew back in Hong Kong before heading back home.

This left our Terek to strike the last blows. She did so against the British-flagged Ikhona (5252 GRT) of the Indian Steam Navigation Company on 5 June while north of Hong Kong in the Philippine Sea, during the latter’s voyage from Rangoon to Yokohama with a cargo of rice and mail. Taking off the crew, the shipwrecked mariners were transferred to the passing Dutch steamer Periak at sea two weeks later and eventually landed at Singapore. The ship’s skipper, one Capt. Stone reported that the capture and sinking had taken six long hours, with dynamite charges failing to scuttle the steamer before Terek opened up with “quick-firers.”

Ikhona was the fourth British ship lost to the Russians during the conflict after SS Knight Commander, St. Kilda, and the schooner Hip Sang. His majesty’s government later pursued a claim of £250,000 against Russia for the value of the ships and their cargoes, with Ikhona being the most expensive at £100,000.

Continuing in the South China Sea, on 22 June 1905, Terek came across the unlikely victim that was the Kiel-built Danish East Asiatic Company steamer Prinsesse Marie (5416 tons), bound with cargo for Japan, and sank the same. Another bloodless kill by old school “cruiser rules,” her crew was taken off and brought to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies a week later. With the Dutch refusing Terek coal, the Russian cruiser ended her sortie there and was interned for three months until the Treaty of Portsmouth ended the war. Capt. Panferov dutifully offered his flag and sword to the local Dutch naval commander, who refused them.

Det Østasiatiske Kompagni Prinsesse Marie

Ironically, the Danish EAC protested the sinking of Prinsesse Marie under the pretext that, while her cargo was bound for a Japanese port, it was manifested to go to a European concern. It’s possible the Tsar, his mother being a Danish princess, made that one right in the end.

Returning home to Russia, on 10 December 1905, an order was received to Kuban, Terek, and Don of “all weapons and things related to naval affairs,” and investigate the possibility of selling the ships.

On 18 November 1906, by order of the fleet and the Naval Department No. 300, the Terek and her sister Kuban were excluded from the naval lists and were handed over to the port of Libau pending auction. The following February, Vosidlo and Co. paid 442,150 rubles for both vessels and sent them to Stettin to be cut up for scrap metal.

Epilogue

Terek could arguably be listed as one of the most successful ships on the Tsarist side of the Russo-Japanese War. A huge 1:48 scale model of the ship was crafted for the Russian Naval Museum in St. Petersburg following the campaign. Although damaged by fire during German bombs in WWII, it remains on display.

Terek’s only wartime Russian skipper, Panferov, earned both the Order of St. Anne, 2nd degree, and the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree for his service on the cruiser. Promoted to Capt. 1st Rank in 1908, then, switching to a shoreside non-line duty, by 1913, rose to the rank of major general. During the Great War, as chief quartermaster of Kronstadt, he earned the St. Anne 1st degree in 1916. One of the rare senior officers retained by the Red Navy post-revolution, he retired in 1919.

Russian Navy MG Konstantin Aleksandrovich Panferov. His son, Georgy Konstantinovich Panferov, went on to become a surgeon colonel during WWII and a professor at the Naval Medical Academy (VMMA). His grandson, Yuri Georgievich Panferov, followed in his footsteps and became an officer in the Red Banner fleet.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, May 28, 2025: Part Eagle, Part Phoenix

Posted on May 28, 2025 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Warship Wednesday, May 28, 2025: Part Eagle, Part Phoenix

Photo received from the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence. Naval History and Heritage Command Catalog #: NH 45853

Above we see a port bow view of the Tsar’s brand-new Borodino-class squadron battleship Orel (also seen transliterated in some Western sources as “Oryol” and “Ariol”), taken in the Baltic soon after her completion in September 1904.

She had a curious history that saw her rushed to the losing side of one of the worst naval defeats of the 20th Century, some 120 years ago this week, after an 18,000-mile shakedown cruise. She would then be reborn to fight the Germans in China (!) while under a Japanese flag, return to her homeland under very different circumstances, and meet her ultimate fate at the hands of budding technology that would echo into another Pacific war.

The Borodinos

In the 1900s, the Imperial Russian Navy was full speed ahead to create three top-notch fleets: one in the Baltic to defend against the Germans (or attack Swedes, who knows); a second in the Black Sea to take on the Turks who were rapidly rearming with new vessels from America and Britain; and a third in the Pacific to be able to hold on to its Manchurian possessions which had been essentially stolen from Japan after the latter’s cakewalk victory against China in 1895.

A key acquisition during this period was the one-off 388-foot tumblehome hulled battleship Tsesarevich, which had been built in France at Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, La Seyne-sur-Mer. The same yard had produced a series of 12,000-ton leviathans for the French Navy (Jauréguiberry et. al.) and patterned the new Russian ship along those lines.

Tsesarevich. Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, La Seyne-Sur-Mer brochure published by the society for its fiftieth anniversary, Imprimerie Chaix, Paris, July 1906, p. 40.

Weighing in at 13,000 tons due to her thicker armor (up to 10 inches of good German Krupp plate), Tsarevich was powered by 20 Belleville water-tube boilers that ate coal like it was going out of style. Armament was in two pairs of impressive Russian-built (Obukhov) French-designed (Canet) 12″/40 (30.5 cm) Pattern 1895 guns mounted in double turrets fore and aft, with six French-made Canet Model 1892 6-inch guns in double turrets arrayed along the hull of the ship. Capable of 18 knots and able to steam over 6,000nm before needing more coal, she was capable of deploying to the Pacific, which was to be her homeport at Port Arthur.

With Tsesarevich as a cue, the Russians embarked on a campaign to build at least five (with potential for up to ten) new ships in the St. Petersburg area for their Baltic fleet. Just nine feet longer than their inspiration but with heavier engines, thicker armor, and larger turrets (but with the same general armament), the Russian admiralty packed another 1,400 tons onto essentially the same hull. This gave them a draft pushing 30 feet– on a hull just 397 feet long!

profile Borodino class

The new ships, the Borodino class, would have significantly less coal bunkerage, cutting their range in half, which was not seen as a hindrance, as their Baltic role would ensure they never operated very far from a Russian port. When loaded with more coal than designed, their protective armor belt submerged, and their 6-inch guns rode so low and close to the waves as to be useless at all but point-blank range.

armor plan Borodino class, with thickness in mm

Equipped with old-style (1880s-designed) French Lugeol stadiametric rangefinders, which typically maxed out after 4,000m, their guns were handicapped when it came to fire control. The Russians made a move to change these out for more modern British Barr and Stroud coincidence rangefinders, but training in their use was minimal before the class was rushed to war with Japan.

The five ships of the class were all ordered within months of each other from yards around Saint Petersburg, with Borodino constructed at the New Admiralty Shipyard; Imperator Aleksandr III, Knyaz Suvorov, and Slava contracted at the Baltic Works (now OJSC Baltic); and our subject, Orel, ordered from the Galernyi Island Shipyard (now JSC Admiralty Yard). The cost for each ran between 13.4 and 14.5 million rubles, with Orel being the cheapest.

Meet Orel

Our subject was at least the fifth ship to carry the Russian name for “Eagle” in the history of the Imperial Navy. The first was the first sea-going warship of the Russian Empire, a Dutch-style three-mast pinnace ordered by Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1667 to protect Russian merchant ships on the Caspian Sea from pirates. Of note, the ship’s crew consisted of 20 Dutch sailors and officers and 35 Russian musketeers.

The original three-master Orel, a frigate in Russian parlance, was the first sea-going Russian warship. Today, the ship’s profile is the emblem of St. Petersburg. Likewise, her contracting date, 29 June, is celebrated annually as “Shipbuilder’s Day” (Den’ sudostroitelya) in Russia.

Our Orel was laid down on 20 May 1900, launched 6 July 1902, and– despite sinking to the bottom of Kronstadt during a storm while fitting out on 7 May 1904 and settling with a 24-degree list– was commissioned on 1 October 1904 following three weeks of builder’s trials.

Orel under construction, c. 1903

Her construction was overseen by Russian Maj. Gen. Mikhail Karlovich Yakovlev, the senior shipbuilder of the Admiralty.

Those who are savvy with military history will realize that Orel entered the fleet eight months into the Russo-Japanese War, at a time when the bulk of the Russian Pacific Fleet was bottled up by the Japanese in their besieged homeport at Port Arthur.

Orel was photographed in 1904. NH 92419

The bad news for Orel was that, with her three other finished sisters (Slava was still under construction), and almost everything in the Baltic fleet that could float, would be rushed to the Pacific to clock in against the Japanese, changing the course of the war.

At least that was the plan.

War!

Covering the nightmarish 7-month, 18,000-mile voyage of the Russian Baltic Fleet (renamed the 2nd Pacific Squadron) to reach the Tsushima Straits from St. Petersburg is a bit beyond the scope of this post. We will be more narrow in our focus, relying on Orel’s part in the trip– which she began on 15 October, just two weeks after she was commissioned.

Not a misprint. She sailed to war a fortnight after hoisting her colors for the first time, and just six months after she sank pierside while fitting out.

Borodino class battleship of the 2nd Pacific Squadron getting ready to leave the Baltic in 1904.

With so many battleships rushed to completion in a country without a huge maritime tradition, the Russians were scraping the barrel to crew Orel. Many were pulled from shoreside assignments and the far-away Caspian Sea flotilla and Black Sea fleet. As the standard term of service for new Russian recruits was seven years active and four reserve, many of the men aboard were of the latter category and less than enthusiastic when it came to returning to the colors amid a war they did not understand.

Her skipper, Capt. (1st rate) Nikolay Viktorovich Jung (Naval Cadet Corps 1876), had dallied with the Narodnaya Volya revolutionary movement as a young officer, for which he had been arrested and blackballed for a time. Despite nearly 30 years of service, his largest command before Orel was a 4,600-ton cruiser, having spent most of his career on training ships.

Her XO, Capt. (2nd rate) Konstantin Leopoldovich Shvede, had entered the Navy in 1884 but had never held a seagoing command and had spent most of his career in shoreside service as a functionary. His last assignment before Orel was as the officer in charge of the mess hall at the Kryukov barracks.

A few capable young officers, such as LT (future RADM and polar explorer) Nikolay Nikolaevich Zubov, quickly sought transfer to other vessels. Zubov, reassigned to the destroyer Blestyashchy, fought his ship at Tsushima until it sank under his feet and made it to internment in Shanghai for the rest of the war.

47mm Hotchkiss with gunnery officer, LT Fedor Petrovich Shamshev on Orel, headed to the Far East in 1904. After graduating from the Naval Corps in 1891, he served in several posts until joining Orel in 1903. Wounded at his post in the ship’s burning conning tower, he spent much of his time as a POW in Japan in 1905 in the hospital. After the war, he returned to service, commanded the gunboat Gilyak, and the destroyer Storozhevoy. During the Great War, he was the skipper of the old monitor training ship Pyotr Velikiy and commanded the coastal artillery on Nargen Island off Tallinn. After the Revolution, he left Russia for exile in Denmark, where he died in 1959, aged 90.

