Gallipoli Campaign

what do you believe was the cause of the failure of the Gallipoli campaign?

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specture(jrotc cadet)

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has anybody wondered why the Gallipoli campaign which was the allies against the ottoman empire in a long offensive was a failure from the start? there are many different beliefs which were military strategy and leadership, which great Britain during that time in WW1 was still in the strategies of previous british principles...which i saw on the history channel was: strength in numbers....which was opposite of true during the world wars and beyond. The only reason why it was no longer true. was the invention of the machine gun. when trench warfare and the machine gun were used in unison.. that made the idea of strength in numbers an invalid idea! the whole reason the Gallipoli campaign was lost was because of the landscape of the invasions, the weapondry, and the tactics....as Britain (as i think) was still using victorian tactics.....does anybody agree? its what i read and found out in several locations. here is some info on the victorian army which lasted until world war two:
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/army1.html
 
Why did this assault fail, well there were many reasons. Most people thought that the main war being fought in Europe and the Middle East was just side show. The General in charge had not commanded any thing more than a desk for countless years.. When he submitted a list of senior officers that he needed for the planning side of this operation it was turned down as they could not be spared. Yet these same officers were called in to sort out the problems later on. There was talk about this operation all over London months before it took place with other Embassies in London that were friendly with Turkey and Germany they must have been for warned about this operation long before it took place.
The concept of this operation was correct, but it failed in the planning and implementation and this is not meant to be critical of of the soldiers that took part.
 
I beleive the ANZAC's would have been highly sucsessful at Gallipoli, had they been landed on the right beach. They obeyed orders, went to the wrong beachead, but fought for it with tooth and nail, with only one exception, The Nek.
 
with only one exception, The Nek.
Click to expand...

What do mean exception. The lads of the light horse fought the battle of the Nek like bloody tigers, what more on foot (they were cavalry), with empty magazines (because they were ordered to go unloaded) and only bayonets and grenades. They ran through a space the size of a few tennis courts into massed Turkish machine guns. Pure discipline and self sacrifice, thats all there is to it. Brave as they bloody come, full of the same bravado that won the charge at Beersheeba. How can you call that an exception?
 
Sorry, bad wording there. What I meant was, it wasn't a very good idea by putting men with bayonets up against MG's. The poor buggers were sent to the slaughter. Don't get me wrong, I'm not belittling the Lighthorsemen, I have great respect for them.
Once again, bad choice of words
 
Military leadership failed.

That is why Winston Churchil never forgave himself for the part he played in that conflict.
 
I don't know, so many factors were against the ANZAC forces. I answered terrain and machine guns. They attacked a penninsula on both sides with no cover and machine guns on the high ground. The Turk snipers were having a field day too. The fortifications were perfect inland. I can see how the command staff would feel that they had lost the battle since they were working with bad terrain maps and poor intel.
 
If Gallipoli was a stuff up the navy attack on the Dardanelles was even worse. It was worse because if it had been handled properly it could have prevented the whole Gallipoli campaign.

Admiral Carden orginally went into the straits with battleships and 35 minesweepers (with civilan personnel). Despite having initial success, he lost one minesweeper to turkish batteries and withdrew.

Carden resigned & Admiral De Robeck took over but his first attempt at the straits didn't take place for a month, giving the Turkish ample time to lay new mines in the straits. He moved in and silenced the guns at the narrowest point but assumed that the Turks would not have laid new mines. They had lost two battleships with two more badly damaged.

De Roebeck informed London and General Hamilton that a land based attack was the way to go. The navy attack should have continued for a number of reasons. First, military personnel were still yet to man the minesweepers that had a habit of withdrawing as soon as the Turkish batteries started. 2nd, most of the batteries at the entrance had been destroyed in the previous attacks. 3rd, the attack was never pressed really hard (3 of the four battleships damaged and lost were hit by mines turning around). Finally, albeight with hindsight, the Turks admitted after the war that all of their battery ammunition had been used during the initial attacks. Their guns were without ammunition.

