gallıpolı penınsula ınvasıon attempt by allıed forces
Preparation:
After the failure of the naval attacks, the necessity for eliminating the Ottoman mobile artillery came into consideration. The peninsula had to be invaded and the sea route to Constantinpole had to be cleared. Lord Kitchener appointed General Sir Ian Hamilton to command the 78,000 soldiers which were having training and encamped in Egypt to be sent to France. The troops were the Australian Imperial Force and New Zealand Expeditionary Force which were named as ''Anzacs''. The ANZAC troops were joined by the regular 29th Division and the Royal Naval Division. The French Corps consisting of metropolitan and colonial troops, was subsequently placed under Hamilton's command.
Over the following month, the British and French divisions joined the Australians in Egypt. Hamilton plannned a landing on the southern part of the Gallipoli peninsula at Cape Helles and Seddülbahir. It would be an unopposed landing. The Allies initially miscounted the fighting ability of the Ottoman soldiers.
Landing;
The Allies planned to land and secure the northern shore to capture the Ottoman forts and artillery batteries so that a naval force could advance through the Narrows and the Sea of Marmara towards Istanbul. The landing was Scheduled for 23 April but postponed until 25 April due to bad weather. Landings were plannned to be made at five beaches on the peninsula. The 29th Division was to land at Helles on the tip of the peninsula and then advance upon the forts at Kilitbahir. The Anzacs, with the 3rd Australian Infantry Brigade would land north of Gaba Tepe on the Aegean coast, from where they could advance across the peninsula & attack Kilitbahir. Their duty was to destroy reinforcements from reaching Cape Helles. The French landed at Kum Kale on the Asian shore to hold the eastern area of the Helles sector.
Arrangements for naval gunfire support to the landings had originally included bombarding the beaches and approaches but in fact no decision was ultimately made about how to support the landing, and it was left up to the initiative of battleships' captains. The aircrafts used to observe and for intelligence were also unsufficient& inadequate to meet the Allies' intelligence needs and make up for the lack of adequate maps. After the landings, Allied aircrafts conducted photographic reconnaissance, observed naval gunfire, reported on Ottoman troop movements and conducted a small number of bombing raids.
The northern landing troops were Birdwood's force including the 1st Australian Division and the New Zealand and Australian Division which consist of about 25,000 men. The duty of the force was to land and advance inland to create communication lack between Ottoman forces in the south. The 1st Australian Division would land first, The 2nd Infantry Brigade was to follow and to capture the higher ground on Sari Bair. The 1st Infantry Brigade would land last as the reserve. Finally The New Zealand and Australian Division would come ashore and advance across the peninsula. The force would assemble at night and land at dawn to surprise the unexpecting defenders.
At 04:00 on the morning of 25 April the first wave of troops from the 3rd Brigade began moving towards the shore. The covering force landed approximately 1.2 miles too far north, in a bay becaause of undetected currents. The landing was more difficult, because of the ground which rose steeply from the beaches. The landing site was being guarded by only two Ottoman companies but because of their advanced positions they inflicted numerous casualties on the Australians before being defeated. Australians didn't have appropriate and accurate maps, so, the broken terrain didn't let for a coordinated drive inland. Because of the unknown and unpredictable area Australian troops that andanced forward quickly lost contact with each other and were divided into small groups. Some Australian troops reached the second ridge but could provide little support to the follow-up force.
Above-the slideshow about landing operations on 25th of April
The 1st and 2nd Brigades, then the New Zealand and Australian Division, landed on the beaches around Ari Burnu but became entangled, which took time to reorganise. About four hours after the landings began, the bulk of the 1st Australian Division was ashore safely and its leading elements were pushing inland. By mid-morning Ottoman general Mustafa Kemal had reorganised the defenders for a counter-attack on the commanding heights of ''Conk Bayırı'' and ''Sarı Bayır''. The right flank of the small lodgement taken by the Australians was captured again. During the afternoon and evening the left flank was pushed back. By evening the allies planned to attack again but when the navy advices that re-embarkation was impossible, Hamilton ordered the troops to dig-in defence lines instead. The Ottoman counter-attack was eventually repulsed and the Australians established a invaded perimeter to be defenced. ANZAC casualties on the first day were around 2,000 men killed or wounded.