Some among her enlisted only narrowly missed the brig, or worse. This included one of her senior sailors, Alexey Silych Novikov-Priboy, who had been cashiered as an “unreliable person” for spreading revolutionary propaganda while on the old cruiser Minin, but, with the fleet in need of bodies, was reassigned to Orel. Soon, with the help of a like-minded engineering officer, he maintained a full-blown revolutionary library aboard. As he was paymaster steward, Novikov-Priboy had contact with every member of the crew.

Orel suffered from numerous incidents of sabotage on the way to the Pacific, with steel shavings found in her engines, a propeller shaft nearly ruined on the outbound cruise, a grounding, a rudder cable incident that forced her to stop briefly at Tangier, and one good-sized fire reported. Still, she pressed on to meet her destiny, albeit punctuated by breakdowns.

Orel and her three sisters formed the Russian First Division, with Squadron commander, VADM Zinovy Rozhestvensky, flying his flag from Orel’s sister, Knyaz Suvorov. The Second and Third Divisions, respectively, were formed of increasingly older battlewagons. Of note, the Second Division commander, RADM Baron Dmitry Gustavovich von Folkersahm, who had previously been the naval gunnery school commander, was ill with cancer. He was pulled out of convalescence for his seagoing billet and would perish in his cabin while on the cruise, well before the force met the Japanese.

The morning of 27 May 1905, the end came as the Russian battleline was crossed by that of ADM Togo’s Japanese Combined Fleet. The revolutionary Novikov-Priboy recalled that, with the straits approaching, Orel’s crew held a mass on deck just before the battle, “crossing themselves furiously as if swatting away flies.”

Our subject fired the first shots of the battle at 11:42, hurling 30 12-inch shells unsuccessfully at a distant Japanese cruiser that was shadowing on the horizon some 9,000 yards out. Rozhestvensky’s flagship, Knyaz Suvorov, the lead ship in the Russian battle line, later opened fire at the Japanese battleship Mikasa, Togo’s flagship, at 14:05. Over the next five hours, the battle went very badly for the Borodino class.

Imperator Aleksandr III turned turtle and sank at 18:50, leaving but four survivors.

Knyaz Suvorov, with Rozhestvensky switching his flag to a destroyer, sank with all hands at 19:20.

Borodino went up in a flash when a shell from the battleship Fuji ignited her magazine at 19:30, leaving just one survivor. Gunlayer Semyon Semyonovich Yushchin swam out of a flooded casemate, held onto a floating debris, and was picked up by the Japanese destroyer Oboro later that night.

Orel was the only battleship of the First Division to survive the maelstrom; her three other sisters were sent to the bottom with just five men living to tell the tale. She limped off into the night, riddled with holes and her decks filled with mangled bodies. Her skipper was mortally wounded.

“Broken hell” Russian Battleship Orel leading 2nd Pacific Squadron last daylight hours during the battle of Tsushima by Alexander Zyakin.

The next morning, falling in with RADM Nebogatov’s Third Division, including the old battleship Imperator Nikolai I (his flag) and the two small coastal battleships General-Admiral Apraksin and Admiral Seniavin, the badly damaged Orel, under the command of her XO, surrendered to the Japanese just after 1300 on 28 May, the group’s withdrawal to Vladivostok cut off by the Japanese.

Capt. Jung, who succumbed to his wounds, was buried at sea as the group sailed toward captivity.

Fortunio Matanya. Drawing 1905. Burial at sea of the commander of the battleship Orel

Taken under escort by the battleship Asahi and the armored cruiser Asama to Maizuru Navy Yard in Japan, Orel’s crew was moved ashore, politely, and would spend the rest of the war under a very gentlemanly confinement, a stark contrast to how enemy POWs were treated by the Emperor’s forces in WWII. They were repatriated in February 1906.

Russian battleship Orel officers on Asahi, 28 May 1905, after Tshumia

Orel lost 43 killed in addition to Jung and had over 80 seriously wounded, casualties that amounted to about 15 percent of her complement.

One of those nursing a life-changing injury was LT Leonid Vasilyevich Larionov, the battleship’s junior navigator. Entering the service in 1901 and cutting his teeth on the cruisers Africa and Abrek, Larionov was at his battle station in the conning tower of Orel during the fight. Wounded seriously in the head, he persevered. He had managed to destroy the battleship’s sensitive papers before reaching Japan, keeping one of her logbooks hidden on his person. In captivity, he carefully began the task of reconstructing the ship’s brief history.

Knocked out by Japanese shrapnel while in command of the left bow 6-inch turret, LT Konstantin Petrovich Slavinsky later reported:

At about 3 o’clock I felt a strong blow to the tower, my eyes were blinded by the explosion on the roof, I was thrown from the command platform and lost consciousness. When I came to, I saw that I was lying on the floor of the tower, there was blood all around, a stream of which was flowing from my forehead, the gunners were trying to lift me up and arguing whether I was killed or just wounded. Having forbidden them to see me off, I got to the operations point with the help of the porters, where they bandaged two deep wounds to my head and a knocked out left eye, after which I was placed in a room in front of the operations point, where I again lost consciousness from severe pain.

Slavinsky recovered enough to help lead firefighting efforts until knocked unconscious by another shell. He spent three months in a Japanese hospital in Maizuru, wearing an eyepatch for the rest of his life.

Orel survived some serious damage. Some reports contend she had 76 hits (five from 12-inch shells, two from 10-inch, nine from 8-inch, 39 from 6-inch, and 21 from smaller shells). Russian sources, namely from engineer Vladimir Polievktovich Kostenko of Orel (who helped Novikov-Priboy store his library), cited that the ship suffered more than 140 hits.

New Jersey-born Lloyd Carpenter Griscom, the 33-year-old U.S. Minister to Japan, was able to almost immediately obtain several very detailed images of the captured Russian battlewagon, a vessel considered well-protected at the time. It is known that he passed them on to Teddy Roosevelt personally.

As they showed Russian/German armor (on ships largely designed with help by the French) under the effects of Japanese/British weapons (especally the Shimose powder/cordite filled shells and the new Barr and Stroud FA3 coincidence rangefinders and the Dumaresq, the latter an early mechanical fire control computer), the snaps were surely of great interest to the man who was readying his “Great White Fleet” to circle the globe.

Orel, shortly after her capture by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66272

Orel photographed at Maizuru Navy Yard Japan, on 3 June 1905, following her surrender at the Battle of Tsushima on 28 May 1905. Courtesy of J. Meister collection, 1976. NH 84789

Same as above, NH 84788.

The Russian battleship Orel, shortly after her capture by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. Fragment of ship’s forward left twelve-inch gun, which lodged in a signal locker on the starboard side of the bridge. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66267

Orel shortly after her capture by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. Damages to the shelter deck and boats (overhead). Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66263

Orel, view of port side, looking forward from the after bridge, showing damage to superstructure and boats. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66264

Orel, view taken looking into a damaged searchlight on the after bridge. The reflector reverses the view. Notice that the photographer has photographed himself and a Japanese officer. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66261

Orel, damage near the port center six-inch turret. Looks like a shell exploded immediately upon impact with this bulkhead. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66262

Orel, note the shot holes around the 6-inch gun turret. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66270

Orel, damage near 47mm (3-pounder) quick-firing gun, port side of the fore bridge. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66265

Orel, fore 12-inch turret of the Russian battleship OREL, shortly after she was captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. The muzzle of the damaged twelve-inch gun was carried bodily to the starboard side of the bridge, and lodged in a signal locker. A Japanese sailor is in the foreground, standing guard. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66269

Orel, damaged 12-inch gun of the fore turret of the Russian battleship OREL, shortly after she was captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Tsushima, 28 May 1905. This photograph graphically illustrates the construction of a “built up” gun. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66268

Orel, damage to fore port 6-inch turret and the deck. A 12-inch shell exploded on impact at the turret base. Notice the immense force of this Japanese shell, which exploded on impact, without penetration. The downward explosive force burst in the deck, and the upward force cut a wide piece out of the turret from top to bottom. Japanese photograph, inscribed: “To the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, from Lloyd C. Griscom.” Farenholt Collection. NH 66266

The photos were likely widespread in Japan at the time, as one of Orel’s senior signalmen, one V.P. Zefirov, who filled at least three journals with drawings during his captivity in Japan (preserved in Russian archives), depicted several in his work.

Rebirth

By far the most powerful Russian warship captured at Tsushima, Orel was an important trophy. Further, unlike the Tsar’s ships salvaged from the mud of Port Arthur, her crew did not have extensive opportunity (and will) to wreck her.

Renamed Iwami on 6 June 1905 after a traditional feudal province, now the western part of Shimane Prefecture, the former Russian battlewagon was presented a statue of Umashimachi as the guardian deity of the ship by Mononobe Shrine in Oda City. The Japanese also renamed the other four captured Russian warships from Tsushima on the same day, with Imperator Nikolai I renamed the battleship Iki, Admiral Senyavin renamed the coastal defense ship Mishima, General Admiral Apraksin dubbed the coastal defense ship Okishima, and the destroyer Bedovy renamed the destroyer Satsuki.

This set up Orel for an extensive 29-month reconstruction which saw her French Bellville boilers replaced by Japanese-built Miyabara boilers, her superstructure and funnels rebuilt lower to help change her overloading, and her armament greatly modified. Retaining her Russian 12-inchers (the Japanese had a quantity of shells and replacement guns captured at Port Arthur), new gun tubes were later ordered from the Muroran Works of the Japan Steel Works.

Her heavy twin 6-inch turrets were placed by single 8″/45 Armstrong guns in deck mounts as used in the cruiser Takasago, further saving weight. Her 3″/48 Canet guns were landed, replaced by fewer Japanese Type 41 guns of the same caliber. Likewise, her 47/40 Hotchkiss and 37/20 Hotchkiss light guns were removed, replaced by a smaller number of Yamauchi-type 47mm guns. Even two of her four torpedo tubes were removed, saving only her twin submerged beam tubes, which were upgraded from 381mm to 450mm. The above-water torpedo tubes at the bow and stern were eliminated.

Emerging from the Kure Naval Arsenal on 26 November 1907, at the time, Iwami was the newest battleship in the Imperial Japanese Navy’s fleet at the time, excluding the two new Vickers-built Katori-class battleships, which were only slightly larger and only delivered in May 1906.

Battleship Iwami, 2 November 190,7 Kure via Kure Maritime Museum

Assigned to the 1st Fleet, Iwami was rated a first-class battleship and saw serious service with the Japanese fleet for the next five years, only re-rated to a second-class coastal defense ship in 1912 after the two 20,000-ton Satsuma-class and two 21,000-ton Kawachi-class dreadnoughts were completed under the 1907 Warship Supplement Program.

