Battle of Gallipoli

Having established two beachheads at great cost Hamilton determined to extend the Allied position in the south, with attacks directed towards Krithia. Unduly optimistic in its aims three successive operations were launched upon Krithia by Hunter-Weston in April, May and June 1915: all were thrown back by Liman's increasingly effective Turkish defence force.

Meanwhile British First Sea Lord Admiral Fisher's dramatic resignation on 15 May 1915 over Churchill's handling of the Gallipoli campaign led to the latter's own downfall as Churchill too resigned, his wartime political career apparently effectively over. Churchill had earlier, on 23 March, reluctantly admitted the failure of the purely naval bombardment to the War Cabinet, denting his already frail political credibility.

Allied Forces, 128,000
General Hamilton, Commander
British, 63,000
Russian, 47,000
French, 18,000
Cavalry, 36,000

Turkish Line Troops, 250,000
General Liman von Sanders, Commander

The Expeditionary Force, numbering at the outset 63,000 British, 47,000 Russian and 18,000 French troops, besides 36,000 horses, with General Ian Hamilton in supreme command, arrived off Gallipoli in five divisions on April 23, 1915. In all the history of warfare there is nothing to compare with the difficulties attending their landing at Gallipoli. There were no harbors, wharves or docks at which to land. The troops were compelled to debark in small boats and wade a hundred or more feet in water before setting foot on the low beaches.

Three main landings were made; the 29th Division of British Regulars disembarked near Sedd-el-Bahr at the point of the peninsula, where its landing was protected by the warships in the Gulf of Saros ; the Australian and New Zealand troops disembarked north of Gaba Tepe; while a naval division made a demonstration further north.

The Turks, in anticipation of the invasion, had strengthened their defences. Elaborate systems of trenches and redoubts had been constructed in front of the heights from end to end of the peninsula. The beaches had been lined with rows of barbed wire, some of them extending into the sea. The shores had been planted with mines, electrically operated, to blow the invaders into fragments. Concealed pits, machine-gun nests and other traps were prepared along the front. On the rocky uplands, rising in successive ridges above the beaches, batteries of howitzers and cannon were solidly emplaced, and prepared to belch forth their infernos of shell, lyddite and shrapnel.

Plan of Assault at Gallipoli

The general idea of the Gallipoli campaign was the capture of Constantinople (Istanbul) by an army marching through the peninsula and reducing the forts along the Dardanelles shore by successive rear attacks. The first...