question that no nation could have got more work out of the boats than did the Japanese.
Whether Japanese torpedoes hit or missed is a comparatively unimportant detail; there is probably no lesson for the future in their percentage of misses. The point of historical importance is how often or how seldom were the Japanese able to have their boats at the necessary spot at the necessary moment. On this matter we know that, as boats served only one-third of their time, 66 per cent, of the force was useless at any given moment. From this it may be argued that three boats on paper means one boat actually and continually in service—a proportion not at all likely to be exceeded in any future war. But, on the other hand, there is the evidence of Round Island and Tsushima to show that at psychological moments the whole, or nearly the whole of the Japanese torpedo force was available. This would suggest that torpedo craft are a complete force, acting intermittently, rather than a partial force, acting constantly. On the whole it must be admitted that the influence of torpedo craft on the result of the war was small, even though the torpedo paralysed the Russian fleet at the outbreak of the war, and gave the coup de grâce to it after Tsushima.
In the first case the conditions that obtained were altogether abnormal; in the second, as the Russians had only a trifling torpedo force (and that apparently not detailed for torpedo work) special conditions also
