The Dandarnelles Disaster (37 page)

Many millions of Palestinian refugees live miserable lives in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. Tragically, the Arabs will not absorb them, understandably if cruelly, because that would imply acceptance of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Ironically, 60 years after the Arabs rejected the idea of two states on the soil of Palestine, Israel's all-powerful protector, the United States, tried to revive the seriously neglected ‘peace process' on the basis of a ‘two-state solution'. The Palestinians have seen their fragile hopes crumble as the Israelis built a wall across Palestine against Arab suicide bombers and allowed scores of illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank. The fact that a once-persecuted people has itself turned persecutor is surely one of the bitterest ironies in history.

If Turkey is responsible for none of the foregoing, why mention it? The twin roots of the endless crises that have engulfed the former Ottoman lands since 1918 are first, that Turkey should have remained neutral in 1914 (as it wisely did in 1939) rather than joining the Central Powers, and second, that the Royal Navy squandered the chance to correct this mistake by its great failure at the Dardanelles to mount a combined operation. While this might be dismissed as mere hindsight, it is fair to point out that most of the Turkish Cabinet favoured neutrality in 1914; and that overwhelming
contemporary
opinion in British ruling, naval and military circles had always been that only a combined operation could hope to force the Dardanelles.

To the combined effect of two huge, failed gambles, Enver's in Constantinople and Churchill's in London, must be added Souchon's successful one in delivering the instrument, itself the beneficiary of another blunder by the Royal Navy, to activate the Turco-German alliance that doomed Russia. As Barbara Tuchman wrote in
August 1914
:
Thereafter the red edges of war spread over another half of the world. Turkey's neighbours, Bulgaria, Rumania, Italy and Greece, were eventually drawn in. Thereafter, with her exit to the Mediterranean closed, Russia was left dependent on Archangel, icebound half the year, and on Vladivostok, 8,000 miles from the battlefront. With the Black Sea closed, her exports dropped ninety-eight per cent and her imports by ninety-five per cent. The cutting off of Russia with all its consequences, the vain and sanguinary tragedy of Gallipoli, the diversion of Allied strength in the campaigns of Mesopotamia, Suez and Palestine, the ultimate break-up of the Ottoman Empire, the subsequent history of the Middle East, followed from the voyage of the
Goeben
.

Not only
post hoc,
but also
propter hoc
.

Epilogue

The Tale of Two Ships

After the Russian Revolution there was very little for the Turkish fleet to do. Many of the sailors on the two German ships were farm boys, and they were given some land near their anchorage of Stenia (Istinye) where they could grow maize and rear pigs. Eventually this little enterprise turned a profit in a Constantinople which was close to starvation. From 4 September 1917 their flag officer was Vice-Admiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz, Souchon's replacement. The Black Sea was quiet after three years of sometimes desperate actions with the Russian Black Sea Fleet, now confined to port. When intelligence indicated in December 1917 that two British divisions were about to be moved from Salonica to reinforce Allenby in Palestine, Paschwitz was reminded that there was another enemy afloat at the other end of the straits with whom the Turco-German fleet had never fought an action. He suggested to Enver that his ships stage a raid on Salonica, 120 miles from the entrance to the Dardanelles, to disrupt the troop movements and raise Turkish morale.

Even Enver could see that this was an extremely risky, not to say crazy, proposition, but preparations for a sortie out of the Dardanelles went ahead. To avoid confusion the two German ships are referred to here by their original names. Enemy naval forces were well known: the last two British pre-dreadnoughts,
Lord Nelson
and
Agamemnon
, which with a combined total of eight 12-inch guns outgunned the
Goeben
; one French heavy and one British light cruiser, both elderly; two monitors (floating gun platforms for coastal bombardment), HMMs
Raglan
and
M28
; a small flotilla of destroyers and miscellaneous vessels.

Paths were quietly cleared in the defensive minefields beyond the Narrows and German aircraft plotted the positions of Allied mines off the entrance on a chart as Paschwitz scaled down his plans to a hit-and-run raid on the Allied guard force which, in one form or another, had been in place off the Dardanelles since August 1914. He hoped to make a surprise attack and get his ships back inside the Narrows long before the pair of
battleships could get to the scene from Mudros. The admiral assembled the strongest and most viable squadron available to him: the
Goeben
and
Breslau
, four of the best Turkish destroyers and the German submarine
UC23
, which was detailed to lay mines off Mudros under cover of the raid and lie in wait for torpedo targets.

Hearing of the plan at the last minute, General Liman von Sanders helpfully gave the admiral a British Admiralty chart, seized from a British steamer grounded off Gallipoli, which bore markings interpreted (wrongly) as Allied mine positions. The two charts proved irreconcilable, suggesting that there were no gaps at all between or within the opposed minefields, but Paschwitz metaphorically shut his eyes and pressed on. At 5.10 a.m. on 20 January 1918, after his ships had crept through the Turkish minefields during the night, the
Goeben
at the head of the column struck a British mine. Damage was minor and soon brought under control, so
Goeben
sailed on after a few minutes.

Breslau
turned north-west out of the entrance and targeted the monitors at anchor in Kusu Bay, Imbros. The
Goeben
caught up and both ships started shelling the eastern coast of the island.
Raglan
blew up and sank at her moorings, shortly followed to the bottom by
M28
, whose magazine exploded
.
Remarkably, both monitors had managed to return fire, though only briefly and to no avail: only 132 men out of the two crews totalling 310 survived the double blast.

