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In 1915, the Allies tried to force their way through one of the most heavily defended waterways in the world. What they found was a deadly combination of mines, artillery and determined Ottoman resistance. This is the story of a doomed attempt to force the Dardanelles. Welcome to not so quiet on the western front. The podcast where we lift the lid, bust amits and explore the incredible history of the First World War. I'm Dan Hill, a military historian and battlefield guide specialising in the history of the war on the western front. I'm Dr Spencer Jones, author and senior lecturer in war studies at the University of Wolverhampton. Well, hello, Dan and hello Steve. I'm pleased to be joining you for another episode in our series covering the incredible story of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaign. Steve, a pleasure that you can join us on the show once more and for listeners who aren't familiar with Steve. Steve Chambers is the Chairman-elect of the Gallipoli Association and the official historian of the Gallipoli Association. So it's wonderful to have your expertise with us today. And in our last episode covering the Dardanelles, we looked at the planning of this operation and we weighed it, was it a good move, was it a reckless gamble? The decision, whether it was good or bad, had been made by the start of 1915 and the next step after approving the concept of a fleet assault down the most heavily defended war to the world, the Dardanelles, to try and eliminate the Ottoman Empire with one-felt swoop. The plans approved, the next step, Dan, is well, what are we going to use to actually do this? And this is where force composition, assembling the fleet, preparing the fleet, comes in. And that's a huge logistical effort and of itself. Absolutely, Spencer. And we'll dive into the detail of this throughout the episode and particularly with Steve and we talk about all of the different moving parts. But I just want to say, as you were describing it there, I was just thinking, this sounds pretty ominous really, doesn't it? The most heavily defended war to the world, a thousand yards at its thinnest point, sure, sure, so absolutely covered every single inch, strong with ten lines of mines, with embedded torpedo tubes, with modern gunnery, with forts overlooking it on both the European and Asian side. And we're going to steam a fleet down it, hopefully get across towards Constantinople, Istanbul, and then do something impressive which is going to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. That is a really big task. And as we discussed in quite a bit of detail last time out, all of the very different moving parts with regards to whether it's a good idea or not, as you rightly say, well, it's decided that it's going to be attempted anyway. And this is kind of where it brings us to right now, Steve, because someone's got to do the job. Now, it's worth saying, and this is I think something that we should probably come back to a number of times when we talk about Gallipoli. Because if you talk Gallipoli, if you ask, I guess if you tap somebody on the shoulder in the street and you say, who served at Gallipoli in 1915, whether it's on land or at sea, one of the very first things you're going to hear is Anzacs. You almost certainly going to hear British. One of the things you're not going to hear, or very unlikely to hear, is the French and in big numbers. But that's true of the naval side of things as well, isn't it? Very, very true, Dan, because it was a true Anglo-Franco fleet, as so to speak. Under the command of the British, Admiral Carden at the time, who sort of shared his plan with French help to break through the Dardanelles. So yes, I think very, very important, because you do need to look at it from all of those countries involved from the Allied side, but also from the Ottoman side as well, because there weren't just fighting the Turks. There were fighting those from the Middle East, the Syrians, for example, those from North Africa, were equally part of the Ottoman army as they were interesting enough, the French and the British army at the time. Yeah, really great point, Steve. Of course, we'll talk a bit more about Ottoman composition, particularly when we talk about the land campaign. In terms of ships and looking just from the aggressors side at the moment in terms of the British and French fleet, what sort of numbers are we talking in terms of vessels and what sort of size of vessels are we talking? Is it everything from fishing trawlers to battleships, or how does it sit? Very good question. So in terms of numbers, when you talk in battleships or such, you're talking around 18, 22 battleships there between the French and the British as well. And of course, they would have supporting ships and transports for colon, for munitions and supplies, the whole host of that, as well as the minesweeping fleet as well, which were requisition North Sea fishing trawlers, believe it or not at the time. Predominantly along with their civilian crew as well, that were given a uniform, took the King Shillin and joined the Royal Navy. So quite a big fleet when you look at a really small waterway and part of the Aegean Ocean there. And it's worth just stressing something here that this is a multinational fleet. It's a British and French fleet because the British have sold the idea that the French can participate. And in some ways, this is suitable for the French. The French Navy is overwhelmingly concentrated in the Mediterranean where it's not going to see any significant surface action for the entire war. There are some U-boats operating in the Mediterranean. The French Navy will hunt those, but it leaves behind large number of battleships. But these are not necessarily the most modern battleships in the world. These are what are called pre-Dreadnaut battleships. The ships that were launched before HMUS Dreadnaut was launched in 1906 and overnight revolutionized naval warfare. And the Dreadnaut class battleship was bigger, it was faster, it was more heavily armoured and it was more heavily armed than pre-Dreadnaut's plus. Depends on when you're talking about a Dreadnaut because they went through many variations prior to the first war. But they're also a bit more resistant to undersea threats as well. Now, pre-Dreadnaut's came in a wide variety of classes. They were often characterized by having lots of different type of gun batteries. Unbored short-range