The Dandarnelles Disaster

by Dan Van der Vat

  As noted above, everybody in the Allied war leadership, including Churchill, accepted the received wisdom, dating back more than a century, that a combined operation was the only realistic approach to forcing the Dardanelles and that it would be difficult – but that a success could be decisive for the course of the war because it would be an enormous help to the cause of the Entente in general and Russia in particular. Kitchener’s understandable if frustrating refusal to commit his last reserve of battle-hardened soldiers that might yet be needed on the main front in France prompted Churchill and others to cast about for troops elsewhere – the Greek Army, then the navy’s own marines plus the RN Division, the two ANZAC divisions, a French division …

  But why? Kitchener believed that 150,000 men would be needed to capture and hold the Gallipoli peninsula, which was not only the main threat to a fleet advancing up the strait but was also the overland route to Constantinople from the Mediterranean. The generals simply did not believe the navy could do it alone. A scratch, mostly unblooded, force of 50,000 was neither fish nor fowl: much larger than was needed for pinprick raids to spike shore-based guns for the navy (which could be done by the four marine battalions plus bluejackets), and too small for a landing in strength as part of a combined operation. Nevertheless Kitchener issued orders on 20 February to Lieutenant-General Sir J. G. Maxwell, the commander-in-chief in Egypt, to prepare ANZAC, under the British Major-General Sir William Birdwood, for service at the Dardanelles. Kitchener told Maxwell to contact Carden and find out if he needed troops before 9 March, when the transports for ANZAC would be ready at Alexandria. If so, Maxwell was to send an advance party in locally available transports at once. The Admiralty had already mustered six troopships at Alexandria which would be ready to leave on 27 February. In south-west England the Admiralty had also organised transports for the 29th, which were ready on 22 February; Kitchener however had told the Admiralty the day before that the division would not be leaving.

  Admiral Carden intended to continue his bombardment of the entrance forts the next day, 20 February. But, as so often at the Dardanelles in winter, the weather turned hostile. A gale was blowing, and stormy conditions prevailed until the afternoon of the 22nd. Carden had hopes of completing the destruction of the outer forts the next day, but the weather turned foul again. Meanwhile he had told General Maxwell that he wanted 10,000 troops to be landed at the south-western end of the Gallipoli peninsula, at a point where it was just five miles wide, as soon as the outer forts had been silenced. They could occupy the local high point at Achi Baba, from which accurate spotting of the fall of shot should be possible (although a visit to the unachieved objective of the later British landings shows that it was not high enough anyway). This proposal alarmed the War Office; and Maxwell on his own initiative dispatched just one infantry brigade of Australians to Lemnos on 23 February. On the same day he sent Birdwood to confer on the spot with Carden and assess the military possibilities and requirements.

  The War Council debated the Dardanelles again on 24 February. Churchill reported on the frustrating weather conditions. Kitchener opined that if the fleet did break through, Turkish troops on the peninsula would probably retire towards Constantinople to avoid being cut off and starved. The 29th Division figured prominently in the discussion. The ‘easterners’ made the point that one division, however good, was hardly likely to make a noticeable difference on the Western Front, whereas it could play a decisive role at the Dardanelles as a first-class leavening for otherwise raw troops. Everyone recognised that if it were to be sent east, the decision would signify a strategic shift, nothing less than the opening of a new front. If it did go, the last shred of credibility attached to Kitchener’s airy theory, that the attack on the Dardanelles could simply be abandoned if progress were not made, would disappear. A commitment of 100,000 men (including the promised French and Russian divisions), with a crack British division in the van, could not be cancelled after a landing without severe loss of prestige. The concept of a combined operation appeared to be gaining ground as if by stealth. But the Admiralty did not go that far, regarding the troops as strictly supplementary to the fleet, to be used for limited local operations against strongpoints and the like. Kitchener was prone to oracular pronouncements, and he chose this stage of the debate to announce that the Allies could not afford to fail at the Dardanelles, a 180-degree change of course on his part. The loss of prestige would be catastrophic. The Secretary of State for War followed his own argument to its conclusion: if the navy did not succeed alone, then the army would have to see the job through.

