Grasping Gallipoli

by Peter Chasseaud

  This was followed by a ‘Very Secret’ report, dated 8 August 1906, entitled The Forcing of the Dardanelles (The Naval Aspects of the Question)17 and submitted to the CID on 10 August. Ottley concluded that his considerations:

  … make it plain that from the naval point of view any attempt to send the fleet to Constantinople as an operation of war against Turkey without first destroying the forts in the Dardanelles, is greatly to be deprecated. Hence, if the emergency should arise, we are driven back upon the well-known and matured plan [emphasis added] for a combined naval and military expedition to seize and hold the isthmus [sic] of Gallipoli with the forts on the northern shore of the Dardanelles.

  The report examined the amphibious operations which would be required, including capturing and holding the Bulair Lines at the narrowest part of the Peninsula using some ‘less valuable ships’,18 a phrase which reappears in the December 1906 report. In the final draft of this report, Ottley concluded that ‘Such an operation is believed to be perfectly feasible. It would be desirable as time and opportunity offers to frequently practise the joint naval and military operation of embarking and disembarking the troops’, without giving away the intended destination. He emphasised that surprise was essential, and it was imperative to ‘conceal any locality to be represented’.19

  By the next meeting of the CID in November, Grierson had been replaced (for instigating unauthorised staff talks with the French) by Major-General Sir John Ewart, who advocated a surprise attack by troops rapidly and secretly transported from Malta, supported by fleet landing parties. Fisher stated that German control of Turkey implied that the Turks could no longer be bribed to allow the passage of the fleet, and he ‘hoped that no attack on the Dardanelles would ever be undertaken in any form’. Esher wanted any naval attack to be supported by the military, while Haldane was concerned about Britain’s loss of face in the Moslem world in the event of failure, and also about the possible loss of ships. He therefore favoured an alternative such as capturing Aegean islands. The failure on this occasion to arrive at a clear preference for one of the three possible alternatives outlined by the Prime Minister, Campbell-Bannerman – a purely naval attack, a naval attack supported by military landings, or a genuinely amphibious attack jointly by the fleet and a large expeditionary force20 – was to be echoed in 1914–15. An important result of this meeting was that the conclusion of the previous meeting – that the best way to defeat the Turks might be either a purely naval attack on the Dardanelles, or one accompanied by an expeditionary force – was deleted.

  As a result of this impasse, Campbell-Bannerman, for the CID, instructed the General Staff at the War Office, in conjunction with the Admiralty, to prepare a paper on ‘The Possibility of a Joint Naval and Military Attack upon the Dardanelles, with a Note by the Director of Naval Intelligence.’21 This was duly prepared at the War Office by Colonel Charles Callwell,22 dated 20 December 1906, and printed as a secret document in February 1907. The General Staff at the War Office and the Director of Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty showed their appreciation of the ‘great risks’ of a joint naval and military operation to take the Gallipoli Peninsula. While the military were pessimistic about the prospects for success of such an operation, the Naval Intelligence Division, in view of developments in the power of modern naval guns, took a more optimistic view. It concluded: ‘Military opinion, looking at the question from the point of view of coast defence, will be in entire agreement with the naval view that unaided action by the Fleet, bearing in mind the risks involved, is much to be deprecated’,23 leaving open the possibility of military landings to aid the navy. This memorandum was written by Charles Callwell, though it was printed under the name of General Sir Neville Lyttleton, the Chief of the General Staff. Being considered too sensitive, the report was withdrawn from circulation shortly after being issued.

  Ominous information that the Turks were strengthening their forts and reinforcing garrisons in the Sea of Marmara was received by Haldane late in 1906, and would therefore be more resistant to pressure via the Dardanelles should another crisis occur.24 It was agreed at a CID meeting on 28 February 1907 that the Dardanelles should only be tackled if there was no alternative, and that a sub-committee should be formed to look at other ways of applying military force to Turkey than via the Dardanelles.25 This decision had far-reaching results, leading to the recall of all copies of the joint General Staff and NID memoranda. These were not therefore available at the War Office in 1914–15 when the question was reopened.26 Not only that, but the decision had implications for intelligence acquisition, as it suggested downgrading (at least for the time being) the Dardanelles as an intelligence target.