The U.S. Navy, keeping tabs on the Emperors’ increasingly suspect fleet from 1905 onward, dutifully photographed every Japanese warship when encountered in the region. Cataloged by the Office of Naval Intelligence, this left a ton of photos in the NHHC’s files.

Iwami. Starboard beam view taken between 1907 and 1914. Received in archives from ONI, 1935. NH 45832

Iwami photographed in a Japanese port, probably shortly before 1914. The battleship Settsu (1911-1947) is partly visible in left background. Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1987. NH 101762

Another War

When the Great War began, Japan, an ally of Britain, jumped at the chance to gobble up German colonies in the Pacific. Iwami helped in this task, joining in the reduction and capture of the Kaiser’s treaty port in China.

Added to the VADM Kato Sadakichi’s Second Fleet, from September to November 1914, Iwami was exclusively engaged in bombardment of the artillery batteries in the Tsingtao (Qingdao) area, adding her 12- and 8-inch shells to the more than 43,000 fired into the German positions during the siege. As Sadakichi’s force was made up primarily of cruisers (Tokiwa, Tone, Chitose, Akashi, Niitaka, Otoha, Kasagi, and Yakumo) and destroyers, Iwami was an important asset.

British Major-General Nathaniel Barnardiston next to a wrecked gun at Fort C, Tsingtao, November 1914. Barnardiston commanded the 1,500 British troops (2nd Battalion The South Wales Borderers and a detachment of the 36th Sikhs) sent to assist the 20,000 Japanese soldiers under General Kamio Mitsuomi in capturing Germany’s naval base at Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China. The port fell to the Allies on 7 November 1914. NAM. 1969-06-31-53

Allied troops inside one of Tsingtao’s forts, November 1914. The German naval base of Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China was captured by the Allies on 7 November 1914 following a two-month siege. Around 4,700 Germans were captured and sent to Japan for internment. NAM. 1992-08-139-21

Battleship Iwami, December 26 1915, Kure Arsenal

Spending the rest of the war on duty in Japanese home waters, Iwami was tapped for an ironic mission on 9 January 1918 when she received orders to leave Kure as part of the 5th Squadron, with the battleship Ashai under RADM Kato Kanji, bound for Vladivostok, where the newly-formed Bolshevik government was in charge.

Her marines and armed naval infantry spearheaded the seizure of the port on 6 April, and Iwami would remain in Russian waters for most of the next four years until the final Japanese withdrawal.

Japanese marines in a parade of Allied forces in Vladivostok before French and American sailors, 1918

Vladivostok, circa 1918-1919, during the Russian Intervention Operations. Ships in harbor include Suffolk (British cruiser, 1903); Iwami (Japanese Battleship, 1902); and Ashai (Japanese Battleship, 1902); NH 50290

Iwami Saihaku Incident 1918, with American officers aboard Iwami. National Diet Image 966644_0019

Battleship IJN Iwami anchored in Vladivostok, winter of 1921 22

With the Japanese evacuation from Russia, Iwami was removed from the fleet list in September 1922.

The following May, she was ordered disarmed and prepped, along with the old battleships Aki and Satsuma, the unfinished Tosa, and the Hizen (former Russian battleship Retvizan, salvaged from Port Arthur) for use as target ships in line with the naval limits of the Washington Conference of 1921–22.

Former Russian battleship Orel as Iwami floating target with a Tikuma-class light cruiser

In July 1924, the ships were used for the Japanese equivalent of Billy Mitchell’s Virginia Capes experiment in airpower, subjected to bomb runs from aircraft from the carrier Hosho, Navy H-450 and F-5 flying boats, and land-based Army T2 bombers. Heavily damaged over two days, Iwami slipped under the waves near Jogashima on 9 July.

Epilogue

Iwami’s armament outlived her, with her Armstrong guns emplaced in the coastal defenses around Tokyo Bay and on Iki Island in the Strait of Tsushima (what irony).

One of her Russian 12-inch guns was installed vertically in the schoolyard of Iwataki Elementary School in Yosano, Kyoto, in 1927, where it remains, surrounded by inert shells.

The statue of Umashimachi carried by Iwami from 1905 through 1922 was returned to the Mononobe Shrine in Oda City, where it remains today.

bronze statue of Umashide no Mikoto Mononobe Shrine Oda City. Photo by Professor Jun Kuno.

In Japanese service, her skippers included several officers who went on to lead the fleet in the 1920s and 30s, including Admiral Baron Sadakichi Kato, and vice admirals Kumazo Shirane, Ishibashi Hajime, and Yoshita Masaki. Kato had an outsized influence on Japanese naval thinking, advocating a “big-ship, big-gun doctrine” that ultimately led to the construction of the super battleships of the Yamato class.

As for Orel’s Russian crew that rode her into captivity, Capt. Shvede, the XO who was in command when she surrendered, was court-martialled when he returned to Russia in 1906. Acquitted as he was following RADM Nebogatov’s orders, he never did command another ship at sea, although he did continue in shoreside service until 1917. He passed in 1933.

The revolutionary Novikov-Priboy would become a noted writer under Soviet rule– after penning scathing essays on the loss of his ship and the Russian fleet at Tsushima, which sent him into exile in Western Europe until 1913. Serving on hospital trains along the Eastern Front during the Great War, his fame grew under Stalin with the publication of the rather spicy novel “Tsushima,” which saw seven printings. During WWII, he wrote numerous patriotic articles about the Red Banner fleet, having found his patriotism. He passed in 1944, aged 67.

The good LT Larionov, who saved Orel’s logs, recovered from his wounds while in Japanese custody, then returned home and served on the Naval Staff. Commanding the minelayer Neva during the Great War, he fell in with the Reds post-Revolution, then worked as a historian in the Central Naval Museum in Leningrad, compiling the official history of Tsushima and Orel. His shoulder straps that he wore in the battle are on display in the Peter the Great Naval History Museum.

Larionov died during the siege of Leningrad in WWII, aged 59, but his shoulder straps and compiled history of the Russo-Japanese War endure.

LT Slavinsky, who gave his eye to the service, returned to naval service and by early 1918 was a captain in the Volga-Caspian Flotilla. Post-war, he was tossed into a Red prison for three years. Released in 1923, he worked as an engineer in Soviet shipyard concerns until 1930, when he was arrested on charges of “espionage” during the Gulag Archipelago phase of Soviet history. Sentenced to 10 years at hard labor, he was released in 1940 and died in exile in remote Syktyvkar, some 500 miles north of Moscow.

Since 1905, the Russians have recycled the name Orel several times. This included an auxiliary cruiser in the Siberian Flotilla during the Great War and being attached to at least two CVN projects (Project 1153 and 1160) in the late 1960s – early 1970s that never left the drawing board.

Since 1993, a Project 949A Antey-class (NATO “Oscar II”) SSBN, (K-266) has carried the name Orel as part of the 11th Submarine Division of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy.

Orel, Murmansk, April 2017

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

***

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1904-05 Imperial Japanese Army infantry uniforms

Posted on March 12, 2024 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Hattori Han has an in-depth impression of the Imperial Japanese Army infantry during the 1904-05 war with the Tsar in Manchuria, a conflict now some 120 years in the rearview. He includes the blue field training uniform, white summer dress, and winter sentry and front-line service with wartime theatre modifications.

Like an Osprey book come to life. Really well done.

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Jan. 11, 2024: Like a Bad Penny

Posted on January 11, 2024 by laststandonzombieisland 3 comments

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) Jan. 11, 2024: Like a Bad Penny

Above we see the modified Russian Sokol (Falcon) class destroyer Reshitel‘nyi (also seen in the west transliterated as Rieshitelni, Ryeshitelni, or Reshitelnyy, and often confused with sister Rastoropny) and her crew in Port Arthur in 1904.

She had…an odd career.

The Sokol class

Basically the default class of Russian torpedo boat destroyers in the 1900s, the Sokols (sometimes referred to as the Krechet class as the second ship incorporated several minor changes) were a Yarrow design and were one of the world’s fastest such ships when they took to the water, with the lead ship hitting 30.2 knots at 4,500hp on trials– although with the more typical 3,800 hp output they were rated at 29 knots, which was still plenty fast for the era.

An artist’s impression of Sokol

Small and sleek, they were not much larger than torpedo boats, running about 190 feet overall with just a narrow 18.5-foot beam. They could float in just seven feet of water, making them ideal for littoral operations. Displacing around 240 tons, they used 2 VTE steam engines fed by 4 Yarrow boilers and were good for about 600 miles on a maximum 58-ton coal load when chugging along at 15 knots.

Sokol before delivery in 1895 while still in the Glasgow area on trials with her recently arrived Russian crew, but no armament. Via Cassiers Magazine circa 1897

Destroyer Сокол ‘Sokol’ during her travels from Great Britain to St. Petersburg in 1895, after a heavy green paint was applied and her armament installed.

Owl, later Ryanyy, on trials in the Gulf of Finland in May 1901. She would serve in the Baltic Fleet her entire career, survive the Great War, and was captured in Helsingfors by Finnish White Guards in 1918, later becoming S1, the first Finnish destroyer although she was largely just used for training along with four of her sisters. She was the last of the class afloat, only discarded in 1939.

Sokol class destroyer Prytkiy (Quick) formerly Kretchet

Their main armament was two Russian-pattern 15-inch Lessner-type torpedo tubes on aft turnstiles with six Whitehead torpedoes (two loaded, four in the bow cockpit with their warheads in the magazines) while her guns were French: a single 3″/48 Canet gun with 180 shells, and three 47mm 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns with a supply of 800 rounds. They could also carry as many as 18 mines in a pinch.

Sokol class destroyer. Note her large Canet gun forward, three smaller Hotchkiss guns spread out stern and amidships, and her two aft torpedo tubes. Observe the rail track running down the starboard side of the deck. This allowed reload torpedoes to be moved from the bow cockpit to the tubes and could also double as parking for mines, which could be deployed over the side

The crew was about 50 officers and men.

In all, 27 hulls of the Sokol/Krechet class were constructed between November 1894 when the class leader was laid down at Yarrow in Glasgow and the final, Statnyy, laid down by the Nevskiy works in St. Petersburg, was completed in July 1904. In between, two other yards– that of Wm. Crichton’s works in Finland and St. Petersburg and the Izhora Admiralty Works at Kolpino– got in on the contracts. Following Sokol’s lead, they were initially all issued bird names, but in 1902 this was changed to a more dynamic naming convention after attributes (Obedient, Strong, Zealous, et.al.)

Meet Our Tin Can

Laid down at the Nevskiy Works as Kondor in 1900, just after the Tsar’s government had wrestled a 25-year lease on the Chinese harbor at Port Arthur along with a concession to extend the Russian-run Chinese Eastern Railway to the port, the 12th Sokol was also the first of a series of 12 destroyers that would be shipped, incomplete, in sections some 7,000 miles east by rail and boat to be completed at the growing naval base on the Liaotung Peninsula.

