The Dumbest Russian Voyage Nobody Talks About | Paws Reacts to BlueJay 

The Admiral they got was actually about the best possible choice, but trying to keep the rest of the fleet in line was beyond his abilities.

Another channel by the name of Drachinifel has an even better coverage of this event - including a number of additional incidents like the time the fleet hid from its own reinforcements. The reinforcements were called, quote, "the sink by themselves squadron". Drachinifel also has a truly phenomenal video on the Mark 14 Torpedo, which is somehow arguably an even bigger mess.

Admiral Rozhestvensky was one of the most competent admirals of the Russian Navy at the time, and he was genuinely a good leader who did the best he could in this extremely chaotic situation. You have to feel bad for the guy with how many idiots were around him as he was trying so hard to save the proverbial sinking ship. Interestingly, after the doomed engagement with the Japanese, while he was recovering from several wounds in the battle, the enemy commander, Admiral Togo Heihachiro, actually went to visit Rozhestvensky and went to reassure him as an honorable combatant, saying: “Defeat is a common fate of a soldier. There is nothing to be ashamed of in it. The great point is whether we have performed our duty. You performed your great duty heroically until you were incapacitated. I pay you my highest respects.”

Fun Facts: There IS 1 survivor of this whole Ordeal, the Cruiser Avrora who is sitting as a Museum Ship in St. Petersburg and when a russian pow woke up in hospital he supposedly asked his captors if they sunk the Kamchatka, after they confirmed it all he said was "Thank God!" and the US did practically the same trip few years later and its now known as "The Great White Party Cruise"

The Tsar ordered the Baltic Fleet to go because that was either that or surrender the port without trying to take it back. And, yes, this is the same Tsar who would be ousted by Lenin 12 years later.

In fairness to the Russians, the Brits were allied with the Japanese at this time and were selling warships from their yards. The fear was that Japanese ships might loiter around Britain after being claimed, specifically to attack the Russian navy. So the idea of running into Japanese warships in the North Sea wasn't quite as ridiculous as it sounds, and the fact that they'd be indistinguishable from British ships probably fed Russian paranoia.

This video from BlueJay is the best one so far.

Funny detail about Tsushima: Aboard the bridge of one japanese cruiser there, a little staff lieutenant lost two fingers to shrapnel from a russian shell hit. If he had lsot a third, he would have been retired from service according to IJN regulations. Which would have been a wee bit of a butterfly event indeed. The name of the young lieutenant was Yamamoto Isoroku.

The history of everything does this voyage as well and goes into more depth

PLEASE do a full react of this using Drachinifel's vids covering the voyage to and eventual battle of Tsushima by the 2nd Pacific Squadron. The shenanigans are just... spectacular. It's that kinda voyage where the phrase "And then it got worse" is a persistent theme. Poor Admiral Rozhestvensky. Bro must have felt like he aged 20 years in that voyage. The vids are long but well worth it. History of Everything's (not the podcast) "The Russian Navy Sucks" series is also a worthy contender. Especially the episodes talking about Kuznetsov or the uh... Sweden incident...

"But like US presidents in convertibles, not everything can be a match made in heaven." Years later that's still a hell of a line 🤣

To be fair to Rozhestvensky and the whole misadventure, the Russian army was filled with yes men and people hired out of nepotism. So, most of the men under his command were laughably incompetent. He himself was a no nonsense experienced leader but because of rank being more about who you know than any skill he had trouble controlling other ships. I think the main measure of the man was after the Battle of Tsushima, he's enemy was impressed by his bravery enough to consoled him and during his court martial, he was honorable enough to take full responsibility for surrendering to the enemy even though he was injured and knocked unconscious during the first day of battle. Admiral Nikolai Nebogatov was the man that gave the order, but Rozhestvensky was willing to take the fall.

Paws reaction to this video make it 100% more funnier and also more interesting to watch.

Ok now that you've gotten the primer you absolutely 100% have to look at Drachinfel's vid on the subject, Blue Jay here has only scratched the surface of the shenanigans they got up to Including but not limited to: the admiral commandeering a casemate gun to hurl shells at an icebreaker that was being handled like a drunk walrus and refused to obey orders to stop where they were

"History of Everything" has a series on how dumb the Russian navy was and still is for anyone intrested

The "Kamchatka" was the worst ship out of all the ships in their fleet Caused multiple false alarms and shot at Civilian German, Swedish, and French ships and the constant claims that they were being attacked by torpedoes boats when none were there to begin with Drachinifel summed up the story in two videos The Voyage of the Damned and The Battle of Tsushima

"How do you confuse the two?" - In the dark all you have is an outline silhouette. And - believe me - it's not that easy to identify ships this way if you have bad light and can't get a proper silhouette. You normally used signal lights to challenge unknown ships and if they didn't respond properly ... well ...

There is a way more detailed video on this by Drachinifel called "The Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron - Voyage of the Damned" it is way longer though and less focused on comedy elements than Blue Jays. It is also 42 min long...

I actually did a small research paper on the Russo-Japanese War (both land and sea), and it really doesn’t get enough credit for how interesting it is. It was a David vs Goliath battle, but where David has to defeat Goliath before he can bring his full strength to bear. It was also the first showcase of WWI technology, and how inadequate the tactics of the time were.

Paws confusion throughout the whole video was hilarious 🤣

Second Pacific Squadron? What time? It's time! It's! Kamchatka! Time!

3:29 - LOL DEI but 100 years ago kek

The "another ship" that signaled that she was under attack from 8 Japanese torpedo boats was the Kamchatka. The same ship that forgot to fire a dud and attacked one of their own ship. It's rare that a navy celebrates the sinking of one of its ships but I guess the destruction of the Kamchatka caused a celebration within the Russian navy,

The tale about the British revoking access to the Suez canal seems to be wrong. The majority of the ship - the slower ones - *did* go through Suez and only the faster, bigger ships took the long way round. This was supposedly to not get the ships stuck in the narrow canal where they could be attacked by Japanese torpedo boats. And before anybody laughs - the Japanese bought their torpedo boats from the United Kingdom, so some Japanese presence in the canal was not completely off the chart. Also: The reinforcements (if one might be generous enough to call them that) of the 2nd wave also passed through the Suez canal. So I think Blue Jay got that part wrong. I trust Drachinifel's version more on this part.

10:43 If I remember correctly, King himself proposed. Not like he was ever good in this

Hope you had a good birthday Paws! ❤

You should react to dj peach cobbler

Paws reactions gives me life👌

Первый русский комментарий зачем? Ради баланса вселенной

Would it be weird to say that your ears are extremely adorable? Also great video.

Happy birthday paws.

The British: Lions Led by Donkeys Russian Baltic Fleet: A lone lion facepalming at jackasses.

Please react to more Blue Jay!

Okay apparently this voyage was even more of a shitshow than i was aware of

Oh yeah… this war…

That was soooo good :D

This isnt even the worst part about It

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

If you're after another video on Russian Naval incompetence... would recommend: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ucDZ2MxubeQ.htmlsi=pegKXiVw-nSzXU24 This story particular, but the series as a whole is interesting. This one specifically is just really funny.

Yo wsg paw

Great video paw

You know what the horrifying part is? This isn’t a one off of history. Russia has always had a poor history of naval endeavors. History of Everything has a playlist that examines several instances and examples including the Baltic Fleet.

Some of the jokes were stolen from Sam O'Nella

Здесь нет ничего хоть сколько-то близкого к правдивой истории, это буквально небоскреб из лжи