The landing at Cape Helles was going well but the landing at Anzac Cove was not as successful and the Anzac commander, Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, contemplated the re-embarkation of his troops.
Above-the slideshow about Ottoman defending Forces in gallipoli
THE EARLY BATTLES IN THE AREA;
On the afternoon of 27 April, the 19th Division of Ottoman forces, counter-attacked the six Allied brigades at Anzac. The allies got the support of battleship naval fire and could hold the Ottomans back throughout the night. İn the morning French troops which were transferred from Lumkale joined British troops on the Asiatic shore near the beach at Morto Bay. On 28 April, the Allies fought the First Battle of Krithia to capture the village. Hunter-Weston made a bad plan which caused to lack of communication. The troops of the 29th Division were still exhausted and unnerved by the battles for the beaches and for Seddülbahir village, which was captured after much fighting on 26 April. The Ottoman defenders stopped the Allied advance at the evening by having 3,000 casualties.
When the Ottoman reinforcement forces arrived, the allies lost the chance for a swift victory and the fighting at Helles and Anzac became a battle of attrition. On 30 April, the Royal Naval Division landed. The Ottoman commander in charge Mustafa Kemal who was believing that the Allies were on the verge of defeat, began moving troops forward. Eight battalions of reinforcements were brought from Istanbul a day later and Ottoman troops counter-attacked at Helles and Anzac. The Ottomans succeded to reach in the French sector but the attacks were repulsed by massed Allied machine-gun fire. Ottoman troops had many casualties. The following night the New Zealand and Australian Division were ordered to attack. Covered by a naval and artillery barrage, the troops advanced a short distance during the night but got separated in the dark. Than they have faced with Ottoman massed small-arms fire from their left flank and were repulsed, having suffered about 1,000 casualties.
There were also conflicts in the sea. On 30 April, an allied submarine were sunk by Ottoman torpedo boat Sultanhisar. The crew was taken as prisoner. On may 1 the French submarine Joule attempted to pass, but struck a mine and was lost with all hands. Several weeks earlier another French boat, Saphir, had been lost after running aground near Nagara Point.
On 5 May, the 42nd a British Division was dispatched from Egypt. Hamilton moved the Australians and the New Zealandians along with 20 Australian field guns, to the Helles front as reserves for the Second Battle of Krithia. It was the first general attack with 20.000 soldiers at Helles and was planned for daylight. French troops were to capture Kereves Dere and the British, Australians and New Zealanders were assigned Krithia and Achi Baba. After 30 minutes of artillery preparation, the assault began at mid-morning on 6 May. The British and French advanced but they were separated by deep gullies on the unfamiliar terrain fortified by the Ottomans. Under artillery and then machine-gun fire from Ottoman outposts that had not been spotted by British aerial reconnaissance, the attack was stopped; next day, reinforcements resumed the advance.
The attack continued on 7 May and four battalions of New Zealanders attacked up Krithia Spur on 8 May; with the help of 29th Division they managed to reach a position just south of the village. Late in the afternoon, the Australian 2nd Brigade advanced quickly over open ground to the British front line. Under small arms and artillery-fire, the brigade charged towards Krithia and could just gain an area smaller than 1 square kilometers with 1,000 casualties. The New Zealanders managed to get forward and link up with the Australians, although the British were held up and the French were exhausted, despite having occupied an aimed point. The attack was suspended and the Allies started to dig in, having failed to take the objectives.
A brief period of consolidation and recovery followed the failed attacks. The Allies had almost run out of ammunition for light guns and also for artillery and both sides were trying to consolidate their defence lines. Rare & territorial fighs continued, with sniping, grenade attacks and sudden raids. The opposing trenches separated in places by only a few metres. They were so close that the enemies sometimes throwing each other foods like biscuits or bread intead of grenades. They were not hating each other but they were trying to kill when possible. The Australians lost a number of officers by sniper fire, including the commander of the 1st Division, Major General William Bridges, who was wounded during his inspection on troops. he died of his injuries on the hospital ship HMHS Gascon.
