In March 8, 1915, the warships started their assaults on the Dardanelles strait. 16 battleships tried to advance through. However, almost every single battleship was damaged by the sea mines Nusrat, a Turkish Minelayer. Earlier, before this happened, the Australian and the New Zealanders volunteered soldiers to fight and was encamped in Egypt to training before going to France. They also thought that once the Turks were driven off Gallipoli with a land invasion, it was going to be easy enough for the battleships to go through the Dardanelles Strait all over again.
There were a lot of reasons why the Gallipoli plan was a failure. I think that the very first and worst mistake was the delay. Before the ANZAC forces were transported to Britain, there was a delay of 2 months. This gave the Turks some time to replenish and reload and to get ready for a land assault. This gave the Turks another line of strength over the Gallipoli plan. One source says, “The Turks had deployed six times as many troops as there had ready two months earlier.” This means that while the ANZAC forces remained in the same number, the Turks had reinforced 6 times!
Another severe mistake was the landscape of the bays of Gallipoli, especially Suvla Bay. The Allied troops had no idea of how difficult it would be to invade the bays. The landscape alone was very difficult to attack. Captain Downay tells us more, “The landing place was a difficult one, a narrow sandy beach backed by a very intricate mass of hills, those behind the beach being exceedingly steep.” This means that after the very difficult landing place, where most of the soldiers were shot to pieces was the beach and the hills. The beach was the perfect place to get blown to bits and the hill was a steep climb. Another quote from Captain Downay “How they (the soldiers) got up fully armed and equipped over the rough scrub-clad hillside one can hardly imagine.”
In other parts of Gallipoli, some soldiers were ordered to wait for certain orders. One of the sources tells us that, “…attacks were ordered rather lightheartedly and carried out without a method.” and, “The men on the spot were not listened to when they pointed out steps to be taken before entering on a special task.” This tells us that there were poor coordination between the land and the naval forces. This means that the naval forces attacked too early without the support from the army.
This lead to trench warfare, Major H Mynors Farmar, a staff captain tells us more. “The Turks had sited their trenches very cleverly,” and, “The Turks dig like moles and prepare line after line for defence.” Because the Allied troops weren’t given any orders to go inland and invade, the Turks found where the troops are. According to Major Farmar, I think that the Turks would have won the battle of Gallipoli even if there weren’t any evacuation at the end.
Another mistake that is linked to the previous paragraph was that there was a shortage of soldiers. Because there was a trench warfare that means that there should be more fresh soldiers. Major Farmar says, “…attacks were made by men in the trenches and not by fresh troops. The men are kept too long and too thick in the trenches: they become stupefied after five days.”
After months of fighting, Sir Ian Hamilton who was replaced by Sir Charles Munro. They were then evacuated from the area because they knew that they were going to lose. The ANZAC forces completed their evacuations by December 19, 1915 and the British troops were completely evacuated by January 9, 1916.
I think that Gallipoli was a complete failure because of all of the problems stated on the past paragraphs and because of very bad planning. They thought the Gallipoli campaign was going to be easy so they just carried on attacking without thinking of planning so this is why ‘I’ think that Gallipoli was a failure. And of course, the other problems.
