Chinese Battleships

[shadowsrider]

Well too long I've been reading about European history.
I am just reading history of colonial wars and I would like to share with you a shock for my Polish optics :)
I really was very surprised when I got to chapter of Sino-Japanese war. The shock was where I found out that Chinese were using several battleships armed with 305mm guns and some of their ships had American commanders. And it was 1894...
This is the machine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_turret_ship_Dingyuan

[JCR]

The Chinese had these ships courtesy of AG Vulcan Schiffbau, Stettin
"Made in Germany" was popular even then.
So you could even argue for a polish connection, at least in regards to modern borders ;)

And the US commanders were basically Annapolis rejects to whom the desperate chinese turned because they still knew more about modern warfare than they did.
Sadly even Krupp armor and american happy amateurs didn't last long against the IJN...

But the two chinese battlewagons actually survived the Battle of Yalu, despite being hit numerous times.
Chinese gunnery was abmysal, japanese gunnery as usual excellent, but the japanese had exactly three guns that could theoretically punch through the two battleship's armour. And those three were installed on three different french built cruisers, a la jeune ecole.
I guess this battle was the reason for the IJN to ditch jeune ecole doctrine and go for the biggest and most modern battleships possible.

[T-5 Killer]

Interesting I had no idea!

[kutter]

Thought this might be of interest. A full scale replica of the Dingyuan (also referred to as the Ting Yuen, could be an old spelling vs. new spelling thing) was made at Wei Hai, formerly Port Edward, and was opened in 2005. Below is a link to someones visit to this bit of history:
http://www.hksw.org/Ting%20Yuen.htm

If your ever in the area and are interested in seeing a pre-Dreadnought battleship than it could be worth a visit.

[TheKiwi]

I have just been reading "Rising Sun, Tumbling Bear" which is about that Russian-Japanese War of 1904/05 that was a follow up to this war. A very interesting read. A point made within is that during the 1904 conflict, the Japanese took care to treat well the local Chinese, who were hired at above market rates as coolies and were relied upon for a great deal of intelligence about Russian moves. This was in contrast to their behaviour during the 1894 war, during which it is alleged that over 10,000 civilians died.