These 12 were very slightly longer (200 feet oal vs the 190 feet of the standard Sokol) and heavier (300 tons full load vs 240) with a beam a few inches wider and a draft a few inches deeper. This was to accommodate eight smaller but more efficient Yarrow boilers and bunkers to carry as much as 80 tons of coal, giving them an endurance of 750 miles at 15 knots, something thought beneficial for the Pacific.

At that, Kondor, which had been renamed while incomplete, first to Baklan (Cormorant) and then to Reshitel‘nyi (Resolute) under the new naming convention for the type, took to the water of the Pacific and was commissioned on 14 July 1903.

Russian destroyer Reshitel‘nyi. One of the very few images of her

Of the 12 stretched Sokols sent to Port Arthur in such a manner, all managed to be completed although the final three– Strashnyy, Stroynyy, and Statnyy— were done in the summer of 1904 while the port was under Japanese blockade, so the shakedown period was…difficult.

War!

As covered above, Reshitel‘nyi was the oldest of the dozen modified Sokol class destroyers at Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War.

Her first skipper, the noted polar explorer LT Alexander Alekseevich Korniliev, died of pneumonia and severe concussion received in his ship’s first battle with the Japanese fleet in the frigid waters, one that saw the sister destroyer Steregushchiy sent to the bottom while on a scouting mission that bumped into a superior force.

Japanese destroyer IJN Sazanami attempting to tow a sinking Steregushchiy, lost in action against two Japanese cruisers, while Reshitel‘nyi managed to escape. In the fight, Reshitel‘nyi lost one killed and 16 injured– a third of her crew. William Lionel Wylie painting.

Reshitel‘nyi’s second skipper was Capt. (2nd Rate) Fyodor Emilievich Bosse, who had been in command of the two-ship task group when Steregushchiy was lost and was ordered to take over for the ailing LT Korniliev. Bosse, who was also wounded in the engagement, surrendered his command in March 1904 and was invalided back to European Russia (while the railroad was still connected) for recovery– saving him from the disaster that would befall the Tsar’s Pacific Squadron.

Bosse, who commanded the ill-fated task group that left Steregushchiy sunk, Reshitel‘nyi damaged, and himself wounded bad enough to be sent home. He would retire as a rear admiral in 1916 after 40 years of service, survive the Revolution and Civil War, and then go on to be an advisor to the Peruvian Navy during the 1932-1933 Peruvian-Colombian War. He is buried in Lima.

With her third skipper in less than a year, LT Platon Platonovich Travlinsky, the scratch-and-dent Reshitel‘nyi was one of the Russian destroyers on patrol just outside of Port Arthur that spoiled the second Japanese attempt to scuttle four blockships at the entrance, torpedoing them well short of the outer harbor, too far out to fill their intended role.

Russian accounts credit the destroyer Silnyii with hitting two of the blockships while Reshitel‘nyi torpedoed a third.

Second attempt to block Port Arthur, 27 March 1904 William Lionel Wylie RMG PV0976

In July, out of torpedoes, Reshitel‘nyi conducted two successful mine laying operations near the harbor’s approaches.

Escape to China

Russian RADM Wilgelm Vitgeft, the third head of the Russian Squadron at Port Arthur since the war started (the first was sacked and the second killed when his flagship was sunk), was ordered against his better judgment to break out of the besieged port in early August 1904 and form up with a group of armored cruisers that made up the Vladivostok squadron, turning the tables on the Japanese blockade force under Admiral Togo.

In a poor state and with repair facilities in Port Arthur lacking, Reshitel‘nyi was unlikely to be able to break out for Vladivostok and would have to remain in the port to be destroyed or scuttled by her crew should the siege not be lifted.

On the morning of 10 August, Vitgeft took everything he thought that could make it– the battleships Tsesarevich, Retvizan, Pobeda, Peresvet, Sevastopol, and Poltava, the protected cruisers Askold, Diana, Novik and Pallada, and 14 destroyers– out to sea. A few hours later, most of them limped back after being repulsed by Togo. Vitgeft and his staff were killed by a 12-inch salvo from the Japanese battleship Asahi that cleared the bridge of his flagship, Tsesarevich, which, heavily damaged, made for exile in the German treaty port of Tsingtao along with three German-made destroyers.

That afternoon came orders for Reshitel‘nyi to limp out under the cover of darkness to the nearest neutral port with a Russian consulate, Chefoo (now Yantai), some 100 miles directly across the Bohai Strait from Port Arthur on the Shandong Peninsula. There, she would bring vital dispatches for the consul to send on to the higher authorities, among them the details of Vitgeft’s defeat.

But first, let us paint you a picture of Chefoo during the Russo-Japanese War.

It was from Chefoo that the flotsam and jetsam of the combat at Port Arthur washed up. As early as February 1904, shipwrecked Japanese sailors rowed into the harbor in the lifeboats. This was followed by successive waves of Russian refugees and blockade runners of all stripes smuggling contraband across to the besieged garrison via sampan and coaster. Meanwhile, foreign correspondents of all stripes set up shop in Chefoo to turn second and third-hand tittle-tattle into news stories for the hungry masses back home. For example, many of the columns on the war appearing in the New York Times in 1904 were filed from Chefoo.

The indifferent Chinese Qing dynasty’s government at Chefoo was represented by one Admiral Sah aboard the fine German-built protected cruiser Hai Yung (2680 tons, 3×5.9 inch, 8x 4.1 inch, 3 tt), resting at anchor under the protection of a battery of Krupp-made coastal artillery that controlled the harbor.

Ashore was a division of the Qing New Army’s infantry and brigade of cavalry, both of which had Japanese instructors, so there is that.

Western warships also often could be found in the harbor, with the American cruiser USS Cincinnati sharing space that summer with German VADM Curt von Prittwitz’s visiting East Asiatic Squadron, with the old man aboard his flagship, the cruiser Furst Bismarck.

Now back to the story of our little destroyer’s breakout.

Moving out of Port Arthur on the dark night of 10 August, Reshitel‘nyi was able to make 18 knots and miraculously threaded her way through holes in the Japanese screen, arriving at Chefoo at 0605 on the morning of 11 August.

Reshitel‘nyi (spelled “Rieshitelni” on the record), was photographed at Chefoo, China, on 11 August 1904, possibly by U.S. Navy personnel or the American consul. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil, 1982. NH 94358

Her fourth skipper, the eager LT Mikhail Sergeevich Roshchakovsky (formerly of the daring little minelayer Avos who had crept within yards of Japanese warships to lay mines outside of Port Arthur), had a plan of his own which included patching his little warship up enough to be able to sortie south to the only allied port, Saigon in French Indochina, where he could presumably join Admiral Rozhestvensky’s Russian Baltic Fleet (dubbed the Second Pacific Squadron) for their final voyage.

Floating under the radar, so to speak, in the Chinese port without surrendering to internment wasn’t out of the question. At the same time, the damaged Russian light cruiser Askold and the destroyer Grosovoi had taken refuge in the port Wusong on the Yangzi and remained there, fully armed, until they voluntarily accepted internment the next month.

Service aboard shrapnel-riddled Askold in Shanghai

However, even in good repair, the likelihood that Reshitel‘nyi would be able to cover the 1,085 sea miles from Chefoo to Saigon, when her maximum range at 15 knots was only about 750 miles when packed with coal, avoiding prowling Japanese warships along the way, was slim.

Still, she would eventually link up with Rozhestvensky but in a quite different way than what Roshchakovsky had in mind.

Unluckily for Roshchakovsky’s plan, Admiral Sah, sending over officers from his cruiser, ordered the Russian destroyer disarmed within 24 hours or he would eject them from the port. Taking a vote from his crew, who elected to tap out rather than roll the dice at sea with moody engines, Roshchakovsky dutifully handed over the breechblocks from his deck guns, barred his torpedo tubes, and surrendered his small arms locker (13 rifles and two revolvers), in addition to disabling his engines and supplying the Chinese with a list of names of his crew. The Russians signed a pledge not to participate in further hostilities.

Roshchakovsky requested his ship be moved from the outer mole closer to shore where the guns of the cruiser Hai Yung and the Chinese coastal battery could protect it. Just in case, he ordered three small charges placed on the bulkheads in the magazines belowdecks, ready to scuttle if needed.

Reshitel‘nyi was out of the war.

Except she wasn’t.

Not wanting to let a juicy prize slip away, the Japanese destroyers Asashio and Kasumi entered the port shortly after Reshitel‘nyi was disarmed but before she could be moved to the inner harbor and dropped anchor in a position that cornered the Russian tin can. Refusing Admiral Sah’s signals to disarm and be interned or leave immediately, they replied that they would leave the next morning

Putting an armed prize party aboard the disarmed Reshitel‘nyi at 0330 on 11 August from two whale boats, Roshchakovsky confronted the Japanese officer in charge. With his hand on a sheathed sword, the Japanese lieutenant offered two options: immediately go to sea and engage in battle, even if he had to be towed, or surrender. Roshchakovsky selected a third option, and grabbed the Japanese officer, forcing him overboard and following him over the side into the harbor. A volley of fire from the Japanese blue jackets wounded the Russian with a bullet in his thigh.

In the ensuing melee, the Reshitel‘nyi’s crew, which more than outnumbered the two boats of Japanese, armed themselves with wrenches, fire axes, and coal shovels and fought it out, that is, until someone triggered the charges in the magazine, which were lackluster in performance.

Damaged but not sinking, the battle could end only one way, with the Japanese eventually taking over the Russian destroyer. Meanwhile, the waterlogged and bleeding Roshchakovsky and his 55 crew– with two men missing and several wounded– withdrew and made for shore. The Japanese suffered as well, losing at least two of their own.

Dawn came with the Japanese towing the captured Reshitel‘nyi out of the harbor and the Russians proceeding to their consulate, where most would spend the rest of the war.

The body of one of Reshitel‘nyi’s missing was recovered and buried ashore with full military honors, carried by her crewmates and escorted by an armed honor guard provided by Admiral Sah.

The crew of the Reshitel‘nyi in the courtyard of the Russian consulate in Chefoo grave of sailor Volovich. Roshchakovsky is the bearded officer in the center.

The fisticuffs became worldwide news and were interpreted by newspaper artists around the globe.

The crew was decorated, with Roshchakovsky both the Order of St. Stanislaus, 2nd class with swords, and the Order of St. Vladimir, IV degree with swords and bow. His men received the Order of St. Anne.

They were Russian heroes in a war with few of those and became legends.

