Wikimedia Commons
The First World War was an unprecedented calamity that shaped our modern world . Erik Sass is encompass the events of the war exactly 100 year after they bechance . This is the 169th installment in the serial .
1 April 2025: Allied Ships Bombard Turkish Forts
The tragedy of Gallipoli was the result of a series of errors and misjudgments by British civilian leaders and military commander , which lead off to spread on February 19 , 1915 , with the first Allied bombardment of Turkish defence at the Dardanelles .
With the Western Front instalemateand Russia on thedefensivein the due east , First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill wanted to habituate British naval power to make a find on the flanks of the Central Powers . Churchill win over his fellow cabinet members that the Royal Navy could resolutely falsify the strategic balance by forcing the Turkish strait and capturing Constantinople , thus knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the state of war and reopening the maritime provision path to Russia through the Black Sea .
Crucially the original plan call for an amphibious component , with ground forces land on the Gallipoli peninsula to attack Turkish positions from the rear ; however Secretary of War Lord Kitchener refused to disport any troops from the precarious Western Front , so the cabinet eventuallyapproveda purely naval operation , scar an confederate fleet against interlock Turkish defenses including forts , mobile artillery , mine fields , and submarine earnings . Everyone involve recognized from the beginning that the plan was risky , but they were persuade by the promise of Brobdingnagian increase — maybe even an destruction to the war .
In mid - February a formidable Allied naval force gathered in the Aegean Sea , under the overall command of Admiral Sir Sackville Carden . The British fleet consisted of the tiptop - dreadnought HMSQueen Elizabeth ; three conflict - cruisers ; twelve sure-enough ( “ pre - dreadnought ” ) battleships ; four cruisers ; 16 destroyers ; five submarines ; seven minesweeping trawler ; and the aircraft carrier HMSArk Royalwith six seaplane alongside . The French detail consist of four “ pre - dreadnought ” battleships , two uprooter , one submarine , and fourteen minesweepers .
Carden had carve up the flack into a number of phase , aiming to methodically rase the various layers of Turkish defense one by one . In the first phase angle , battleships would barrage the Turkish forts protecting the entrance to the pass with their heavy gun at tenacious distance , outside the mountain chain of the Turkish coastal artillery . In the 2d phase , they would iron out ahead into the mouth of the straits , where the minesweeper would begin clearing the minefields so the battleship could destroy the wandering ordnance batteries protect “ the Narrows , ” the strategic choke period where the channel was less than two kilometers all-encompassing .
Click to lucubrate
Naval-history.net
Operations for the first stage begin on the dawn of February 19 , 1915 , with long - grasp shelling of the four forts cross the entrance to the strait — two located on Cape Helles at the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula on the European side , the others at Kumkale on the Asian side , not far from the ruins of Troy ( below , a Turkish gun at Kumkale today ) .
Anzacsite.gov.au
Although they scored a act of hits , British and Gallic commanders were disgruntled with their gunnery , believing minimum hurt had been inflicted ; in fact the price was substantial , but the Allies had no way of observing this . When they eventually approached for close - range bombardment , Turkish fort lay down a heavy return fire and keep the Allied ship impress , making it even more difficult to target effectively ( fortuitously for the Turks , the Allied commanders were also incognizant that the forts were running low on ammunition ) .
Navyingallipoli.com
After a wait because of storms and rough seas , the Allies would return to the attack a calendar week later , on February 25 , 1915 , and again in other March ( top , HMSAgamemnonfires at the Turkish fortress at Sedd el Bahr on March 4 , 1915 ; above , Agamemnonunder fire on February 25 ) . These attack , combined with landing by British marines , finally managed to quash the outer forts — but now the fleet function into ferocious justificative fire from the well - hidden fluid heavy weapon battery protecting the internal entrance to the straits . These proved much more difficult to clear , in part because the Turks moved them at night — which meant , in turning , that the comparatively defenceless minesweeper could n’t reset the minefield before the Narrows . The plan was stalling at the second phase .
In mid - March these obstacles would push the Allies to espouse a Modern , even riskier scheme : the minesweepers would make the minefields by night , so the battleships could destroy the mobile barrage fire and rush the Narrows in one fell slide . However the nighttime minesweeping missions were unsuccessful ; even bad , unbeknownst to the Allies the Turks managed to dwell a raw minefield in Erenköy Bay , along the eastern approaching to the Narrows . On March 18 , 1915 , this would result in disaster for the Allies .
See theprevious installmentorall ledger entry .
