The siege of Port Arthur (Japanese: 旅順攻囲戦, romanized: Ryojun Kōisen; Russian: Оборона Порт-Артура, romanized: Oborona Port-Artura; August 1, 1904 – January 2, 1905) was the longest and most violent land battle of the Russo-Japanese War.
Port Arthur, the deep-water port and Russian naval base at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula in Manchuria, had been widely regarded as one of the most strongly fortified positions in the world. However, during the First Sino-Japanese War, General Nogi Maresuke had taken the city from the forces of Qing China in only a few days. The ease of his victory during the previous conflict, and overconfidence by the Japanese General Staff in its ability to overcome improved Russian fortifications, led to a much longer campaign and far greater losses than expected.
The siege saw the introduction of much technology used in subsequent wars of the 20th century (particularly in World War I) including massive 28 cm howitzers that fired 217-kilogram (478-pound) shells with a range of 8 kilometers (5.0 miles), rapid-firing light howitzers, Maxim machine guns, bolt-action magazine rifles, barbed wire entanglements, electric fences, arc lamp, searchlights, tactical radio signalling (and, in response, the first military use of radio jamming), hand grenades, extensive trench warfare, and the use of modified naval mines as land weapons.
Background
The Russian forces manning the defenses of Port Arthur under Major-General Baron Anatoly Stoessel consisted of almost 50,000 men including the crews of the Russian warships in port (the total population of Port Arthur at the time was around 87,000) and 506 guns. He also had the option of removing the guns from the fleet to bolster the land defenses.
Russian improvements to the defences of Port Arthur included a multi-perimeter layout with overlapping fields of fire and making the best possible use of the natural terrain. However, many of the redoubts and fortifications were still unfinished, as considerable resources were either in very short supply or had been diverted to improving the fortifications at Dalny, further north on the Liaodong Peninsula.
The outer defense perimeter of Port Arthur consisted of a line of hills, including Hsiaokushan and Takushan near the Ta-ho River in the east, and Namakoyama, Akasakayama, 174-Meter Hill, 203-Meter Hill and False Hill in the west. All of these hills were heavily fortified. Approximately 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles) behind this defensive line was the original stone Chinese wall, which encircled the Old Town of Lushun from the south to the Lun-ho River at the northwest. The Russians had continued the line of the Chinese wall to the west and south, enclosing the approaches to the harbor and the New Town of Port Arthur with concrete forts, machine gun emplacements, and connecting trenches.
General Stoessel withdrew to Port Arthur on July 30, 1904. Facing the Russians was the Japanese Third Army, about 150,000 strong, backed by 474 artillery guns, under the command of General Baron Nogi Maresuke.
From the beginning Nogi and the Imperial General Staff differed on strategy, an area they thought little of his abilities in. They wanted him to attack from the northwest as he had done so successfully in the earlier conflict. But Nogi believed the Russians would anticipate that angle for that very reason and so planned his attack from the northeast, which also had the advantage of being closer to the railhead he used as a supply depot. Nogi also saw that position offering the possibility of seizing all the Russian forts in one action, preferably via the direct route offered by the Wantai ravine.
Battles
Battle of the Orphan Hills
The shelling of Port Arthur began on August 7, 1904, by a pair of land-based 4.7-inch (120 mm) guns, and was carried on intermittently until August 19, 1904. The Japanese fleet also participated in shore bombardment, while in the northeast the army prepared to attack the two semi-isolated hills protruding from the outer defense perimeter: 600-foot (180 m) high Takushan (Big Orphan Hill) and the smaller Hsuaokushan (Little Orphan Hill). These hills were not heavily fortified, but had steep slopes and were fronted by the Ta River, which had been dammed by the Russians to provide a stronger obstacle. The hills commanded a view over almost a kilometer of flat ground to the Japanese lines, and it was thus essential for the Japanese to take these hills to complete their encirclement of Port Arthur.