The Russians in late 1904 lodged a “Seven Points” letter with the Great Powers protesting China’s Japanese-leaning neutrality including the use by Japan of the Chinese Miano islands as a naval base, the transport of Japanese war material on the Shanhai-Newchwang railway, China’s Hongkew ironworks accepting Japanese military contracts, Chinese soldiers being enlisted in the Japanese Army, the use of Japanese officers in training the Chinese army, Japan paying Manchurian Hunhutses bandits as irregulars, and, last but not least, the Reshitel‘nyi incident in Chefoo.

Illustration of a “shameless geisha” holding Reshitel‘nyi after Japan captured the destroyer in a neutral port, from the Russian magazine Budil’nik. No. 32, 1904.

Of course, the Japanese countered with an equally lengthy list of instances where Russia had abused Chinese good graces during the conflict including the use of Chinese Army uniforms captured during the Boxer rebellion by scouting units in Manchuria and the entire concept of the East Chinese Railroad.

Under the Rising Sun

It turned out that, as Reshitel‘nyi was built to a British Yarrow design and carried common boilers and engines, the British-allied Japanese were able to repair her rapidly.

The breechblocks to her guns were replaced, and her 15-inch torpedo tubes were swapped out for larger 18-inch tubes. The refurbishment took six months, and she entered Japanese service on 17 January 1905 as the destroyer Akatsuki, taking that moniker to obscure the fact that the Japanese had lost a tin can of the same name to a mine the previous May.

Japanese Navy destroyer Akatsuki (ex-Russian Reshitelnyi) underway to participate in the Battle of the Sea of Japan

Placed under the command of Capt. Masasaku Harada, she was with Togo’s fleet as part of his 1st Destroyer Division when it met Admiral Rozhestvensky’s Second Pacific Squadron at Tsushima in May 1905.

Ironically, her last Russian skipper, LT Roshchakovsky, was there as well, sailing on the old Admiral Ushakov-class coastal battleship Admiral Seniavin as the commander of the ship’s bow 10-inch turret. Roshchakovsky had quickly left Chefoo for Russia the previous August and, after meeting with the Tsar personally to brief him of the loss of Reshitel‘nyi, had asked for an appointment with Rozhestvensky’s squadron, joining Seniavin in October only days before the tub left Russia on her 18,000 trip that ended at Tsushima.

While Roshchakovsky and Harada did not personally engage in the swirling fleet action, the battle did not go well for either. Admiral Seniavin was surrendered on the morning of the 28th and became a Japanese prize– with Roshchakovsky becoming a guest of the emperor for the rest of the war. Meanwhile, Akatsuki/Reshitel‘nyi got so turned around in the dark due to heavy seas and harsh weather that she caused Japanese TB No. 69 to capsize and sink– one of Togo’s few losses in the battle.

Following the end of hostilities, Akatsuki/Reshitel‘nyi/Kondor/Baklan picked up her fifth name, Yamahiko (also seen as Yamabiko), and the loss of the original Akatsuki, a war secret, was finally announced. She would be joined in Japanese service by her sister Sokol class sister Silnyy, which had been scuttled at Port Arthur and rebuilt and renamed Fuzuki/Fumizuki.

Also captured by the Japanese were sisters Serdityy, Smelyy, Skoryy, and Statnyy, who were not returned to service. Meanwhile, sisters Storozhevoy, Steregushchiy, Razyashchiy, Rastoropnyy, Strashnyy, and Stroyny had been lost during the conflict.

Yamahiko in the 1914 Janes, the last of her class in Japanese service. Silnyy/Fuzuki had already been hulked in 1913.

Yamahiko in the 1915 Brassey’s

In 1917, our little destroyer was disarmed and removed from Japanese naval service. Working as the coaster Yamahiko Maru for some time, she was scrapped in 1919.

Epilogue

Of the 15 Sokols left in Russian service after 1905, two (Berkut and Prytkiy) were disposed of interwar while the rest were eventually rerated as dispatch vessels or torpedo boats, in the latter tasking picking up larger 450mm tubes. They would endure in the Baltic and Black Sea fleets for another decade, with some transferred to the inland Astrakhan-Caspian Sea flotilla via the Volga.

Baltic Fleet Sokol class destroyers 1912, Ryanyy in front

The Black Sea Sokols, in the 1914 Janes.

The final members retained in Soviet service– Prochnyy, Porazhayushchiy, Retivyy, Strogiy, and Svirepyy— would all be gone by the late 1920s.

The Sokol class destroyer Porazhayushchiy, which served in the Baltic fleet from commissioning until 1918, her crew helped to recover the vital cipher book from the grounded German cruiser Magdeburg in 1914. Porazhayushchiy was later transferred to the Caspian where she retired in 1925.

Following the collapse of Imperial Russia, five of the Sokols in the Baltic fleet– Korshun, Prozorlivyy, Rezvyy, Ryanyy, and Podvizhnyy— were captured by the newly independent Finns at Helsingfors (Helsinki) and Hango in 1918. They would be used by the nascent Finnish Navy as S1-S5 and disposed of throughout the 1930s.

S3 (Finnish destroyer) in commission from 1898 to 1921. Photographed about 1920. This ship was the former Russian Sokol-class Prozorlivyy,

The Finnish S-class boats in the 1931 ed of Janes, which at the time still in numbered two former Russian Sokols picked up in 1918.

Roshchakovsky

Now, we touch on the fate of the unsinkable LT Roshchakovsky.

Repatriated from Japan in January 1906 and still nursing wounds from Tsushima and Chefoo, he was seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for use as a naval attaché in Greece and Germany until he was able to return to duty with the Baltic Fleet in 1908. He would go on to spend the rest of his career with the Tsarist Navy in minelaying/minesweeping work and in small escorts, including command of the Ohotnik-class mine cruiser (minnykh kreyserov) Pogranichnik in the Great War. By 1916, he was in command of the defenses to Kola Bay and Arkhangelsk, where war material was stacked up.

When the Revolution came, Roshchakovsky was cashiered and denied even a pension despite his 23 years of service. He sat out the Civil War in Norway without taking sides– notably writing White Russian General Denikin and urging him to throw in the towel for the sake of the country-– but would spend the rest of his life filing requests with the Soviets to return to naval service, all of which were officially denied. A trained engineer who had won the Admiral Nakhimov Prize while a cadet in 1896, while in Norway Roshchakovsky worked for a shipbuilding company.

Returning to the Motherland in 1925, he served as head of the foreign department under the board of НиГРЭС, the new Nizhny Novgorod powerplant, until 1928, when he was arrested for his past ties to the old regime and exiled to Siberia for three years.

In 1937, at age 61, Stalin’s NKVD picked him up again and gave him five years in a labor camp due to being a “socially dangerous element.”

Capt. 1st Rank Mikhail Sergeevich Roshchakovsky, three-time winner of the St. Anne in addition to the St. Stanislaus and St. Vladimir, perished in the gulag sometime in 1938, the date and place lost to the butcher.

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

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Warship Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023: The Grounded Shrine

Posted on January 11, 2023 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023: The Grounded Shrine

Colorized period photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/, original in Naval Historical Command archives, NH 58997

Above we see the lead ship of her class of Italian-made armored cruisers, HIJMS Kasuga, making a temporary stay in Tsukushi on its way from Yokosuka to Kure, circa 1904 (Meiji 37). Sourced from a cash-strapped Latin American navy while still under construction and named in honor of a famous Shinto shrine in Nara, this cruiser would endure until the final days of the Empire.

Spaghetti cruisers

Built around the turn of the Century by Gio. Ansaldo & C shipbuilders, Genoa, Italy, as an updated version of the Giuseppe Garibaldi armored cruiser class, the ship that would become Kasuga was designed by Italian naval architect Edoardo Masdea as a vessel only smaller than a 1st-rate (pre-dreadnought) battleship of the era, yet larger and stronger than most cruisers that could oppose it.

The Garibaldi class was innovative (for 1894,) with a 344-foot long/7,200-ton hull capable of making 20 knots and sustaining a range of more than 7,000 nm at 12 when stuffed with enough coal. Although made in Italy, she was almost all-British from her Armstrong batteries to her Bellville boilers, Whitehead torpedoes, and Harvey armor.

Armored with a belt that ran up to 5.9-inches thick, Garibaldi could take hits from faster cruisers and gunboats while being able to dish out punishment from a pair of Elswick (Armstrong) 10-inch guns that no ship smaller than her could absorb. Capable of outrunning larger ships, she also had a quartet of casemate-mounted torpedo tubes and extensive rapid-fire secondary batteries to make life hard on the enemy’s small ships and merchantmen.

These cruisers were designed for power projection on a budget and the Argentine Navy, facing a quiet arms race between Brazil and Chile on each side, needed modern ships. They, therefore, scooped up not only the Garibaldi (commissioned in 1895) but also the follow-on sister ships General Belgrano and General San Martín (built by Orlando of Livorno in 1896) and Genoa-made Pueyrredón (1898) to make a quartet of powerful cruisers. These ships, coupled with a pair of battleships ordered later in the U.S., helped make the Argentine navy for about two decades the eighth most powerful in the world (after the big five European powers, Japan, and the United States), and the largest in Latin America.

The design was well-liked, with Spain moving to buy two (but only taking delivery of one in the end, the ill-fated Cristóbal Colón, which was sunk at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish American War) and Italy electing to purchase five further examples of the type.

Why all the talk about Argentina and Italy?

Well, because Kasuga and her sistership Nisshin were originally ordered by the Italians in 1900 as Roca (#129) and Mitra (Yard #130), respectively, but then sold while still on the ways to Argentina to further flesh out the fleet of that South American country’s naval forces, who dutifully renamed them, respectively, Rivadavia and Mariano Moreno.

At some 8,500 tons (full), these final Garibaldis were 364 feet long overall and were roughly the same speed, and carried the same armor plan (with Terni plate) as their predecessors.

However, they differed in armament, with Mitra/Rivadavia/Kasuga carrying a single 10-inch EOC gun forward and twin 8″/45s aft, while Roca/Moreno/Nisshin carried the twin 8-inchers both forward and aft.

Stern 8″/45 (20.3 cm) turret on armored cruiser Nisshin on 24 October 1908. Ship’s officers with USN officers from USS Missouri (B-11) during “Great White Fleet” around the world cruise. Note the landing guns on the upper platform. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 82511.

Of note, the same 8-inch EOC guns were also used on other British-built Japanese armored cruisers (Adzuma, Asama, Iwate, Izumo, Tokiwa, and Yakumo) so they weren’t too out of place when Japan took delivery of these ships in 1904 instead of Argentina.

Armstrong 1904 model 20.3 cm 8 inch 45 as installed on Japanese cruisers, including Kasuga

Both Mitra/Rivadavia/Kasuga and Roca/Moreno/Nisshin were launched, fitted out, and ran builders’ trials in Italy under the Argentine flag.