Ottoman counter-attack: 19 May
On 19 May, 42,000 Ottoman troops launched an attack at Anzac to push the 17,000 Australians and New Zealanders back into the sea. Short of artillery and ammunition, the Ottomans intended to rely on surprise and weight of numbers but on 18 May, the crews of a flight of British aircraft spotted the Ottoman preparations. The allied forces couldn't have been surprised & Ottomans suffered 3000 dead & 10.000 wounded. Australian and New Zealand casualties were 160 killed and 468 wounded. Ottoman losses were so severe that a truce was organised on 24 May, to bury the dead lying in no man's land. This truce gave the enemies to know each other from close distance without killing each other which led to a camaraderie between the armies.
The British superiority in naval artillery is lost after the battleship HMS Goliath was torpedoed on 13 May by the Ottoman destroyer Muâvenet-i Millîye. A German submarine, U-21, sank HMS Triumph on 25 May and HMS Majestic on 27 May. More British reconnaissance patrols were flown around Gallipoli and U-21 was forced to leave the area but ignorant of this, the Allies withdrew most of their warships to Imbros. The submarine HMS E11 passed through the Dardanelles on 18 May and sank or disabled eleven ships.
Operations at Anzac in early June returned to consolidation, minor engagements and skirmishing with grenades and sniper-fire
Interrogation Turkish soldiers in Gallipoli (Above)
Operations: June–July 1915
In the Helles sector, which was occupied by the troops of both sides, the Allies attacked Krithia and Achi Baba again. The attack was repulsed and trench warfare resumed. The troops of both sides were just in distances which could be measured with tens of metres. Casualties were equal & were approximately 25 percent on both sides. The British forces lost 4,500 out of 20,000 men and the French forces lost 2,000 out of 10,000 troops. Ottoman losses were 9,000 casualties according to the Turkish Official History. The trench warfare was a tiring wait with dozens of sleepless hours, hungry bodies and unbearable smell coming from dead bodies around.
In June, the seaplane carrier HMS Ben-my-Chree arrived and the Allied air effort increased. Liman Von Sanders credited the defence to two Ottoman officers. Between 1 and 5 July, the Ottomans counter-attacked the new British line several times but failed to regain the lost ground. Ottoman casualties for the period were estimated at 14,000 men. On 12 July, two fresh brigades from the 52nd Division of Ottoman attacked but could gain very little ground and lost 2,500 out of 7,500 men. The Royal Naval Division had 600 casualties and French losses were 800 men. Ottoman losses were about 9,000 casualties and 600 prisoners.
At sea, an allied submarine made two voyages into the Marmara. On 8 August, she torpedoed the battleship Barbaros Hayreddin with the loss of 253 men and sank a gunboat, seven transports and 23 sailing vessels.
Anzac Cove Encampment (Above)
August 1915
The failure of the Allies to gain land or make any progress on the Helles front led Hamilton to form a new plan to secure the Sari Bair and Chunuk Bair. Both sides had been reinforced. During the warfares in August the indian troops and Gurkha troops were also used. The Allies had 40 aircrafts. The Ottomans had 20 aircraft, of which eight were stationed at Çanakkale. When the Allied aircrafts were brought to the battlefield they made reconnaissance flights, spotted for naval guns and conducted low-level bombing of Ottoman reserves. Allied aircraft also undertook anti-shipping operations in the Gulf of Saros, where a seaplane from HMS Ben-my-Chree sank an Ottoman tug with an air-launched torpedo.
The landing at Suvla Bay took place on the night of 6 August against light opposition. the British commander, Lieutenant General Frederick Stopford, had limited his early objectives and then failed to push his demands for an advance inland and little more than the beach was seized. The Ottomans were able to occupy the Anafarta Hills, and the English troops were stuck. They were preventing the British from penetrating inland. There was an attack on the evening of 6 August by diversions, at Helles. The Australian 1st Infantry Brigade, captured the main Ottoman trench line, to divert Ottoman forces but the attacks at Chunuk Bair and Hill 971 failed.