  Paradoxically, 1907 and 1908 were years in which the War Office and Admiralty gave great attention to the Dardanelles. A 1908 General Staff study of the Dardanelles problem concluded that if the whole operation could be cloaked in secrecy, a simultaneous action by a 20,000-strong military force landing south of Gaba Tepe and attacking the Kilid Bahr Plateau from the west, with the fleet shooting its way through the Narrows, could achieve success (the Ewart view). Yet another War Office review in 1911 confirmed the 1906 judgement, concluding that it was impossible to achieve surprise and that the operation was therefore too risky.27

  Thus, at a critical stage of British relations with Turkey in the run-up to the First World War, the amphibious possibilities had been examined without any clear conclusion being reached. This lack of a clear operational vision, while it may well have been the result of a lack of precedent, technological unknowns, and a fine balance of probable outcomes, implied that whatever approach was endorsed would be a ‘leap in the dark’. Another implication was that it would be less likely that a serious joint-service plan would be commissioned by the CID.

  The Balkan Wars: the Gallipoli Peninsula is fortified

  Between 1911 and 1914, while no further dedicated staff study of the Dardanelles problem was made, intelligence continued to be gathered. Meanwhile the Turkish war with Italy in 1911–12 (the Italians bombarded the Dardanelles forts in April 1912 but did not attempt to enter the mined waters of the Narrows), and the Balkan Wars of 1912–13, continued to focus London’s attention on that theatre. It is important to realise the extent to which the Dardanelles, and the Gallipoli Peninsula, were being prepared against invasion in the years before the First World War. Against the background of the Balkan Wars, Italy and Greece island-hopped across the Aegean. In April and May 1912 Italy occupied Stampalia, Rhodes and the rest of the Dodecanese islands, while in November the Greeks occupied Lemnos, Imbros, Mitylene, Chios and the remaining Aegean islands, advancing to within a few miles of the Gallipoli Peninsula and generating such a spirit of ‘revanche’ that the Turks immediately ordered two new battleships from British shipyards.27 Henceforth it would be even easier for Greece to gather military, topographic and hydrographic intelligence for future operations. On 21 January 1913 the Greeks defeated the Turks in a naval action off Lemnos. The Treaty of London of 30 May 1913 confirmed Greece in her possession of Chios and Mitylene, a clear threat to Smyrna, where half the population was Greek. In fact practically the whole population of the coast of Asia Minor was Greek.29 In 1913 the Turks dug trenches on the Peninsula, mostly on the Kilid Bahr plateau, anticipating a possible Greek landing attack and, following the Bulgarian capture of Adrianople, actually repulsed a Bulgarian attack on the Bulair Lines defending the Peninsula from the north.

  Following the Treaty of London, however, the Turks sent troops across the Enos–Midia armistice line and retook Adrianople, claiming that they needed to save the population from massacre and that they had to establish a suitable frontier to defend Constantinople and the Dardanelles. The new position was consolidated by the Peace of Bucharest on 7 August 1913, leading the ambassadors of the ‘six powers’ to ask that Turkey respect the Treaty of London and evacuate Adrianople, in return for possible strategic compensations. At the end of 1913 the powers agreed that Greece should keep the islands provided she eva
cuated southern Albania; the Turks only accepted this ‘with regret’, and made it clear that they would ‘seek satisfaction’. At the same time the Italians remained in possession of Rhodes and neighbouring islands, and egged the Turks on to confront Greece. In the summer of 1914 war almost broke out between Turkey and Greece over attacks by Turkish immigrants from Macedonia on the Greek population of Ionia.30 The whole of the Aegean was an armed camp; like the Balkans, of which it was an extension, it was a ‘powder keg’.