  The next day, 25 February, Carden was at last in a position to resume the bombardment of the entrance forts, completing the third stage of phase one of his plan, although the wind was too strong for seaplanes to be able to go up to spot the fall of shot. The Royal Marines were ordered to be ready to make local landings against gun positions. Four battleships operating in pairs, one British, one French, were ordered to try for direct hits on the forts at Orkanie and Helles at quite close range, down to 3,000 yards, with their secondary armament. Behind them three British battleships, including the Queen Elizabeth, and one French, would fire heavy shells at all four forts to deter the defenders from manning their guns. The Queen Elizabeth was soon engaged in a lively exchange at 10,000 yards with the Helles guns, which were firing coolly and accurately. The supporting Agamemnon was hit seven times in ten minutes, taking moderate damage and three fatalities. Both ships returned to the fray and by noon appeared to have knocked out the two 24-centimetre guns of the battery. Their crews were seen fleeing. The Helles fort was also putting up a spirited defence, straddling the Gaulois, which blasted the fort in return to such effect that it too was apparently silenced. The main forts at Sedd el Bahr and Kum Kale took many hits and fired few shots in return. The effect, if any, on their guns could not be discerned.

  Even so, by three p.m. Admiral Carden felt confident enough to start the next phase – minesweeping inside the strait. The trawlers, escorted by destroyers and covered by three battleships, moved up an hour later. All four target forts were silent. HMS Albion approached the Asian and Triumph the European shore until 2,000 yards off, opening a brisk fire with their secondary guns. Vengeance stood by in reserve. Only Orkanie shot back, and was immediately shelled by Agamemnon and Irresistible as well as Albion. Helles and Kum Kale got off one shot each; Sedd el Bahr appeared to have been silenced altogether. A handful of hidden, mobile guns fired a few ineffectual rounds. At four p.m. the minesweepers started work in pairs, each pair towing a cable between them to dislodge tethered mines, which would then be set off by rifle fire if necessary. It was very slow work for the trawlers as their underpowered engines struggled against the current. Three battleships remained on station behind them as the rest of the heavy ships retired. Carden and Guépratte reported in optimistic terms to their respective governments that evening.

  The distance from the entrance of the Dardanelles to Kephez Point, a small promontory on the Asian side, is about ten nautical miles. Here the strait is at its narrowest, some 2,800 yards (2,500 metres) wide, except for the Narrows themselves at Chanak, about 1,200 yards wide and nearly three miles further in. Albion and Triumph were ordered to sail as far as Kephez, flanking another old battleship, HMS Majestic (1895), just arrived from England on the 25th and exhibiting an unusual temporary feature: each of her two 12-inch-gun turrets sported a howitzer on top for engaging inland targets. The trio were preceded by the trawlers, which began sweeping overnight to about four miles inside the strait. They had found nothing by eight a.m., when the battleships began their advance, their purpose to bombard the forts on each shore and destroy gun-batteries, a bridge, an observation post and suspected land-based torpedo tubes south of Kephez. Among the main targets were Fort Dardanos on the Asian side and a new Fort Messudieh (armed with the eponymous torpedoed ship’s recovered guns) on the European, roughly opposite each other on a line about one mile short of Kephez, and each supported by subsidiary batter
ies covering the minefields, some fixed, some mobile.

  On their way in, the battleships sought to complete the destruction of the main entrance forts, Sedd el Bahr and Kum Kale, from ‘behind’ or inside the strait. After that, Albion and Majestic began shelling Dardanos from six miles away. Only the occasional shot was fired in reply. Dardanos itself did not respond. At three p.m., as the range from shore to sea shortened, the defenders sharply increased their rate of fire, mostly from concealed and/ or mobile batteries which neither lookouts on the ships nor even scouting seaplanes were able to pinpoint. Dozens of these guns, as well as mortars, had been added to the defences in the preceding three months. They were able to concentrate their fire in such a way as to force incoming ships to keep moving in order to evade potentially serious damage from plunging shot. The Majestic took a direct hit below the waterline before de Robeck on the Vengeance ordered the cease-fire. The damage was not serious.

