Lüshun (Port Arthur):

The Soviet Naval Base in Manzhouguo

 

 

The most powerful naval base of the Soviet Union after Kronstadt is in the place of Lüshunkou, which now administratively is a district of Dalian city. However, this port is famous worldwide under the former name of Port Arthur. Located in the western extremity of Liaotung peninsula, the harbour with the narrow entrance, surrounded by hills as if specially created to shelter warships from the enemy: from long ago, since the times of the Han dynasty, it was used directly for this purpose. At the end of 19 century, when China has decided to get a normal armoured fleet, Lüshun became the main base for the Chinese northern fleet. Seized by Japan during the first Sino-Japanese war (1894-95), it was leased to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

 

But Germany, Russia and France convincingly “asked” Japan to return the peninsula to China. Wishing to develop its presence in the Far East, the Russian government undertook a number of steps to purchase or lease the Liaotung peninsula. An arrangement was achieved in 1898, and from then on Port Arthur began to be actively developed as the primary base for Russia’s Pacific fleet.

 

It is needless to explain that such state of affairs was not pleasant to Japan, and in February, 8, 1904, the Japanese armed forces attacked Port Arthur, initiating the Russo-Japanese war. Under the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty, Japan gained the Liaotung peninsula, the South Manchurian railroad, plus the southern half of Sakhalin in addition.

 

The Soviet Union, which replaced the Russian Empire, got satisfaction for the shameful surrender of Port Arthur almost 35 years later. At the end of the Soviet-Japanese War, when the Soviet armies approached Port Arthur and Dalny, the IJA given the ports up without fight. In 1945, the Soviet Union concluded with the Manzhouguan government the treaty under which the naval base of Port Arthur was leased for 30 years. In 1975 the treaty was renewed for another 30 years.

 

In 1961 it was decided that the Pacific Fleet units would be split almost evenly between Vladivostok and Port Arthur, even when the Pacific Fleet headquarters is still in Vladivostok, with additional home ports in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Magadan, and Sovetskaya Gavan'. The blue-water striking power of the Lüshun Fleet lies in nine nuclear submarines, fifteen nonnuclear submarines and twenty-five principal surface combatants. Its air power consists in 110 combat aircraft and helicopters of the Pacific Fleet Air Force, all of which are land-based. Its most powerful strike force was a bomber regiment, consisting in thirty supersonic Tu-24K Hurricane aircraft. The land power of the Port Arthur forces consists of one naval infantry division and a coastal defense division. The naval infantry division includes half of the total manpower in the Soviet naval infantry.

 

Just before the Soviet Civil War, Lüshun Fleet was built around a core of modern combatants. Its submarines carried out missions of strategic deterrence, protection of strategic assets, regional security, and training for anti-surface warfare. The Soviet Navy maintained the capability to carry out "defense of the homeland" operations and retained the force structure for out-of-area submarine and surface combatant operations.

 

Since 1999 the Imperial Japanese Navy had sent one or two ships a year to Port Arthur for a port call, and in October 2002 Soviet and Japanese navies conducted their first joint naval exercise. Soviet warships included the Pacific Fleet flagship Varyag and destroyer Burgy. The two Russian vessels participated in joint exercises with warships from the Kyokujitsutai (Japan's Home Fleet) in the Sea of Okhotsk.