With Russian ships sabotaging our cables and getting themselves sunk all over, I figured I'd do a thread on arguably the greatest feat of incompetence in Russian naval history.

This is going to be a TLDR of the utterly idiotic voyage of Russia's "Second Pacific Squadron".🧵

Following the revolution of 1905, Tsar Nicholas II figured a short and easy war would be just what he needed to help with his abysmal popularity.

Of all potential candidates for that "short and easy war", in a remarkably well-thought-out move, he picked Imperial Japan.

Admiral Makarov - arguably Russia's most competent, was sent out to lead the Russian Far East Fleet, stationed at Port Arthur (today in China).

For Makarov, the Trans-Siberian train ride all the way to the Far East was to be an extremely long and tiresome one...

...finally arriving at his destination, Makarov quickly took control of the fleet and proceeded to immediately get himself killed and his flagship sank by the Japanese.

Thus, the Russian Far East Fleet found itself admiral-less, badly damaged, and completely blockaded.

Fortunately, Russia had two more fleets available that could be sent all out around the world to help, the Black Sea and the Baltic fleets.

They would be merged into one and renamed "The Second Pacific Squadron". And this is where the fun really starts.

The fleet was led by Admiral Rozhestvensky, who had a nasty habit of getting constant insane anger fits leading to him throwing his pair of binoculars overboard.

After loading several extra boxes of binoculars onboard, the fleet set sail to bring glory to Mother Russia!

Moments after setting off, a cruiser lost its anchor, the flagship ran aground and a destroyer rammed into a battleship, putting both out of action.

After losing three capital ships, the Russian fleet successfully managed to defeat the port exit.

Being utterly paranoid about Japanese subs (?!) around the shores of Europe, they would proceed to fire at any boats they came across (mostly fishing boats).

They did not start a new war only thanks to their aim, never actually managing to hit any of the boats they fired on.

At one point in their journey, after one of the crewmen died, they decided to have a funeral salute.

Kamchatka, the ship selected to fire its guns, mistakenly loaded live shells and for once managed to land a hit, on another Russian ship, killing several crewmen.

During a pit stop in Madagascar, the crewmen sailed ashore for a bit of relaxation (meaning they got exceptionally drunk and brought back large amounts of snakes and other harmless creatures on board their ships).

Several crewmen would die by alcohol poisoning and...snakes.

As they were starting to approach Japan, a gunnery practice was organized. One of the faster ships would run ahead and tow a floating target, which the entire fleet was to fire upon.

Nobody managed to hit the target, but several scores were hit on the ship towing the target.

Having been banned by all European powers from refueling in their African ports, the Russian ships were filled to the brink with coal - bunkers, passageways, you name it.

The thick black coal dust covering the entire fleet will lead to "black lungs" in several crewmen.

Finally making contact with the Japanese Imperial Fleet, the entirety of the Second Pacific Squadron would be sunk with minimal Japanese losses.

Over 5k Russians would lose their life in what would be called the Battle of Tsushima. Russia will catastrophically lose the war.