Had the navy pressed the attack, and made more effective use of their minesweepers, they would have been berthed outside of Constantinople / Istanbul with the most significant strategic advantage of WW1.

That's history for you.
 
I was reading the other day that the Turkish Forts were down to their last few shells and if another attack had gone in they would have fallen, such is the way of life. How many of know that after this affair Churchill Rejoined the Army and spent a number of years on the Western front in the trenches and rose to command a Guards Battalion.
 
There is very little doubt that the civilian/political leadership of Winston Churchill (then First Lord of the Admiralty) and the military leadership of General Sir Ian Hamilton (Commander, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force) were both primarily responsibile for the military disaster at Gallipoli.
 
Newfoundland Regiment at Gallipoli, 1915

A little history form the NFLD Regt

The Newfoundland Regiment landed at Suvla Bay on the Gallipoli peninsula on the night of September 19th 1915 in order to reinforce the hard-pressed British 88th Brigade of the 29th Division. From the beginning the Regiment had a hard time; day and night the Turkish army in control of the high ground surrounding the beach poured a constant stream of artillery and sniper fire down upon the British line. Casualties mounted day by day and the constant enemy fire made re-supply difficult at best, and food and water shortages were common.

read the rest here

http://www.diggerhistory2.info/graveyards/pages/units/newfoundland.htm
 
What do you believe was the cause of the failure of the Gallipoli campaign?

I think there was one reason... Turks were fighting for their independence against imperialism and Anzacs were fighting in an unknown place for them and fighting against an army which was trying to save its country from imperialists with a great belief...
 
As I have said before it was treated as a side show, the General in charge had not commanded much more than a desk for umpteen years. The Generals he requested to help him plan the attack were refused, but when they ran in to problems and wanted to get their troops out all Generals that had been requested were suddenly made available. We had to many Generals fighting a 20th Century War with 20th Century weapons but committed to 19th Century warfare. It took a few years for officers to start to rise to the top of pile who had different mind set on this. If you sit back and take a long hard look at what could have been achieved if it had been successful with better planning, then this attack was worth risk even though it did cause some high casualties in the attacking forces.
 
I don't really know how to vote on this one. I think it was the wrong battle at the wrong place at the wrong time, the Generals who planned this attack, IMO, are the most responsible for its failure, because their strategies were mad eobsolete by new advances in technology.

So which should I vote? Military strategy because it was out of date or military leadership because it was the leaders who divised the strategy?
 
Interesting that no one credits the leadership of Ataturk for the Turkish victory. The Eurocentric perspective of "how did the west lose" ignores the possibility that the Turks actually "won".
 
Or it just acknowledges that the west lost and the Turks won in a battle that should have been a victory for the West given all the internal strife in the Ottoman Empire.
 
I think it was the machine guns. Turkish army has lot of machine guns from Germany.
 
Yes they won at Gallipoli, there is no argument about this, but they lost war. There was some very heavy fighting in the Middle East during WW1 and it is inclined to be overlooked. Both ANZC and Britain were heavily involved in the fighting out there and fighting went from what is now Saudi Arabia right up through Syria and it was death knell for the Old Ottoman Empire.
 
If you dont get angry I wanna add somethin to this thread.

Turkish leader Kemal Atatürk's say about the Anzacs who dead in Gallipoli:
"After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well"​
 
LeEnfield said:
Yes they won at Gallipoli, there is no argument about this, but they lost war. There was some very heavy fighting in the Middle East during WW1 and it is inclined to be overlooked. Both ANZC and Britain were heavily involved in the fighting out there and fighting went from what is now Saudi Arabia right up through Syria and it was death knell for the Old Ottoman Empire.
Click to expand...
The primary perpetrators and combatants for that successful fight agaist the Ottomans were Arabs. Gallipoli did not magically extend itself into that field of the war. Gallipoli was a terrible failure and it is primarily the fault of those in charge of organizing the attack and those commanding it that it was such a failure.
 
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