Battle of Tsushima (1905): Day action

The 27-28 May 1905 fleet action in which Togo Heihachiro destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet -- a Korean-strait day that ended a war and recast Asian naval hierarchy. The Battle of Tsushima was fought on 27-28 May 1905 in the strait between Korea and Japan, at the end of the Baltic Fleet's eight-month voyage from Europe. Vice-Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky had taken Russia's last European battle line around the Cape after the Dogger Bank fiasco. Admiral Togo Heihachiro waited with the Combined Fleet on interior lines, bunkered and repaired after Port Arthur.

In daylight on the 27th Togo crossed the Russian T -- the manoeuvre English naval histories never tire of drawing. Russian battleships were wrecked by fire and then by night torpedo attacks. Thousands of Russian sailors died or drowned; Japanese dead numbered in the hundreds. The war's naval decision was a weekend; the Treaty of Portsmouth (September 1905) followed under US mediation.

For Korean geography this is a home-water battle: the strait is Korea's door. The political sequel -- Japanese protectorate over Korea (1905) and annexation (1910) -- is not a footnote to Togo's turn. English memory treats Tsushima as a "Trafalgar of the East" and as a rehearsal of 1905 modernity (radio, rangefinders). Pair it with Midway: two decisive days, two orders of the same sea.