  The view in the War Office from 1910, and even earlier, was that, in the event of a general European war, Turkey would join the German camp. The British view was that the Greeks should hold all the islands other than Tenedos and Imbros, and in the early months of 1914, at a time when the Russians might get too involved in the question of control of the Dardanelles, the British Ambassador in Constantinople, Sir Louis Mallet, and the Foreign Office, were seriously discussing the use of force by Britain against the Ottoman Empire. The island situation became so tense that the Turks were actively preparing against a Greek invasion, and remained serious right up to the outbreak of war.31 Two points arise from all this. Firstly, Turkey was fully alive to the dangers and had already put the Dardanelles and Gallipoli Peninsula into a state of defence. Secondly, decades of British interest in operations against the Dardanelles and the Peninsula had not weakened the British military and naval attention focused on this area. Despite these two factors, no strong intelligence attack or operational planning was started in London. HMS Inflexible, flagship of Admiral Milne, the C-in-C Mediterranean Fleet, sailed through the Dardanelles in June 1914, arriving at Constantinople for an official visit on the 26th.32 No doubt British intelligence officers took the opportunity to make a close study of the defences.

  In Greece, Rear Admiral Mark Kerr (Chief of the British Naval Mission to Greece and Commander-in-Chief of the Greek fleet) was assisting the Greeks to organise their defence plans. Kerr noted that, as a continuation of the Balkan Wars, at the beginning of 1914 it seemed likely that Turkey and Bulgaria would declare war on Greece. When Admiral Condouriotis told King Constantine that the Greek fleet could sail up the Dardanelles, Constantine asked the naval minister to pass this opinion to Kerr, and asked for his view. Kerr replied that the British Navy, even if supported by all other navies, could not pass the Dardanelles until the minefields were cleared, but these could not be swept until the forts overlooking them had been captured. This could not happen until the Gallipoli Peninsula, followed by the Asiatic Shore, was captured by a large military force. Following this, other places would have to be garrisoned to prevent Turkish reinforcements recapturing the shores of the Straits. Constantine, agreeing with Kerr, ordered him to prepare a scheme, and directed the army staff to work out the military requirements.

  Kerr’s scheme was for 20,000 men to capture Alexandretta, through which the railway from the south (Syria) passed, for another 30,000 to land at Aivaili in the Gulf of Adrymati, to prevent the Smyrna Army Corps from going north, and for two regiments to land behind the Kum Kale fort on the Asiatic side of the entrance to the Dardanelles and, capturing this, to turn the guns on to Sedd-el-Bahr fort on the Gallipoli side. A further 30,000 men would then, under cover of naval guns, capture the Bulair Lines, and 80,000 men would land between Gabe Tepe and Cape Helles, and capture the Kilid Bahr forts from the rear.33 This plan, formulated in early 1914, was revived in September.

  The military attaché in Athens from 1 March 1915, Lieut.-Col. Sir Thomas Montgomery Cunninghame, who conferred with Colonel Metaxas on 3 March 1915 and subsequently, told the Dardanelles Commission that the Greeks had in fact worked out several successive plans:34

  1. Towards the close of the 1912 Balkan War, when the Turks were defending the Gallipoli Peninsula against the Bulgarians at the Bulair Lines;

  2. In June 1914 Col. Metaxas’s Anafarta (Suvla) plan which, combined with independent operations against Cape Helles and Kum Kale, stated that the scheme was impossible if not carried out as a coup de main;

  3. Instructions given by the Admiralty on 3 September 1914 to Rear Admiral Kerr to work out a plan of descent on the Peninsula in concert with the Greeks; this was approved by King Constantine on 5 September, and

  4. Col. Metaxas’s plan for co-operation against Turkey by a direct march by Greece on Constantinople, making provision for possible hostility of Bulgaria, on which the Greek offer of co-operation against Turkey was made on 14 April 1915. This plan did not include an attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

  Sir Basil Thomson noted that the Greek ‘detailed scheme’ of 1912 was given to Kerr by King Constantine, and that the 1914 plan, drawn up by Colonel Metaxas, was ‘substantially the same as the Anafarta scheme adopted by Hamilton in August 1915’ – i.e. the Suvla Bay landing scheme. He also stated that the Greeks refused to take part in the ‘Dardanelles adventure’ because they were convinced it would fail. Constantine and his General Staff held the view that the only way to force the Dardanelles was by simultaneous attack by a fleet and strong land forces supported by the heaviest artillery.35

