Gallipoli

[JOHN THURSTON]

Besides Spawning a movie with Mel Brooks in an aussie made film, what was the Campaign All About:

1st Lord of the Admiralty Mr. Winston Churchill Had a very good idea to undertake an amphibious Campaign against the Turks, take Comstantinople.

Problems:

1. Lack of proper intelligence: The maps of the Peninsula showed gentle sloping ravines and relatively flat groundce once off the beaches.
2. The Allies believed that because German Siege Mortars made relatively easy if no short work of destroying the forts in belgium centered around Liege, that the bigger Guns of the Battleships of France and Britain would make short work of the Turkish Fortifications. H.G. Wells. also states that the naval guns were useless in destroying entrenchments such as existed on the Western Front-I do not believe this to be the case, but they certainly were more difficult to destroy from the sea than the Allies thought.
3. The French Battleship (appearing to be a pre dreadnaught type as it does not appear in the materials I have, although a search on the net would yield more information.
4. The Allies thought that because "Johnie Turk" was not fighting well in other theaters (with the exception of the besieging of KUT and the conduct of a "death march" of allied prisoners after the fall thereof that beggared the Bataan Death march-or so is my opinion) that he would not fight well for his capitol and environs, which was NOT the case.
The Dardanelles was remined by the Turks no less than two weeks before the bombardments began, and these fields accounted for two more British battleships which may not have been state of the art.
5. No specialized amphibious warfare landing craft at the time of the campaign in 1915, never mind such vehicles as tanks and the "Sillies" developed for the landing at Normandy.
6. At the time, since the Ottoman Empire had not, obviously, fallen, and the fact that Bulgaria had apparently taken a chunk of greece, Greece was not an independent state possessing any land connection to its former capital -called by the Turks; Istanbul, literally "THE City". Now the city suffers from the fact that its Greeks are finally leaving the city in substantial numbers-but this is another issue.
7. The Autralian, NewZealand (ANZACS) British and Turkish Armies possessed modern repeating, strip clip using rifles and roughly equally dangerous machine guns. Although my opinion always would unreasonably be swayed to the Vickers, later Dubbed the "Queen on No Man's land.
8. The Turks were allied to the central powers and received M1898 Mausers and the Allied troops, saving the French who used the ugly but effective Lebel, general possessed the ten round capacity MK.III no.1 Short Magazine Lee enfield (SMLE) in which an american had had a hand in designing.
9. Unlike the terrain shown on the hand drawn maps in the possession of the Allies, Gallipoli was "Tough Going", some of the land beaches had no more cover than the beaches used by the americans at Iwo Jima.

There is a great deal of research to be completed to completely fill in the blanks concerning this multinational disaster of a campaign. Allied Commanders from the "Territories" lacked experience and such thoroughbred British career officers as Guy Nightingale committed suicide during the inter war period as a result of his experiences. Indian Troops were also present and I do not intentionally omit them, and can only theorize that the mechanized and methodical death machines of the West had a negative effect on them. However, without "colonial" and Territorial troops, the issue in the West would have been in some doubt.

I eill try and find a way to post maps of the first of many "hells in small places" that came to being between 1914 and 1918.

JOHN