After pounding the two hills from 04:30 until 19:30, General Nogi launched a frontal infantry assault, which was hampered by heavy rain, poor visibility and dense clouds of smoke. The Japanese were able to advance only as far as the forward slopes of both hills, and many soldiers drowned in the Ta River. Even night attacks suffered unexpectedly high casualties, as the Russians used powerful searchlights to expose the attackers to artillery and machine-gun cross-fire.
Undeterred, Nogi resumed artillery bombardment the following day, August 8, 1904, but his assault stalled again, this time due to heavy fire from the Russian fleet led by the cruiser Novik. Nogi ordered his men to press on regardless of casualties. Despite some confusion in orders behind the Russian lines, which led to some units abandoning their posts, numerous Russian troops held on tenaciously. The Japanese finally managed to overrun the Russian positions mostly through sheer superiority in numbers. Takushan was captured at 20:00, and the following morning, August 9, 1904, Hsiaokushan also fell to the Japanese.
Gaining these two hills cost the Japanese 1,280 killed and wounded. The Japanese Army complained bitterly to the Navy about the ease with which the Russians were able to obtain naval fire support; in response the Japanese Navy brought in a battery of 12-pounder guns, with a range sufficient to ensure that there would be no recurrence of a Russian naval sortie.
The loss of the two hills, when reported to the Tsar, caused him to consider the safety of the Russian Pacific Fleet trapped at Port Arthur, and he sent immediate orders to Admiral Wilgelm Vitgeft, in command of the fleet after the death of Admiral Stepan Makarov, to join the squadron at Vladivostok. Vitgeft put to sea at 08:30 on August 10, 1904, and engaged the waiting Japanese under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō in what was to become known as the Battle of the Yellow Sea.
On August 11, 1904, the Japanese sent an offer of temporary cease-fire to Port Arthur, so the Russians could allow all non-combatants to leave under guarantee of safety. The offer was rejected, but the foreign military observers all decided to leave for safety on August 14, 1904.
Battle of 174 Meter Hill
At noon on August 13, 1904, General Nogi launched a photo reconnaissance balloon from the Wolf Hills, which the Russians attempted to shoot down. Nogi was reportedly very surprised at the lack of coordination of the Russian artillery efforts, and he decided to proceed with a direct frontal assault down the Wantai Ravine, which, if successful, would carry Japanese forces directly into the heart of the city. Given his previous high casualty rate and his lack of heavy artillery, the decision created controversy in his staff; however, Nogi was under orders to take Port Arthur as quickly as possible.
After sending an immediately refused message to the garrison of Port Arthur demanding surrender, the Japanese began their assault at dawn on August 19, 1904. The General Staff embargoed all correspondents from reporting anything that happened until after Port Arthur had fallen. The main thrust was directed at 174 Meter Hill, with flanking and diversionary attacks along the line from Fort Sung-shu to the Chi-Kuan Battery. The Russian defensive positions on 174 Meter Hill itself were held by the 5th and 13th East Siberian Regiments, reinforced by sailors, under the command of Colonel Nikolai Tretyakov, a veteran of the Battle of Nanshan.
Just as he had done at the Battle of Nanshan, Tretyakov, despite having his first line of trenches overrun, tenaciously refused to retreat and held control of 174 Meter Hill despite severe and mounting casualties. On the following day, August 20, 1904, Tretyakov asked for reinforcements but, just as at Nanshan, none were forthcoming. With more than half of his men killed or wounded and with his command disintegrating as small groups of men fell back in confusion, Tretyakov had no choice but to withdraw, and 174 Meter Hill was overrun by the Japanese; it had cost the Japanese some 1,800 killed and wounded, and the Russians over 1,000.
