Naval Operations in The Dardanelles Campaign - Supporting The Army

Supporting The Army

The Mediterranean Expeditionary Force had been established on 12 March under the command of General Sir Ian Hamilton and comprised some 70,000 soldiers. At a conference on 22 March, four days after the failed attempt by the navy, it was decided to use the infantry to seize the Gallipoli peninsula and capture the forts, clearing the way for the navy to pass through into the Sea of Marmara. Preparations for the landing took a month, giving the Ottoman defenders ample time to reinforce.

The British planners still underestimated the ability of the Ottomans and, at the outset, it was expected that the invasion would be over swiftly. A British force—landing at Cape Helles—would advance 6 mi (9.7 km) on the first day, and on the second would seize the Kilitbahir plateau, overlooking the Narrows. As it happened, in eight months of fighting, the British never advanced much more than 5 mi (8.0 km), and their first day objectives of Krithia and the hill Achi Baba remained out of reach.

The Gallipoli landings were the largest amphibious operation of the war. The initial landings were made at Cape Helles by the British 29th Division and at Gaba Tepe by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. In the latter case, the landing miscarried and the troops went ashore too far north at a place now known as Anzac Cove. In both landings, the covering force went ashore from warships with the exception of V Beach at Helles where the SS River Clyde was used as an improvised landing craft for 2,000 men.

In the landing at Anzac Cove, the first wave went ashore from the boats of three Formidable-class battleships; HMS London, HMS Prince of Wales (1902) and Queen. The second wave went ashore from seven destroyers. In support were HMS Triumph, Majestic and the cruiser HMS Bacchante as well as the seaplane carrier HMS Ark Royal and the kite-balloon ship, HMS Manica from which a tethered balloon was trailed to provide artillery spotting.

The landing at Cape Helles was spread over five beaches with the main ones being V and W Beaches at the tip of the peninsula. While the landing at Anzac was planned as a surprise without a preliminary bombardment, the Helles landing was made after the beaches and forts were bombarded by the warships. The landing at S Beach inside the straits was made from the battleship Cornwallis and was virtually unopposed. The W Beach force came from the cruiser HMS Euryalus and the battleship HMS Implacable which also carried the troops bound for X Beach. The cruiser HMS Dublin and battleship Goliath supported the X Beach landing as well as a small landing to the north on the Aegean coast at Y Beach, later abandoned.

The role of the navy was to support the landing, using naval guns instead of field artillery, of which there was a severe shortage in 1915. However, with a few spectacular exceptions, the performance of naval guns on land targets was inadequate, particularly against entrenched positions. The guns lacked elevation and so fired on a flat trajectory which, coupled with the inherently unstable gun platform, resulted in reduced accuracy.

The battleship's guns did prove effective against exposed lines of troops. On 27 April, during the first Ottoman counter-attack at Anzac, the Ottoman 57th Regiment attacked down the seaward slope of Battleship Hill within view of Queen Elizabeth which fired a salvo of six 15 in (380 mm) shells, halting the attack completely. On 28 April, near the old Y Beach landing, Queen Elizabeth sighted a party of about 100 Turks. One 15 in (380 mm) shrapnel shell containing 24,000 pellets was fired at short range and killed the entire party. For the rest of the campaign, the Turks were very wary of moving within view of battleships.

Also on 27 April, a kite-balloon ship had spotted an Ottoman transport ship moving near the Narrows. Queen Elizabeth, stationed off Gaba Tepe, had fired across the peninsula, at a range of over 10 mi (8.7 nmi; 16 km), and sank the transport with her third shot. For much of the campaign, the Ottomans transported troops via rail, though other supplies continued to be transported by ship on the Sea of Marmara and Dardanelles.

It quickly became evident that the battle for Gallipoli would not be a swift or easy operation. At Helles, which was initially the main battlefield, a series of costly battles only managed to edge the front line closer to Krithia. Through the early battles, the Royal Navy continued to provide support via bombardments. However, in May three battleships were torpedoed: Goliath in Morto Bay on 12 May; Triumph off Anzac on 25 May; and Majestic off W Beach on 27 May. Goliath was sunk by the Ottoman torpedo boat Muavenet-i Milliye while the other two were sunk by U-21. Following these losses, the permanent battleship support was withdrawn with the valuable Queen Elizabeth recalled by the Admiralty as soon as the news of the loss of Goliath arrived. In place of the battleships, naval artillery support was provided by cruisers, destroyers and purpose-built monitors which were designed for coastal bombardment.

Once the navy became wary of the submarine threat, losses ceased. With the exception of the continued activity of Allied submarines in the Dardanelles and Sea of Marmara, the only significant naval loss after May was the Laforey-class destroyer HMS Louis which ran aground off Sulva during a gale on 31 October and was wrecked. The destruction of the stranded ship was accelerated by Ottoman gunfire.