  Carden’s second-in-command had been checking the shores nearer the entrance for mobile batteries and found one abandoned on a beach near Kum Kale. De Robeck decided to land demolition parties to destroy the guns spotted on both shores. Half a dozen battleships and cruisers were called up in support. The Vengeance landed a naval demolition party and 50 Royal Marines to protect them at 2.30 p.m. The small force came under crossfire but Lieutenant-Commander E. G. Robinson, RN, pressed ahead to destroy the guns at Orkanie, winning the VC. On the European side the Irresistible landed 45 marines and 30 bluejackets of a demolition party to attack the Sedd el Bahr guns: four out of six heavy guns were found to be intact amid the rubble. Guncotton charges rammed into their barrels destroyed them. The raiding party tried to move on to the Helles fort but was halted by enemy infantry and artillery fire. A pair of medium field guns were destroyed as the party withdrew. Only a few men had received minor wounds. Carden resolved to continue these productive raids the next day, 27 February, but was once again foiled by the weather, which produced heavy squalls in the morning. In the afternoon Irresistible landed a naval demolition party covered by some 80 marines at Sedd el Bahr to disable a battery of six German 15-centimetre mortars. Despite a counter-attack the British party achieved its objective without loss and was safely re-embarked under the battleship’s booming heavy guns.

  The weather on 28 February was so wild that no operations, whether minesweeping, bombardment or landings, were possible. Snow now masked both shores of the strait, and gales turned into blizzards. Planned landings were cancelled, but Carden ordered de Robeck on 1 March to take four battleships as far as was safe up the strait (the four miles that had been swept for mines) to check and if necessary renew the bombardment of the forts battered by the Allied navies earlier. Even so the defenders managed to play cat and mouse with the attackers. Two battleships fired on Fort Dardanos and another in the vicinity. Two others searched for mobile guns and the positions behind Sedd el Bahr from which the resistance to the landing there had come. Having silenced guns firing on them near Kum Kale on the Asian side, the second pair moved on – and promptly came under heavy fire from howitzers as they passed Erenkeui Bay. De Robeck, his flag transferred to the Irresistible, crossed over from the European shore to support them. The three ships imposed silence on the local defence in half an hour and de Robeck ordered the first pair of battleships to make a sweep up the European shore. The Turkish guns on that side now laid down a fierce curtain of fire, forcing a temporary withdrawal until naval fire could be concentrated on the new threat. A quarter of an hour later, at 1.15 p.m., Albion and Triumph moved in slowly to attack Dardanos again. Obstructed by their own destroyers escorting the minesweepers, the two ships came under the most intense and accurate fire yet from the European shore. Forced to take evasive action, they could not hope to mount an accurate bombardment of Dardanos, so they switched their attentions to the European littoral. Having imposed silence on that side, the Allied ships came under a truly withering fire from many well-dispersed and hidden guns on the Asian side, which the circling attackers could not silence. So they withdrew, baffled, for the day.

  De Robeck, noting a considerable improvement in the weather, decided to send a large landing party to complete the destruction of the Kum Kale fort. The result was both good news – and bad. The navy demolition men, covered by the usual 50 marines, made a successful landing in which they destroyed eight heavy guns in the fort and half a dozen medium field guns positioned to the west. As the party withdrew to its boats it destroyed four more guns and a mobile searchlight without any casualties. The bad news was that the fort itself had only had nine heavy guns; all the shelling had done was to wreck one of them, leaving seven untouched and one dismounted but still usable.