The New Zealand Infantry Brigade came within 500 metres of the near peak of Chunuk Bair by dawn on 7 August but was not able to seize the summit until the following morning. On the morning of 7 August, the Australian 3rd Light Horse Brigade attacked on a narrow front against the rear of the Ottoman defences. The opening artillery barrage lifted seven minutes too soon, which alerted the Ottomans and the attack become a failure. An attack on Hill 971 never took place after the Australian 4th Infantry Brigade and an Indian brigade lost direction during the night. Attempts to resume the attack were easily repulsed by the Ottoman defenders, with many casualties from the allies. The New Zealanders held out on Chunuk Bair for two days before being relieved by two New Army battalions but an Ottoman counterattack on 10 August, led by Mustafa Kemal, swept them from the heights. 711 men out of 760 from the New Zealand Wellington Battalion who reached the summit were dead. With the Ottoman recapture of the ground, the Allies' best chance of victory was lost.
The Suvla landing was reinforced by Irish & Welsh divisions on 7 August. On 12 August, the 54th Division attacked Kavak Tepe and Tekke Tepe, crossing the Anafarta Plain. The attack failed and Hamilton briefly considered the evacuation of Suvla and Anzac.
Elements of the new Australian 2nd Division began arriving at Anzac from Egypt with the 5th Infantry Brigade landing from 19–20 August and the 6th Brigade and 7th Brigade arriving in early September. The 29th Division was also shifted from Helles to Suvla. The final British attempt to resuscitate the offensive came on 21 August, in the Battle of Scimitar Hill and the Battle of Hill 60. Control of the hills would have united the Anzac and Suvla fronts but the attacks failed. On 17 August, Hamilton had requested another 95,000 troops but a day earlier, the French had announced plans to Kitchener for an autumn offensive in France. A meeting of the Dardanelles Committee on 20 August determined that the French offensive would be supported by a maximum effort, which left only about 25,000 reinforcements for the Dardanelles. On 23 August, after news of the failure at Scimitar Hill, Hamilton went onto the defensive as Bulgarian entry into the war, which would allow the Germans to rearm the Turkish army, was imminent and left little opportunity for the resumption of offensive operations. On 20 September 1915, the Newfoundland Regiment was deployed at Suvla Bay with the 29th Division. On 25 September, Kitchener detached two British and one French division for service in Salonika in Greece, which was the beginning of the end of the Allied campaign at Gallipoli.
Alan Moorehead wrote that during the stalemate, an old Ottoman batman was regularly permitted to hang his platoon's washing on the barbed wire undisturbed and that there was a "constant traffic" of gifts being thrown across no-man's land, dates and sweets from the Ottoman side and cans of beef and packs of cigarettes from the Allied side. Conditions at Gallipoli grew worse for everyone as summer heat and poor sanitation resulted in an explosion in the fly population. Eating became extremely difficult as unburied corpses became bloated and putrid. The precarious Allied lodgements were poorly situated, which caused supply and shelter problems. A dysentery epidemic spread through the Allied trenches at Anzac and Helles, while the Ottomans also suffered heavily from disease which resulted in many deaths.
Evacuation;
After the failure of the August Offensive, the Gallipoli campaign drifted. Ottoman success began to affect public opinion in Britain, with criticism of Hamilton's performance being smuggled out by Keith Murdoch, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett and other reporters. Stopford and other dissident officers also contributed to the air of gloom and the possibility of evacuation was raised on 11 October 1915. Hamilton resisted the suggestion, fearing the damage to British prestige but was sacked shortly afterwards and replaced by Lieutenant General Sir Charles Monro. Autumn and winter brought relief from the heat but also led to gales, blizzards and flooding, resulting in men drowning and freezing to death, while thousands suffered frostbite. The Serbian defeat in the Serbian Campaign in autumn 1915 prompted France and Britain to transfer troops from the Gallipoli Campaign to Greek Macedonia; the Macedonian Front was established to support the remnants of the Serbian army to conquer Vardar Macedonia.
