Lessons learned from the Russo-Japanese war

What lessons were learned from the land part of the Russo-Japanese war?

What if someone had thought,

'mmhh, what if the infantry get armoured protection from those machine guns

 

You mean the 1905 war?

I guess the only lessons learnt were that small, well-trained & well-equipped modern armies can beat an army that relies mostly on weight of numbers (not a new lesson - even the Crimean war taught us that), and that the Russian army was not invincible (not a new lesson - even the Crimean war taught us that).

 

Hi.

The japanese army learned at least the following:

1. The numbers of artillery they fielded were too low and the average caliber was too small against field and heavy fortifications.

They had to transport 28 cm howitzers from their coastal defence forts to Port Athur to get sufficient fire support.

This lead to the development of heavy transport equipment horse-drawn. In the late 1920th special tractors were developed for the heavy fortification artillery like the type Meiji 45 24 cm howitzers and type Taisho 7 305 mm howitzers.

2. The ammunition stocks had to be increased as the standard ammunition train of an artillery battalion or regiment stored only an ammunition supply for a standard three-days-firefight.

Sadly this lection was rejected during the expansion phase of the armed forces during the early 30th when the number of artillery pieces was increased faster as the production capacities of the ammunition factories.

During the Nomonhan-Incident this leads to a lot of japanese batteries lacking badly needed ammunition. It took days to transport the ammunition from the ammunition supply storages deep inside Manchuria with the very limited transport capacity avaliable. This was one mayor cause for the defeat.

3. The japanese army was able to cope with the task to defeat an army of a large western country using "modern warfare" methods.

One brick in the own view of having an invincible army

Yours

tom!

 

jap/Ruski war

I suppose one thing learned is that vodka tastes better than 'sushi'!!

 

..the lesson was ...beware the sunday morning crushing seaborn japanese suprise attack ...of course we yanks had to have a repeat lesson as we somehow dozed through the first one..