At 5.20 a.m. the tiny destroyer HMS
Lizard
, which had been on night-patrol duty off the Dardanelles, sent out the signal the guard force had been waiting for these past three and a half years: ‘GOBLO … GOBLO …' –
Goeben
and
Breslau
out. She had challenged the unfamiliar light cruiser ahead of her and got no reply; then she sighted a battlecruiser one mile behind. None the less the 780-tonne destroyer (Lieutenant O. A. G. Ohlenschlager, RN) opened fire on the cruiser even as she was shelling the monitors, breaking off to organise help for their crews.
Breslau
opened fire on her as she zigzagged violently, her guns hopelessly outranged. Her patrol partner and sister-ship HMS
Tigress
was the only Allied warship to come to her aid. British naval aircraft based on Imbros heard the GOBLO alert, took off and harassed the Germans as best they could, prompting them too to zigzag as they fired machine-guns in the air. The German pair turned north up the coast of Imbros, looking for new targets, damaging ships and buildings, the pair of destroyers following, even though the
Breslau
had resumed firing on them.

At 7.31 a.m. the
Breslau
, sailing half a mile behind the
Goeben
, pulled out
of line to take up station ahead of her – and ran into a British minefield. One blew up under her stern and wrecked her rudder. The
Goeben
turned to help and set off a mine aft. Five minutes later the
Breslau
succumbed to two more mines under her damaged stern, and yet another exploded on her port bow. She went dead in the water, listing to port. A fifth mine went off amidships and Captain Georg von Hippel gave the order to abandon ship. More then 500 men jumped overboard, and their captain led three cheers from the bitterly cold water for their dying ship. The two British destroyers had turned to beat off an attack by the four Turkish ones before it started, driving them back into the Dardanelles and turning back again to rescue more than 150 Germans, including von Hippel, despite the mines all around.
Goeben
took a further mine amidships and began to list, a development which was corrected by yet another mine on the other side as she zigzagged at half speed back into the Dardanelles. With her pumps working flat out she evaded the Turkish minefield inside the Narrows – only to run aground on a sandbank near Nagara Point on the Asian shore. British aircraft circling overhead were met by German aircraft and dogfights developed as Captain Stoelzel, in command for just 16 days, struggled to refloat the
Goeben.
She was a sitting target, open to air and submarine attack and within range of the big guns of the British battleships, listing at an angle that prevented her from using her own main armament. She had never been closer to destruction.

But, as ever, there was a British admiral on hand to ensure that a golden opportunity was missed. Rear-Admiral Arthur Hayes-Sadler had hoisted his flag just eight days before the last foray of the Mediterranean Division. When he found his yacht was out of service and needing to confer with army headquarters at Salonica, he took the
Lord Nelson
, thus ensuring that there were not enough big guns on hand to outshoot the
Goeben
, the very reason why the two pre-dreadnoughts were there together in the first place. The rest of the guard force was scattered, leaving just the pair of little destroyers on watch, a fact which may partly explain why Hayes-Sadler used a battleship as a taxi, but not why his ships were so dispersed. The commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, Vice-Admiral Sir Arthur Gough-Calthorpe, was furious and slammed another stable door by ordering that the pair of battleships should stay together in future …

As frantic work went on round the clock to save the
Goeben
, more than 250 Allied air sorties failed to cause significant damage with their little bombs, even by rare direct hits. More Allied planes came over from Salonica; seaplanes from the carrier
Ark Royal
tried the new tactic of dropping
torpedoes in the water. The beached ship was thus constantly surrounded by columns of water, explosions, smoke from bombs and anti-aircraft fire from Turkish batteries at the biplanes growling overhead as other ships tried to free her. On 26 January, as the German sailors lightened ship and a strong wind grounded Allied aircraft, Turkish warships assembled for an almighty towing effort, freeing the
Goeben
in the afternoon. She sailed slowly under her own power to Constantinople, which she reached on the morning of the 27th, saved by the strength and construction of her hull. But for her at last the war was over. On the same day Hayes-Sadler decided after days of dithering that one of his three submarines on hand might usefully pass up the strait to administer a
coup de grâce
by torpedo to the crippled battlecruiser.
E14
got as far as Nagara Point, where the
Goeben
had lain for the best part of a week, at dawn on 28 January, but of course found nothing. A British aircraft came over at about the same time and reported that the bird had hopped away. On her way out
E14
was detected and sunk by shore batteries and destroyers. Nine men survived and were taken prisoner. The
Goeben
had once again eluded the Royal Navy in acutely embarrassing circumstances. The new First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss (formerly in command at Mudros), was no less furious and sacked Hayes-Sadler, the third British admiral after Milne and Troubridge to be removed from seagoing command for missing the
Goeben
:

The
Goeben
getting away is perfectly damnable and has considerably upset me, since we at the Admiralty were under the happy delusion that there were sufficient brains and sufficient means out there to prevent it: of the latter there were; of the former apparently not.

He could just as well have been talking in August 1914.

The anti-climactic battle of Imbros cost the British 200 men, two monitors, one submarine, two aircraft and a steamer; the Germans and Turks lost some 400 men along with SMS
Breslau
, together with SMS
Emden
, the most successful light cruiser in the history of the Imperial German Navy. Since the war was going badly for the Turks on all remaining fronts, the
Goeben
was given only running repairs because her heavy guns might be needed at any time to defend Constantinople.

On 1 May she sailed out of the Bosporus bound for Sevastopol, where she had helped with her guns to force Russia into the war in 1914, to keep an eye on the naval base which she reached the next day. The victorious German Army had marched into the city and a Russian admiral had led
two battleships, ten destroyers and other ships out of harbour to Novorossiysk, in breach of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Kaiser's ensign was hoisted on the four remaining battleships and German troops took possession of them. On 6 June the
Goeben
started a week in a naval dry dock, for the first time since well before the war started. The three holes from the Imbros mines were left with temporary plugs for want of time and labour. After various local tasks the
Goeben
arrived back in Constantinople on 12 July for serious repairs. The first hole was closed by the middle of October.