  The minesweepers carried on after dark on 1 March, at least until 11 p.m., when a powerful searchlight came on as they were about a mile and a half short of Kephez Point, followed by massed fire from the mobile batteries on both sides placed there to cover the minefields. The trawlers cut their sweeping cables and retired as their escorting destroyers fired blind and hastily put up a smokescreen. After 40 minutes the navy knocked out the searchlight and the trawlers withdrew undamaged. Here was more food for thought for Carden: to add to the evidence that big naval guns were not much use against shore batteries (far more damage was done to them by the landing parties), he had been shown that minesweeping, at least in its current form, lay somewhere between difficult and downright impossible. An impossible dilemma or what would now be called a ‘Catch 22’ was developing: the battleships could not silence the guns unless the mines were swept, but the mines could not be swept until the guns were silenced. This is how Admiral Wemyss, commanding at Mudros, saw the situation at the time:

  The battleships could not force the straits until the minefield had been cleared – the minefield could not be cleared until the concealed guns which defended them [sic] were destroyed – they could not be destroyed until the peninsula was in our hands, hence we should have to seize it with the army.

  The only way to resolve this was indeed to send troops ashore to take the guns in the rear, which is why almost everyone at the Admiralty and the War Office had always believed that a combined operation was the only way to break through the Dardanelles. A landing on the Gallipoli peninsula and the seizure of its guns would enable them to be turned on the less well-hidden artillery on the lower-lying Asian shore.

  The 2nd of March began with another storm, making landings impossible. Carden’s force meanwhile had reached peak strength, with 18 battleships organised in three divisions: the first consisting of the four most modern British vessels in two subdivisions, the second comprising the older British ships in three subdivisions, and the third was the French quartet. Two seaplane-carriers, four light cruisers, destroyers and submarines completed the fighting fleet. The fourth subdivision, led by HMS Canopus, back in action after her Falklands efforts, entered the strait in the afternoon and concentrated on reducing the Dardanos fort from positions off the European shore. After about two hours the fort suddenly fired back with considerable effect, hitting Canopus three times in short order and causing minor damage. Keeping on the move to minimise damage, the three ships came under fire from positions on both sides, but kept up the pressure on Dardanos, where one gun was reported to have been hit. Mobile batteries were a major irritant for the attackers, who withdrew before dusk. After dark, another attempt to clear mines was started but there was such heavy gunfire from howitzers and field guns that the trawlers and destroyers soon fell back. Meanwhile, in a useful diversion, the French battleships sailed up the western side of the Gallipoli peninsula to reconnoitre possible landing places and shell military installations in the Bulair area – the northern neck of the peninsula. Accompanying minesweepers found nothing.

  The weather was good enough on the afternoon of the 3rd for landing another raiding party from Irresistible, which destroyed a hidden battery of six field guns near Sedd el Bahr without injury. The fifth subdivision of three battleships engaged in further bouts of inconclusive
bombardment against both coasts. The European side was the more active this time in shooting back. The battleships retired unhurt, and the minesweepers moved up for another attempt to complete phase two after dark.

  The seaplanes were still unable to contribute very much in their would-be role observing the fall of shot. The only apparent solution to this crippling difficulty was Carden’s idea of seizing Achi Baba heights near the end of the peninsula. But two battalions of marines at Lemnos and the raw Australian brigade about to arrive from Alexandria, the only troops within Carden’s immediate reach, were by no means enough to take and hold the position. Carden’s pedestrian leadership, soon to come to an end, has often been criticised and was doubted at the time, but he clearly saw the need for accurate observation and the means for obtaining it. He proposed landing 10,000 troops to do it – and was turned down in London by army and navy alike. Naval officers who had observed the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 and the slow progress of the Japanese siege of the Russian naval base at Port Arthur, and others who had taken part in the capture of Tsingtao, the German base on the northern Chinese coast, late in 1914, supported

  Carden’s idea, to no avail. Even General Birdwood, who arrived to see the situation for himself and conferred with Carden on 3 March, failed to appreciate the navy’s specific need for a good observation post. But he did realise that the concealed and mobile batteries were a major problem and therefore recommended an immediate landing on the peninsula to take the defence guns in the rear. He wanted to deploy all 30,000 infantrymen in ANZAC, who could not be fully available before 18 March. Birdwood did not believe the navy could succeed alone and proposed a landing at Cape Helles with a simultaneous feint in strength against Bulair at the other end of the peninsula. He believed Achi Baba could be taken in three days.