The Dandarnelles Disaster (19 page)

Carden's plan was straightforward and deliberate, in seven phases, starting with the reduction of the entrance forts on either side of the strait. Then the minesweepers with escort were to sweep up to the Narrows, where more forts would come under heavy bombardment in their turn. Next the main minefields at the Narrows would be cleared, enabling the battleships to move on and bombard the inner forts immediately beyond. The bulk of the fleet would enter the Sea of Marmara, where the final phase, including general clearing operations against the Turkish fleet, would be carried out.

The first-phase attack on the outermost forts would be in three stages: bombardment at long range (including indirect fire across the Gallipoli peninsula) by the heaviest guns, then at medium range with secondary armament, and finally at 4,000 yards or less with all guns that could be brought to bear. A battleship from the Second Division,
Albion
, with a light cruiser and seven minesweepers, was briefly detached and sent up the Aegean coast of the peninsula to clear an area off Gaba Tepe so that the
Queen Elizabeth
could bombard the Narrows forts ‘over the top' from there in phase three. Other ships were assigned various forts as targets in phase one:
Inflexible
for example took on the main fort at Sedd el Bahr on the European side while the
Suffren
attacked its opposite number on the Asian side, Kum Kale. From their various positions individual ships were expected to observe each other's fall of shot.

At 9.51 on the morning of 19 February HMS
Cornwallis
of the Second Division, a 1901 battleship with a main armament of four 12-inch guns, fired the first shot, at Orkanie, a secondary fort on the Asian shore, from a position where she could not be hit by the Kum Kale guns. The French flagship started shooting at Kum Kale itself at 10.32. It was a curiously desultory, not to say hesitant, bombardment. Carden, apparently inhibited by a shortage of ammunition (as also experienced at this time by the British Army on the Western Front), ordered all bombarding ships to drop anchor so as to maximise the precision of their shooting.
Cornwallis
had a broken capstan and could not comply, so was replaced for a while by the
Vengeance.
The flagship
Inflexible
initially opened fire on the fort at Cape Helles, adjacent to Sedd el Bahr, at 11.50 a.m. – just two rounds at 15,000 yards, which fell short. She moved 2,000 yards closer and started again at 12.20. The battleship
Triumph
of the Second Division fired 14 shells from her ten-inch guns at the same target between ten and 12.15, or one about every ten minutes. Each one missed. At one p.m. the
Inflexible
switched targets from Cape Helles to Sedd el Bahr. A seaplane went up that afternoon and
reported that all the guns at Sedd el Bahr, Kum Kale and Orkanie were intact.

Even so, Carden was sufficiently satisfied with the apparent accuracy of the first-stage shooting to order stage two to begin at two p.m. – bombardment of the entrance forts at closer range, the ships to keep on the move this time in case they were fired upon by the defence. The forts however remained silent. Kum Kale appeared to be in ruins, especially after the French flagship stepped up her rate of fire at 4.10 p.m. Half an hour later Carden ordered de Robeck to sail in the
Vengeance
to examine the condition of the forts. The old battleship made for the entrance at her best speed – and was taken aback when the subsidiary forts at Orkanie and Helles, which had been silent all day, suddenly emitted a hail of shot. De Robeck did not turn tail but headed towards Helles, firing salvoes from his forward-facing armament, to the admiration of the French, whose ships came up in support; they even fired shots over the top of
Vengeance
at the forts on the European side while maintaining their bombardment of Orkanie, which stoutly kept up its lively barrage.
Agamemnon
and
Inflexible
, the fleet flagship, also came up in support. At the end of a slow day the expenditure of ammunition by both sides reached a crescendo in the last half-hour, before Carden issued the general recall in the fading light at 5.20 p.m. De Robeck appealed for permission to initiate stage three, especially as no ship had been hit, but Carden refused, not wishing to sustain casualties at the end of the first day, when the ships at sea made much clearer targets than the defences; he was now also more concerned about his ammunition supply. ‘Cease firing' was signalled at 5.30. Only Orkanie was still shooting back as the fleet retired unscathed.

There was much food for thought on Carden's part: he was beginning to realise that even heavy naval guns could not make much of an impression on static defences such as earthworks, and also that direct hits were too rare, yet essential if the guns of the defence were to be knocked out. Indirect ‘over-the-top' fire was ineffective without close spotting, which was not available. The best shooting came from anchored ships, but this was clearly risky at anything but long range. Both Carden and the Admiralty were however cautiously optimistic on reviewing the course of the first day of bombardment, their only reservation being the conclusion that battering down the defences was going to take even longer than the cautious admiral had predicted. He believed however that another hour of full daylight would have seen the complete destruction of the entrance forts.

In London, meanwhile, consideration was being given to sending more troops to support the navy at the Dardanelles (as distinct from mounting a combined operation). Two more battalions of Royal Marines were ordered to Lemnos to reinforce the two already there. Churchill, changing his mind, decided to send the only other troops at his disposal, the convalescent and still not fully trained RN Division of ten battalions, as well, on 27 February; his aim now was to have 50,000 troops available within striking distance of the Dardanelles, to be ready to exploit and consolidate a breakthrough by the navy. The First Lord openly acknowledged that if the fleet broke in, only armoured ships could go up the straits. If thin-skinned supply ships were to follow, troops would have to be landed to eliminate shore-based enemy artillery and snipers. At the War Council meeting of 16 February it was provisionally decided to send the 29th Division of experienced British troops to the Aegean rather than France: but only in case of emergency, and not yet. Kitchener still had reservations and would not commit himself because the Russians were once again in difficulties, especially facing the Germans, which meant the latter might soon be free to switch many divisions from east to west. The first of Kitchener's ‘new armies' would not be ready for France until April.

With the threat of a Turkish invasion of Egypt removed, however, the 39,000 men of ANZAC were also available; without them there would still be more than 40,000 men left to garrison Egypt, largely from the Indian Army. The Admiralty was instructed to speed up the assembly of transports and lighters to carry and land 50,000 troops. This could not be done in less than three weeks. ANZAC plus RND plus RM made about 50,000; but there were no seasoned troops among this number. Yet the French seemed prepared to send a division of 15,000 men; with the 29th and possibly 10,000 or more from Russia, perhaps even a corps, around 100,000 troops would be available.

The ill-defined Dardanelles plan was now in danger of falling between two stools. The original concept was a purely naval diversion at the straits to distract the Turks as a means of relieving some of the pressure on the Russians in the Caucasus – a purely
tactical
‘demonstration'. As time went by and Souchon made the most of his arrival in the Sea of Marmara, the stalemate on the Allied fronts west of Russia prompted Churchill and others to regard a serious attack on the Central Powers at their weakest point – Turkey – as a highly attractive, indeed the only, possibility of outflanking the enemy, a
strategic
shift in the conduct of the war, exploiting Britain's overwhelming but underemployed naval strength to force the straits and threaten Constantinople.

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.