At Wantai, Nogi had disregarded intelligence on the strength of the Russian defenses that warned they had 10 times as many machine guns as the Japanese, along with an artillery advantage. He was also unaware of a covered road connecting the two forts that allowed the Russians to quickly move troops and materiel between them. Stoessel also repositioned his defenses to better stop an attack from that direction, suggesting he had a spy in Nogi's staff. Japanese troops were under constant fire as they approached, with machine guns raking troops from the front and the rear taking heavy bombardment.
The assaults on the other sections of the Russian line had also cost the Japanese heavily, but with no results and no ground gained. When Nogi finally called off his attempt to penetrate Wantai on August 24, he had only 174 Meter Hill and the West and East Pan-lung to show for his loss of more than 18,000 men. With all other positions remaining firmly under Russian control, Nogi at last decided to abandon frontal assaults in favor of a siege, at least until reinforcements arrived.
On August 25, the day after Nogi's last assault had failed, Marshal Ōyama Iwao engaged the Russians under General Aleksey Kuropatkin at the Battle of Liaoyang. Had the Japanese not lost so many troops at 174-Meter Hill and Wantai, they might have been available to assist Ōyama, giving him the chance to destroy the Russian Army at that battle, instead of merely pushing it further north.
Siege
Having failed to penetrate the Port Arthur fortifications by direct assault, Nogi now ordered sappers to construct trenches and tunnels under the Russian forts in order to explode mines to bring down the walls. By now, Nogi had also been reinforced by additional artillery and 16,000 more troops from Japan, which partially compensated for the casualties sustained in his first assaults. However, the major new development was the arrival of the first battery of huge 11-inch (280 mm) siege howitzers, replacing those lost when the transport Hitachi Maru, loaded with a battalion of the First Reserve Regiment of the Guards, was sunk by Russian cruisers on June 15. The massive 11-inch howitzers could throw a 227-kilogram (500.4-pound) shell over 9 kilometers (5.6 miles), and Nogi at last had the firepower necessary to make a serious attempt against the Russian fortifications. The huge shells were nicknamed "roaring trains" by the Russian troops (for the sound they made just before impact), and during the guns' period at Port Arthur over 35,000 of these shells were fired. The Armstrong howitzers had originally been installed in shore batteries in forts overlooking Tokyo Bay and Osaka Bay, and had been intended for anti-ship operations.
While the Japanese set to work in the sapping campaign, General Stoessel continued to spend most of his time writing complaining letters to the Tsar about lack of cooperation from his fellow officers in the navy. The garrison in Port Arthur was starting to experience serious outbreaks of scurvy and dysentery due to the lack of fresh food.
Nogi now shifted his attention to the Temple Redoubt and the Waterworks Redoubt (also known as the Erhlung Redoubt) to the east, and to 203 Meter Hill and Namakoyama to the west. At this time neither Nogi nor Stoessel seem to have realized the strategic importance of 203 Meter Hill: its unobstructed views of the harbor would have enabled the Japanese to control the harbor and to fire on the Russian fleet sheltering there. This fact was only brought to Nogi's attention when he was visited by General Kodama Gentarō, who immediately saw that the hill was the key to the whole Russian defense.
By mid-September the Japanese had dug over eight kilometers (5.0 miles) of trenches and were within 70 meters (230 feet) of the Waterworks Redoubt, which they attacked and captured on September 19, 1904. Thereafter they successfully took the Temple Redoubt, while another attacking force was sent against both Namakoyama and 203 Meter Hill. The former was taken that same day, but on 203 Meter Hill the Russian defenders cut down the dense columns of attacking troops with machine-gun and cannon fire. The attack failed, and the Japanese were forced back, leaving the ground covered with their dead and wounded. The battle at 203 Meter Hill continued for several more days, with the Japanese gaining a foothold each day, only to be forced back each time by Russian counter-attacks. By the time General Nogi abandoned the attempt, he had lost over 3,500 men. The Russians used the respite to begin further strengthening the defenses on 203 Meter Hill, while Nogi began a prolonged artillery bombardment of the town and those parts of the harbor within range of his guns.