  In 1911 the remarkable figure of Winston Churchill appeared on the stage, when Asquith promoted him from Home Secretary to be First Lord of the Admiralty. Without this fateful decision the whole Gallipoli Campaign, that brilliant strategic conception which soared like a rocket before fizzling to extinction, might not have occurred. The collapse of the campaign brought Churchill crashing down. He was forced to resign from the Cabinet, and was only re-admitted to government after a spell cooling his heels as a battalion commander on the Western Front.

  War with Germany, August 1914

  But this is to anticipate. When war with Germany was declared on 4 August 1914, the Ottoman Empire remained neutral. Germany was determined to force Turkey into hostilities against the Allies in order to close the Dardanelles, blocking their southern route to Russia. This Germany succeeded in doing by applying massive leverage via her diplomatic and military representatives in Constantinople and the Dardanelles. The separate but related incidents of the British impounding (on 3 August) two almost completed Turkish warships in British shipyards (for which the Turkish peasantry had paid large contributions), and the illegal passage on 10 August of the German warships Goeben and Breslau through the Dardanelles to Constantinople, where they became symbolic substitutes for the ships ‘stolen’ by the British, both played their part in tipping Turkey in favour of Germany. On 15 August the British Naval Mission at Constantinople, under Vice-Admiral A H Limpus, was deprived of its executive command, and the German Admiral Souchon was soon appointed to the command of the Turkish Navy.36

  On 19 August Mr Erskine, the British chargé d’affaires in Athens, telegraphed to Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office that Venizelos, on behalf of the Greek government, had placed all its naval and military resources at the disposal of the Entente powers.37 On the same day, Sir Louis Mallett, the British Ambassador at Constantinople, suggested that a possible forcing of the Dardanelles might help to win the war; however, he qualified this a week later by emphasising that the operation could only succeed if troops were also used. It should be emphasised that, despite this talk of operations, the Allies at this stage wanted to keep Turkey neutral, and to avoid a further Balkan war, within the context of a neutral bloc created from Rumania and the Balkan states. If the Allies accepted Greece’s offer, their scheme for such a neutral zone would collapse, and the action might tip Turkey into Germany’s willing arms.

  On 29 August Sir Francis Elliot, the British Minister at Athens, informed the Foreign Office that the Russian minister there had asked the Greek king if he would consider providing an expeditionary force to assist an attack on the Dardanelles. The prospect of Constantinople was dazzling for Greece, which ever aspired to recreate Byzantium, if not Alexander’s empire. The king replied in the affirmative, but later inserted the condition that the neutrality of Bulgaria (which threatened Greece’s flank) must first be guaranteed.

  So far, the Allies had chosen to ignore what th
ey considered Turkey’s flagrant breaches of neutrality but they were faced with a bewildering set of possible ‘rational strategy’ scenarios. Given their belief that it was not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ Turkey joined the Central Powers, they could not ignore the fact that there were great strategic and military advantages to be gained from a pre-emptive strike, either to force Turkey to throw off Germany’s ‘evil counsellors’ and maintain its neutrality, or to attack before Turkish mobilisation was complete. War at a time of British choosing might be better than allowing Germany to impose her will. A credible threat against the Dardanelles might lead to a coup in which Enver’s pro-German ‘Young Turk’ government would be replaced by a pro-peace party. Even if the Turkish coastal defences and minefields opposed the passage of an Allied fleet, the Gallipoli Peninsula might still be captured by a Greek amphibious force with small loss while its defences were still in a low state of preparedness. Combined with this, a successful joint naval and military operation could lead to the immediate surrender of Turkey, removing the threat to Egypt and the Canal. With so many momentous ‘ifs’ hanging in the balance, and possibilities impossible to distinguish from probabilities, the whole question of a Dardanelles operation clearly demanded consideration at the highest level.