Armada Argentina crucero acorazado ARA Moreno, at 1903 launch. Note Italian and Argentine flags. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Nisshin Running trials under the Argentine flag, probably in late 1903, just before her purchase by the Japanese NH 58664

Running trials under the Argentine flag, probably in late 1903, just before her purchase by the Japanese. The photo is credited to her builder Ansaldo. NH 58665

From the same publication as the photo of Nissen, above, NH 58998

Kasuga (Japanese Armored Cruiser, 1902-1945) Photographed at Genoa, Italy, early in 1904 soon after completion by Ansaldo’s yard there. The lighter alongside the ship carries a warning banner reading “Munizioni”– munitions. Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1987. NH 101929

With the Japanese and Imperial Russia circling each other tensely in late 1903, and Argentina not really wanting to take final delivery of these new cruisers, Buenos Aries shopped them to the Tsar’s kopeck-pinching Admiralty only to be rebuffed over the sticker shock, leaving Tokyo to pick them up for £760,000 each– considered a high price at the time but a bargain that the Russians would likely later regret. The Argentines would later reuse the briefly-issued Moreno and Rivadavia names for their matching pair of Massachusetts-built battleships in 1911.

With a scratch British/Italian contract delivery crew, Kasuga and Nisshin set sail immediately for the Far East and were already outbound of Singapore by the time the balloon finally went up between the Russians and Japanese in February 1904.

Kasuga in Italian waters, Source l’Illustration dated 16 January 1904

Japanese Crews embarking at Genoa Italy on Kasuga, Source l’Illustration dated 16 January 1904

The sisters were soon in the gun line off Russian-held Port Arthur, lending their fine British-made batteries to reducing that fortress, and took part in both the ineffective Battle of the Yellow Sea in August 1904 (where Nisshin was lightly damaged) and the much more epic Battle of Tsushima in May 1905.

Carrying the flag of VADM Baron Misu Sotarō, Nisshin fired something on the order of 180 heavy shells during Tsushima, exchanging heavy damage with the 15,000-ton Russian battleship Oslyabya and others– taking several 12-inch hits to show for it. The Japanese cruiser had three of her four 8-inch guns sliced off and a number of her crew, including a young Ensign Isoroku Yamamoto, wounded. The future commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II had the index and middle fingers on his left hand shorn off by a splinter, earning him the wardrobe nickname “80 sen” as a manicure cost 10 sen per digit at the time.

The forward gun turret and superstructure of the Japanese armored cruiser Nisshin following the Battle of Tsushima, showing 8-inch guns severed by Russian 12-inch shells

Oslyabya, in turn, was ultimately lost in the course of the battle, taking the Russian Squadron’s second-in-command, Capt. Vladimir Ber, and half of her crew with her to the bottom of the Korea Strait.

Death of the battleship OSLYABYA in the Battle of Tsushima. (by Vasily Katrushenko)

As for Kasuga,, fifth in the line of battle, she would also engage Oslyabya, though not to the extent that her sister did, and would also land hits on the Russian battleships Imperator Nikolai I and Oryol. All told, Kasuga would fire 50 shells from her 10-inch forward mount and twice as many from her stern 8-inchers, in exchange for minor damage from three Russian shells.

Armoured Cruiser Kasuga pictured post the Battle of Tsushima at Sasebo in May 1905

For both Kasuga and Nisshin, Tsushima was their brightest moment under the Rising Sun.

Kasuga dressed for peacetime flagwaving. NH 58671

Oct.10,1908 : Armored-cruiser Kasuga at Yokosuka.Colorised period photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Greatly modified in 1914 with Japanese-made Kampon boilers replacing their Italian ones, along with a host of other improvements, Kasuga went on to serve as a destroyer squadron flagship in World War I looking out for German surface raiders and escorting Allied shipping between Australia and Singapore.

On 11 January 1918, some 105 years ago today, Kasuga ran aground in the Bangka Strait off Java in the Dutch East Indies. After much effort, she was eventually refloated in June, repaired, and returned to service. The event mirrored that of one of the Emperor’s other warships, the armored cruiser Asama that embarrassingly ran aground off the Pacific coast of Mexico in 1915 and took two years to free.

Kasuga later took part in the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War and would tour the U.S. on a world cruise in 1920, calling in Maine and New York.

Disarmed to comply with international naval treaties and largely relegated to training tasks, both Nisshin and Kasuga were put on the sidelines after the Great War, replaced by much better ships in the Japanese battle line.

Armoured Cruiser Kasuga in Japan in the early 1920s graduating cadets

Hulked, Nisshin was eventually disposed of as part of a sinkex in the Inland Sea in 1936, then raised by Shentian Maritime Industry Co., Ltd, patched up and sunk a second time in 1942 during WWII by the new super battleship Yamato, whose 18.1″/45cal Type 94 guns likely made quick work of her.

Kasuga, used as a floating barracks at Yokosuka, was sunk by U.S. carrier aircraft in July 1945 and then later raised and scrapped after the war.

Epilogue

Incidentally, the two Japanese Garibaldis outlasted their Italian sisters, all of which were disposed of by the 1930s. Their everlasting Argentine classmates, however, lingered on until as late as 1954 with the last of their kind, ARA Pueyrredon, ironically being towed to Japan for scrapping that year.

ARA Pueyrredon in Dublin in 1951. At this point this pre-SpanAm War vet was pushing her sixth decade at sea.

Of note, the British 8″/45s EOCs removed from Nisshin, Kasuga and the other Japanese 1900s armored cruisers in the 1920s and 30s were recycled and used as coastal artillery, including four at Tokyo Bay, four at Tarawa (Betio) and another four at Wake Island once it was captured in 1941.

Japanese Special Naval Landing Force troops mount a British-made, Vickers eight-inch naval cannon into its turret on Betio before the battle. This film was developed from a Japanese camera found in the ruins while the battle was still on. Via http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Tarawa/index.html

Destruction of one of the four Japanese eight-inch EOC guns on Betio caused by naval gunfire and airstrikes, 1943. Department of Defense photo (USMC) 63618

While the Japanese have not recycled the name of Kasuga, one of her 10-inch shells, an anchor, and other relics are preserved in and around Tokyo.

Meanwhile, a builder’s plate that took shrapnel at the Battle of the Yellow Sea is preserved in the Argentine naval museum.

For those interested, Combrig makes a 1/350 scale model of the class.

Specs:

Jane’s 1914 entry, listing the class as first-class cruisers

Displacement: 7,700 t (7,578 long tons) std, 8,500 full
Length: 366 ft 7 in (o/a), 357 wl
Beam: 61 ft 5 in
Draft: 24 ft 1 in, 25.5 max
Machinery: (1904)
13,500 ihp, 2 vertical triple-expansion steam engines, 8 Ansaldo marine boilers, 2 shafts
Speed: 20 knots at 14,000 shp, although in practice were limited to 18 at full load.
Range: 5,500 nmi at 10 knots on 1316 tons of coal, typically just 650 carried
Complement: 600 as built, 568 in Japanese service.
Armor: (Terni)
Belt: 2.8–5.9 in
Deck: 0.79–1.57 in
Barbette: 3.9–5.9 in
Conning tower: 5.9 in
Armament:
(1904)
2 twin 8″/45 EOC (classified as Type 41 guns by the Japanese)
14 single QF 6″/45 Armstrong “Z” guns
10 single QF 3″/40 12-pdr Armstrong “N” guns
6 single QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns
2 Maxim machine guns
2 landing howitzers
4 × 457 mm (18 in) torpedo tubes in casemates
(1930)
4 single QF 6″/45 Armstrong “Z” guns
4 single QF 3″/40 12-pdr Armstrong “N” guns
1 single 76/40 AAA

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022: Limping into Exile

Posted on October 26, 2022 by laststandonzombieisland 4 comments

Warship Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022: Limping into Exile

Original print with McCully report MSS.-AR branch. Naval History and Heritage Command Catalog #: NH 91178

Above we see Tsar Nicholas II’s once-mighty Russian Pacific fleet at anchor at Vladivostok, in September 1903. From left to right: the battleship Sevastopol, armored cruisers Gromoboi and Rossia, battleship Peresviet, protected cruiser Bogatyr, cruiser Boyarin, center; auxiliary cruiser Angara (three funnels, black hull); and battleships Poltava and Petropavlovsk. Of course, the following year would bring war with the Japanese Empire, and just about all the above would be swept away.

Tracing its origins to the old Okhotsk flotilla of 1731, the Tsarist Pacific fleet would reach its zenith in 1904 and, just a decade later, was a shadow of its former self.

Here is the tale of how the Tsar’s final Pacific flotilla ended its days, 100 years ago this week.

1914-17

When Russia entered the Great War in August 1914, the renamed Siberian Military Flotilla included the smallish protected cruisers Askold (Krupp-built, 5,900 tons, 12×6-inch guns) and Zhemchug (3,100 tons, 8×4.7 inch), a mix of 22 old/small torpedo boat-sized destroyers, seven or eight early submarines, a couple of auxiliary cruisers (really just converted steamers), three minelayers, some random gunboats exemplified by the old Danish-built Mandzhur, and two new Taymyr-class icebreakers.

The flotilla was manned by some 6,000 officers and men, including shore establishments, magazines, and drydocks.

Russian protected cruiser Askold under repair in Toulon, Sept 1916

Russian Cruiser Zhemchug as part of the Siberian Flotilla

Russian Siberian Military Flotilla Ulysses Bay 1908 with the submarines Delfin, Kasatka, Skat, Nalim, Sheremetev, Osyotr, Kefal, Paltus, Bychok or Plotva, and destroyer Grozovoy

All-in-all, a respectable coastal defense force to protect its two key ports at Vladivostok and Petropavlovsk, both of which had a serious network of modern coastal artillery emplacements ashore. Further, this did not consider the 30 or so small shallow-draft gunboat flotillas on the Amur, Ussuri, and Sungari River systems coursing through the somewhat outlaw China and Korean border regions.

Its commander, since November 1913, was RADM Maximilian Fedorovich Schultz, one of the few Russian officers who came out of the 1904 War with a decent combat record as the skipper of the hard-fighting cruiser Gromoboi.

However, this force was soon whittled down as the war went on, with Zhemchug scandalously blasted away at her moorings at Penang by the German raider Emden in October and Askold sent into the Indian Ocean to search for Emden and then spending practically the rest of the war in the Mediterranean Sea.

Once the Ottoman Turks entered the war and closed off Russia’s Black Sea ports to British and French war material in late 1914, coupled with the destruction of the German East Asia Squadron under Admiral Maximilian von Spee leaving the Pacific largely safe, Russia’s far Northern ports at Archangel and Romanov-on-Murman (today’s Murmansk) would become strategically important to the War effort. This saw a lot of the Siberian Flotilla siphoned off to become part of the new Arctic Flotilla/Northern Fleet in the freezing White Sea under Rear Admiral Ogrimov.