On 4 September, the submarine E7 was caught in the Ottoman anti-submarine net as it began another tour. The first French submarine to enter the Sea of Marmara was Turquoise but it was forced to turn back; on 30 October, when returning through the straits, it ran aground beneath a fort and was captured intact. The crew of 25 were taken prisoner and documents detailing planned Allied operations were discovered, including a scheduled rendezvous with HMS E20 on 6 November. The rendezvous was kept by the German U-boat U-14 instead, which torpedoed and sank E20, killing all but nine of the crew.
The situation at Gallipoli was complicated by Bulgaria joining the Central Powers. In early October 1915, the British and French opened a second Mediterranean front at Salonika, by moving three divisions from Gallipoli and reducing the flow of reinforcements. A land route between Germany and the Ottoman Empire through Bulgaria was opened and the Germans rearmed the Ottomans with heavy artillery capable of devastating Allied trenches, especially on the confined front at Anzac, modern aircraft and experienced crews. In late November, an Ottoman crew in a German Albatros C.I shot down a French aircraft over Gaba Tepe and the Austro-Hungarian 36. Haubitzbatterie and 9. Motormörserbatterie artillery units arrived, providing a substantial reinforcement of the Ottoman artillery. Monro recommended evacuation to Kitchener, who in early November visited the eastern Mediterranean. After consulting with the commanders Kitchener agreed with Monro and passed his recommendation to the British Cabinet, who confirmed the decision to evacuate in early December.
Due to the narrowness of no man's land and the harsh winter weather, many casualties were anticipated during the embarkation. The untenable nature of the Allied position was made apparent by a heavy rainstorm on 26 November 1915. The downpour at Suvla lasted for three days and there was a blizzard in early December. Rain flooded trenches, drowned soldiers and washed unburied corpses into the lines; the following snow killed still more men from exposure.Suvla and Anzac were to be evacuated in late December, the last troops leaving before dawn on 20 December. Troop numbers had been slowly reduced since 7 December and ruses, such as William Scurry's self-firing rifle, which had been rigged to fire by water dripped into a pan attached to the trigger, were used to disguise the Allied departure. At Anzac Cove, troops maintained silence for an hour or more, until curious Ottoman troops ventured to inspect the trenches, whereupon the Anzacs opened fire. A mine was detonated at the Nek, which killed 70 Ottoman soldiers. The Allied force was embarked, with the Australians suffering no casualties on the final night, but large quantities of supplies and stores fell into Ottoman hands.
Helles was retained for a period but a decision to evacuate the garrison was made on 28 December. Unlike the evacuation from Anzac Cove, Ottoman forces were looking for signs of withdrawal.Having used the interval to bring up reinforcements and supplies, Sanders mounted an attack on the British at Gully Spur on 7 January 1916 with infantry and artillery but the attack was a costly failure. Mines were laid with time fuzes and that night and on the night of 7/8 January, under the cover of a naval bombardment, the British troops began to fall back 5 miles from their lines to the beaches, where makeshift piers were used to board boats.The last British troops departed from Lancashire Landing around 04:00 on 8 January 1916. The Newfoundland Regiment was part of the rearguard and withdrew on 9 January 1916.Among the first to land, remnants of The Plymouth Battalion, Royal Marine Light Infantry were the last to leave the Peninsula.
Despite predictions of up to 30,000 casualties, 35,268 troops, 3,689 horses and mules, 127 guns, 328 vehicles and 1,600 long tons of equipment were removed;508 mules that could not be embarked were killed so as not to fall into Ottoman hands and 1,590 vehicles were left behind with smashed wheels. As at Anzac, large amounts of supplies , gun carriages and ammunition were left behind; hundreds of horses were slaughtered to deny them to the Ottomans. Shortly after dawn, the Ottomans retook Helles.