Askold would eventually end up in Archangel, as would the six best torpedo boats from Vladivostok and the submarine Delfin— the latter sent across the Trans-Siberian railroad and then barged up the Dvina River, a trek of over 8,000 miles. The minelayer Ussuri, along with the shiny new icebreakers Taymyr and Vaygach, would likewise be sent to the White Sea in 1915, largely by the Northern Route.

The twin icebreakers Taymyr and Vaigach coaling from a freighter at Emma Harbor, 1913. Part of the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition under CDR (later ADM) Aleksandr Kolchak that helped chart the Northern Sea Route over Siberia and discovered what is now Severnaya Zemlya, they were assigned to the Pacific pre-war but would end up in the White Sea by 1915.

The Japanese, now Russian allies on paper at least, also retroceded (for a token fee) some wrecked old Tsarist warships captured during the 1904-05 War that they had rebuilt on a budget: the Petropavlovsk-class battleship Chesma (ex-Poltava), the battleship Peresvet (reclassified as an armored cruiser as she had been equipped with smaller caliber British Armstrong guns by the Japanese), the cruiser Varyag, and the auxiliary cruiser Angara.

Transferred by the Japanese at Vladivostok in March/April 1916, the first three were soon dispatched to the Med (where Peresvet was promptly sunk by a German mine off Port Said) within weeks and two would end up in Archangel by 1917.

Chesma photographed at Vladivostok in 1916, after being repatriated by Japan to Russia. This ship served as The Japanese Tango after being salvaged at Port Arthur after The Russo-Japanese War; previously she was The Russian Poltava. NH 94326

Chesma, foreground, and Varyag, background, photographed at Vladivostok after being retroceded by Japan in March 1916. NH 94355

Peresvet photographed at Vladivostok in 1916 after being retroceded by Japan to Russia. This ship was sunk at Port Arthur in 1904 and served the Japanese Navy as the Sagami from 1905 to March 1916. Peresvet was mined and sunk on 4 January 1917 near Port Said, Egypt. NH 94791

Staffing these three large ships significantly drained the flotilla of manpower, leaving several ships laid up afterward.

Angara, in poor material condition, never left Vladivostok and served as a barracks and depot ship there.

Pechenga, a Russian depot ship probably photographed at Vladivostok during World War I. This ship was built in 1898 in Scotland as Moskva for the Russian Volunteer Fleet Association; was renamed Angara in late 1903 for naval service and sunk at Port Arthur. She was raised by Japan and renamed Anegawa Maru then served as a transport until and ceded back to Russia in 1916. Scuttled in 1922, she was later raised and scrapped by the Soviets. NH 92087

Further transfers of the rest of its submarines to the Black and Baltic Sea via rail, and the paying off of three worn-out torpedo boats/destroyers (Besposhtchadny, Boiki, and Grozny) in 1916 would leave the Siberian Military Flotilla in 1917 without any battleships, submarines, or cruisers and precious few escorts. Its two most powerful ships being its auxiliary cruisers.

Orel (“Eagle”), a German F. Schichau-built fast passenger steamer with accommodations for 390 passengers built originally for the Russian Volunteer Fleet, was the Siberian Military Flotilla’s most fearsome warship after October 1914 and would remain so until she sailed away in January 1920. Mounting eight deck guns ranging from 47mm to 120mm along with a few machine guns and capable of maintaining 16 knots, she was classed as an auxiliary cruiser by the Russians. During the Great War, she looked for the German raider Emden, landed her naval infantry at Singapore to suppress a rebellion of Sepoys, and patroled from Hawaii to Bombay. She was sold after the Russian Civil War to an English shipping firm and, as the SS Silvia and later SS Haitian, would survive in merchant service until 1950. Image from Yu.N.Trifonov, A.E.Volkov’s “Marine collection” 2007/06.

Orel and her sisterships, the passenger steamers Poltava, Simbirsk, Pensa, and Rjasan, from the 1910 Engineering magazine

Revolution

By the time of the March Revolution that overthrew the Tsar in far-away Petrograd, the Siberian flotilla would number only about a dozen semi-active torpedo boats/destroyers, the auxiliary cruisers Lieutenant Dydymov and Orel, the 700-ton gunboat Adm. Zavoyko, the gunboat Mandzhur, and the 2,500-ton minelayer Mongugay.

On 29 November 1917, Adm. Zavoyko raised a red flag on her masts while in Golden Horn Bay, the first such vessel in the Pacific to do so, and the rest of the fleet went over to the Bolsheviks, becoming the Red Siberian Flotilla on 12 December 1917– with most ships’ officers and senior NCOs released from duty.

RADM Schultz, after a term in the brig guarded by red-arm banded sailors, was retired. He returned to his sister’s home near Luga, outside of Petrograd, and was later arrested in late September or early October 1919 and shot by the Bolsheviks, his body was never found.

Intervention and Civil War

Meanwhile, with stockpiles of allied war aid crowding the docks of Vladivostok, American (cruiser USS Brooklyn), British (cruiser HMS Suffolk) and Japanese (battleships Iwami and Asahi) warships were in the harbor by January 1918 and had sent marines ashore to protect their consulate.

Bundled up U.S. Marines landed from USS Brooklyn (CA-3) at Vladivostok, Siberia, in 1918-19. 111-SC-76186

This soon expanded to a mandate to support the withdrawal of the newly formed Czech Legion, recruited from Austrian POWs held in Russian camps, and whole divisions of ground troops came ashore over the summer with the Japanese eventually landing 72,000 troops under the command of Gen. Kikuzo Otani. By comparison, the smaller American Expeditionary Force, Siberia, of Maj. Gen. William S. Graves only amounted to about 8,000 soldiers. The latter was supported by a U. S. Navy task force under RADM William L. Rodgers. Similar forces were landed by the Canadians (4,400) and British (6,700, mostly Indian, troops).

American sailors equipped with Remington-made Mosin rifles and helmets in Vladivostok, Russia, 1918. 111-SC-50100

U.S. Soldiers in Vladivostok, Aug. 1918, a mission that would span four years

Russian Intervention, 1918-20. Hospital Car operated by the American Expeditionary Forces at Khabarovsk, north of Vladivostok. American Red Cross Collection. The war in Siberia was one of railways and ports. Photograph received November 11, 1919. National Archives.

With the change in Eastern Siberia’s political polarity in June 1918, the anti-Bolshevik White Russians under then-Admiral Kolchak, with the interventionists as muscle, took control of the Siberian Military Flotilla. The Japanese duly impounded the destroyers Tochnyy, Tvordyy, Smelyy, and Skoryy along with most of the gunboats of the Amur River flotillas, and never gave them back.

Russian destroyer Skoryy, seen at Port Arthur in 1903. The 258-ton Sokol-class destroyer was assembled at Port Arthur from a Nevsky-supplied kit and, escaping the fall of the fortress in 1905, was eventually taken over by the Japanese in June 1918 who kept her in operation for four years, scuttling the vessel in October 1922 along with the other destroyers the Japanese had taken up.

Bereft of lower ratings, who had either signed up with the Reds or deserted, the Flotilla was sidelined through most of the Russian Civil War. During this period, its leadership shifted between Rear Admirals Sergei Nikolaevich Timirev and Mikhail Andreevich Berens. Efforts to train new officers and crews from local recruits were begun but, as it would turn out, were short-lived.

Once Kolchak was betrayed and executed at the end of 1919 and it looked like the Reds were going to win, a great flight from Vladivostok led to the departure of a convoy led by Orel (with RADM Berens aboard), the transport Yakut, and a group auxiliary ships manned by midshipmen of the local Naval School and refugees from Vladivostok to Japanese-held Tsingtao in January 1920, with Orel proceeding ultimately to Sevastopol where they would join the White Russian forces there.

Two Siberian Flotilla units probably photographed off Vladivostok. Transport Yakut was a former British Steamship, purchased in 1892. A Nevski-built, Yarrow-Type Destroyer appears at left. NH 94289

In their wake, Berens (or the Japanese) had scuttled the destroyers Trevozhnyy, Inzhener-mekhanik Anastasov, and Leytenant Maleyev.

Destroyer Inzhener-mekhanik Anastasov in Vladivostok. She had been scuttled in 1920.

Their supply lines running short and the Japanese still in control of the region as far inland as the eastern shores of Lake Baikal, the Reds stopped just short of overrunning the maritime region and Vladivostok languished as the principal port of a rump state– the Far Eastern Republic– under the protectorship of the Allied interventionists and with the tacit agreement of Moscow.

This thing. The population, just 1.7 million-ish, half of it Chinese/Mongol, was sparse but the mineral riches were heavy

It should be noted that the FER kind of wanted to just break away from the whole Russia thing and go its own way, much like the Baltics, Caucuses, Ukraine, Finland, and Poland had done already. Their much-divided 400-member representative Constituent Assembly consisted of about a quarter Bolsheviks with sprinklings of every other political group in Russia including Left and Right Social Revolutionaries, Kadets (which had long ago grown scarce in Russia proper), Mensheviks, Socialists, outright Monarchists, and Anarchists. This produced a weak and divided buffer state between Soviet Russia and Imperial Japan and Moscow, fighting Poland in the West and against Wrangel’s White Russian forces in Ukraine at the time, had bigger fish to fry.

The thing is, Washington and London tired of their Russia expenditures once it became clear regime change wasn’t going to be a thing and, with the withdrawal of the British, the Czech Legion, and AEF-Siberia by April Fool’s Day 1920, it became an outright Japanese puppet, safe and snug behind a cordon sanitaire of the Emperor’s bayonets.

Enter RADM Georgy Karlovich Stark

The descendant of a Scottish family of the Clan Donnachaidh that moved to Russia back during the days of Peter the Great, Stark was a career naval officer born in 1878. Graduating from the naval cadet school in 1898, he was well-placed as his great uncle was Admiral Oskar Viktorovich Stark, the commander of the Russian Pacific Fleet at the beginning of the 1904 war. The younger Stark spent his career in destroyers, ultimately going on to command the 5th and 12th destroyer divisions against the Germans in the Baltic in 1916 and, after the March Revolution, was promoted to become the rear admiral in charge of the Baltic Fleet’s mine forces– the most effective unit of that fleet.

Cashiered once the Bolsheviks came into power, Stark made his way east and fell in with Kolchak by June 1918, ultimately leading an infantry division of all things in combat along the Trans-Siberian. Narrowly escaping the White collapse along the shores of Lake Baikal and crippled by typhus, he was in a Vladivostok convalescence bed when Berens pulled stumps with the flower of the Siberian Flotilla’s officer corps.

Under the squishy politics of the FER, the flotilla was rechristened the republic’s “People’s Revolutionary Fleet” but, following a pro-White coup under Gen. Mikhail Diterikhs and others in Vladivostok in May 1921, became the Siberian Military Flotilla once again– using the old St. Andrew’s naval flag– under the new Provisional Priamur Government, with a recovered Stark in command. Reforms and rebuilding efforts by Stark (who also pitched in with running the government) put some of the fleet’s destroyers and gunboats back in service and they were used to support a variety of amphibious landings along the coastline to fight Red partisans throughout the summer periods of 1921 and 1922.

The gunboat Adm. Zavoyko, away on a mission when the coup went down, rather than sail for Vladivostok and join the Whites, instead made for Shanghai. There, according to legend, she successfully fended off several plots from foreign actors, Whites, monarchists, and the like to take over the vessel.

Then, starting in June 1922, the Japanese began to slowly withdraw from the Priamur enclave with the final troops sailing away in early October. Diterikhs tried to go on the offensive near Khabarovsk to scare the Reds off, but they were driven back. On 9 October, the Reds occupied Spassk and began moving into South Primorye, then, by 19 October, were on the outskirts of Vladivostok.

Members of the Provisional Amur Government in Vladivostok, 1922. In the center are the brothers Spiridon (Chairman of the Government) and Nikolai Merkulov (Minister of Foreign Affairs), and to the right, in a bow-tied Tsarist admiral’s uniform, is RADM Georgy Stark, commander of the Siberian Flotilla.

This left Stark tasked with a maritime evacuation of the last die-hard White Russians, bereft of international support, using what remained of the flotilla. A genuine spit-and-bubble gum effort. Scuttling the already disarmed destroyers-turned-minesweepers Serdityy and Statnyy, as well as the Pechenga (old Angara) after stripping them of everything useful, he was able to scrape together a handful of vessels that could make the open ocean.

Serdityy, a Russian destroyer, photographed at Vladivostok in 1916. Note that the ship’s guns have been removed, probably for service as a minesweeper. This ship originally was ordered as Bekas but was renamed on 26 December 1899 (old style calendar). Note the floating dock in the left background. NH 92392

Stark’s force included the auxiliary cruiser Lieutenant Dydymov, the gunboats Mandzhur, Farvater, Strela, Strazh, and Porazhayushchiy; the minelayer Mongugai, the tug Baykal, dispatch boat Ayaks, and the freighters Diomed, Zapal, Patrokl, Svir, Uliss, Il’ya Muromets, Batareya, and Parizh. Joined by a dozen miscellaneous civilian vessels– including fishing trawlers and construction barges– under a tri-color Russian flag at Posyet Bay, Stark’s little fleet numbered 28 ships all told by 28 October, filled with over 10,000 refugees.

Korea and China

Sailing 370 miles for Genzan (Wonson) in what is now North Korea, they arrived on Halloween 1922 and remained there for three weeks as other White Russian vessels swelled Stark’s exile fleet to over 40 ships. Ordered to leave by the Japanese who were not anxious to support a Russian exile community in the Hermit Kingdom, Stark consolidated his ships, shedding the crippled vessels along the way (Dydymov was tragically lost in a storm while the dispatch boat Ayaks was later lost off Formosa) and stopped briefly at Fuzan (Busan) before arriving at Shanghai with just 15 ships. He was joined there by the White Russian gunboat Magnit, which had left Petropavlovsk with 200 Siberian Cossacks aboard.

Soon, the gunboats Farvater, Strela, Strazh, and Porazhayushchiy were disarmed and sold to a French concern in Shanghai in exchange for enough credit to buy 1,500 tons of coal for the ships that were left.

Meanwhile, (acting) RADM (formerly Capt. 2nd rank) Vasily Viktorovich Bezuar remained at Genzan with 11 broken ships that he would liquidate, arriving in Shanghai before the year was out.

In a state of the surreal, the exiled anti-White gunboat Adm. Zavoyko was still in Shanghai at the time, and only sailed back home to the now-all-Soviet Vladivostok in March 1923 (after Stark’s fleet left) where she became a unit of the Red Banner Fleet– the only one in the Pacific until 1932.

ADMIRAL ZAVOYKO 1921

It was in Shanghai that Red Navy Capt. Vladimir Alexandrovich Belli– like Stark from a Scottish family that had been in Russia since the 1700s– was sent by Moscow to talk with Stark. He brought the White admiral a photo and letter from his family in Petrograd and offered a general amnesty on behalf of the Central Committee in exchange for the return of the flotilla. Stark refused and, according to some reports, Belli didn’t blame him. Nonetheless, some of the refugees had second thoughts about their new lives abroad and returned to Russia with the Red officer.

With most of the sad little fleet’s refugees leaving the ships to cast their lot ashore with the thousands of White Russian exiles in Manchuria and China, by January 1923 it had been decided that the remaining ships which could still steam would head as a force to Manila, where– with the diplomatic support of fellow White RADM Boris Petrovich Dudorov who was serving as naval attaché in Tokyo from 1918 to 1922 and Washington after 1923 for the exile government as the Japanese did not recognize the Moscow government– they would be given a literal safe harbor.

Much like the welcome the Tsar’s battered fleet received in 1905 and the exiled South Vietnamese Navy would receive in 1975 following the fall of Saigon, the Philippines became home to Stark’s Whites.

The Last Leg

On 20 January, ten of Stark’s vessels carrying 720 odd White Russian naval officers and sailors, along with 175 of their wives and children, appeared in the Lingayen Gulf. They would be escorted into Cavite by the U.S. Navy, where their ships would be swept for weapons, the breechblocks of their guns removed, and a (guarded) camp established at Olongapo ashore.

Governor General Leonard Wood went on to secure $5K from the American Relief Administration for Russia and a matching $5K from the American Red Cross while pushing the local government to allow some of the smaller Russian ships to engage in inter-island trade. On 23 March 1923, in agreement with the U.S. Navy, Stark ordered the St. Andrews Cross lowered on his ships, replaced by the Stars & Stripes alone.

In April, President Harding authorized the emigration of 500 Russian refugees from Stark’s ships to the U.S.– provided they could pay their own way on an Army-provided transport and be granted visas– while many of the balance would go on to take jobs in Mindanao.

On 24 May 1923, some 529 Russians, mostly former naval personnel and their families, were taken on the 3,000-ton U.S. Army Transport Merritt and, subject to military justice with Stark’s blessing, would sail for San Francisco in a transit paid for by Stark’s remaining funds. The fees for the necessary visas, likewise, had been paid for out of the fleet’s strongbox.

The USAT Merritt. Built in China in 1912 for the U.S. Army Quartermaster Department, she would ply the Philippines and run a shuttle service to Hawaii and California for 20 years. Sold on the commercial market as SS Bisayas, she was lost in 1942 to the Japanese who raised her and put her back in service as the Hishigata Maru until the USAAF sent her to the bottom for a final time in 1945.

As for the last of Stark’s ships, they were left to sway at their moorings in Cavite with 75 volunteers to keep them afloat until they could be sold or disposed of.

While many of the principal European countries soon reestablished relations with Soviet Russia– Great Britain concluded a trade agreement with the Soviet regime in 1921 and accorded recognition in 1924 while Germany re-established diplomatic relations in 1922 and concluded a comprehensive commercial treaty in 1925– U.S. relations with Moscow gently warmed until the Soviet Union was recognized in 1933. However, a Soviet delegation was allowed to visit Cavite in 1925 to inspect Stark’s remaining unsold ships, and, with one curious exception, they elected to sell them for scrap “as-is, where-is.” Of these, one, the gunboat Mandzhur was purchased by Amagasaki Kisen, refurbished, and placed into service as Kimigayo Maru No.2.

Russian auxiliary cruiser/gunboat Mandzhur (Manchu, Manjur,) built in Denmark in 1886

Kimigayo Maru No.2, formerly the White Russian gunboat Mandzhur, was placed in regular two-day rice and barley runs between Osaka and Jeju Island from 1926 through 1941. Taken up from service by the Japanese Navy, she was lost in the June 1, 1945, B-29 bomber raid on Osaka.

The only ship of Stark’s that went back to Vladivostok was the 2,500-ton minelayer Mongugay.

Built in 1896 in Germany as a commercial steamer Pronto, Mongugay had been bought by the Russian Navy in 1904 for service during the war with Japan. Able to carry 310 mines and armed with a mixed battery of 75mm and 47mm guns, she served the Tsar, then the Reds, then the Whites and Stark until abandoned in Cavite. Reclaimed by the Reds in March 1925, she was made ready to sail and arrived back at Vladivostok on 12 April.

Used by Sovtorgflot as a tramp steamer of sorts into 1933, Mongugay was subsequently handed back over to the newly formed Soviet Red Banner Pacific Fleet and used as a receiving ship until 1951 when she was finally scrapped.

As for Stark, the unsinkable admiral would wander around Asia and Europe for a bit before settling with the large Russian exile community in Paris, where he would work as a taxi driver while serving as the chair of the “All-Foreign Association of Russian Naval Officers.” During the occupation of Paris by the Germans, he refused to cooperate with the German authorities and instead was involved with the Resistance.

Passing in 1949, aged 71, Stark was buried in the Russian cemetery at Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.

Stark’s second in command, the young Bezuar, would go on to serve as a merchant ship captain in Philippine and Chinese waters during the interwar period and was killed in December 1941 when the Japanese sank his ship. Speaking of which, many of the White Russian exiles that settled in Mindanao would go on to join and support anti-Japanese resistance forces in the islands during WWII occupation.

Belli, the Red officer of Scottish ancestry who offered Stark and company amnesty in Shanghai in 1923, went on to spend 10 years as a guest in Stalin’s gulag during the Purges, then, during WWII, returned to service and eventually retired in 1951 as a rear admiral teaching international naval law at the Voroshilov Naval Academy. He outlived just about everyone else involved in this story and died in Leningrad in 1981, still officially a member of the Frunze Academy’s board at age 93.

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Flotsam of the Tsar’s 1st Pacific Squadron

Posted on January 2, 2022 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Camp Kanzense. Matsuyama. Japan, Spring 1905: A group of Russian sailors from the assorted warships sunk by Japanese artillery in the mud of Port Arthur during the siege there. Cap bands show they are from the Баян (Bayan), Бобр (Bobr), Варяг (Varyag), Гиляк (Gilyak), Забияка (Zabiyaka), Паллада (Pallada), Пересвет (Peresvet), Победа (Pobeda), Полтава (Poltava), Ретвизан (Retvizan), and Отважный (Otvazhnyy).

Unlike Japanese EPOW camps in WWII, the Meiji era camps of the Russo-Japanese War were reportedly very hospitable, and the “guests” were returned in good health after the peace. It was only after the corruption of the Bushido code by the 1930s Japanese military elite that the treatment of captured enemy troops and sailors was seen as a dim and distasteful burden.

When the fortress seaport was scandalously surrendered by Baron Anatoly Stoessel to the Japanese on 2 January 1905, despite having another 30-to-60 days worth of shells and supplied on hand, some 8,985 Russian sailors were marched off to captivity along with 878 Army officers and 23,491 of the Tsar’s soldiers.

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Category Archives: Russo-Japanese war

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