ones for close-in work, slightly longer-range ones. They are in, by the sounds of 1914, they're still formidable ships, but they're not the most modern ships available. And they're not the most heavily armed when you compare them with Dreadnaut's. But the Royal Navy was absolutely not keen on the idea of sending full-sized, either Dreadnaut's or Battle Cruises, which are a close person of Dreadnaut's down to Gallipoli. They want to keep that they're fleet intact in the North Sea where the German Navy might come out and fight them and things. And so I don't want to dismiss these ships as the B team, but they are apart from two exceptions, which is HMIS Queen Elizabeth, which is one of the most modern battleships in the world at the time, a Super Dreadnaut oil fired 15-inch guns and HMIS inflexible, which is a Battle Cruiser. These are all pre-Dreadnaut battleships, with lots of quirks. And particularly the friendships are very quirky, lots of different styles of gun position and so on. They're not the most modern, they're not perhaps quite what Winston Churchill had in mind when he was waxing lyrical about how battleships could destroy thoughts. But this all said, when you look at the number of guns these battleships could potentially bring into action, it looks pretty fearsome Steve. Absolutely, and I think the word "old" and "obsolete" actually comes into a lot of the works at the time and wants to counter that a little bit. Because when we're talking about an old Battle Cruiser for example, we're probably talking 7 years old, 10 years old. Now if you look to the fleet today for the Royal Navy, modern day, we've got ships there which are 20, 30, even older than 30 years old. The other thing as well is, obsolete yes, obsolete against a naval ship on ship action, not necessarily a ship to shore, where those probably old weapons which would have been state of the art, probably 10 years ago, prior to the First World War. But still very effective, those 12 inch guns, I think the 9.4 inch guns, would still be arguably accurate weapons or not necessarily accurate weapons by the effective weapons rather. Against those shore based defenses like the Forts for example. So let's get down onto the ground and have a run through exactly how things play out here and just consider for a second some of the key components that need to be neutralised in order for that fleet to make its way up through the narrows along that 41 mile set of straits to eventually get into the sea of Marmer. It's worth pointing out there are a couple of things that are really important here. Of course you've got the Forts which are on both the European and the Asian Headland and we've got a number of them varying as you say in states and modernity but either way pretty much every inch of the straight once you get into the straight has something is going to be firing at you of a pretty big caliber. In addition to that we've got minefields we've got to have a staged advance and then you've got to have inner defenses crushed and then eventually you can get through the straits and go ahead and make your way up to Constantinople. But how exactly is that going to be taken on Steve is it just a case of brute strength forcing your way through is it a bit of a feel your way along the coastline is it some unhappy mixture of the two what exactly is the plan here. Fog a question card and did have a plan if you want to call it a plan the plan consisted basically of three stages the first stage would be to destroy the Forts south of the narrows. second phase would be taking out the minefields that are blocking the narrows, then once the minefields have been neutralized, we'll be taking out the forts to the north of the narrows, which would then open up the Dardanelles, allow the French and British fleet to sail through into the Siamamara and stand off Constantinople. Now, that plan is probably one sheet of a four paper. So in reality, a lot was left to, you know, the local commanders on the ground, from the naval side, you know, how they actually would enact that. Now, the British fleet was fairly enthusiastic at the time because one thing we, I don't think we mentioned it on the previous episode was in November 1914, the British fleet was allowed to bombard one of the out forts at Sidel Bayer. And one lucky shot hit the arsenal there, blew up and destroyed majority of the guns in the fort, along with 80 to 90 Ottoman defenders in that fort, which gave the illusion that ship gun refire on a shore-based fort would be effective. And they had a similar success on the Asian-based forts that the French were engaging. So they went into the Dardanelles enthusiastically, but also with a air of caution. And what I mean by an air of caution was, they used the guns to the full effect, but from 12 to 15,000 yards away, so they were firing outside the range of the Ottoman guns. So that mitigated any danger there from the Ottoman guns hitting the ships, but allowed the ships then to bombard the forts. The issue you have with that is, because you're so far away, ranging those shots and how accurate those shots are falling becomes quite a challenge for the naval personnel. And if you can imagine these shells going off, hitting these earthwork forts, dust and dirt sort of flying into the air, the whole of the forts get massed quite quickly. So those shell shells, which are falling into those forts, do some damage, but not damage in order to knock them out completely. And this becomes the problem days and days later, where they think they've destroyed the fort. It goes quiet, but the fort then opens up fire. Notice the much of an issue in that early engagement, where they're taking the outer forts out, but becomes more of a problem as they near the Dardanelles and get into range with the Ottoman forts. I think it's worth commenting too, that the fort line that the Ottomans have are there. This is, you can always break it down into groups. In fact, the defense of the Dardanelles has been organized at quite break next speed, since the Ottoman entrance to the war. And glad you mentioned, Steve, that there have already been some preliminarily shelling around the Ottoman outer forts really early on. At the end of 1914, which had shown to the Ottomans there's an issue here. And under the German military mission, or with the assistance of the German military mission, under General Otto Limon von Sanders, the Ottomans have reorganized elements of their fortifications. Now, they've got limited time, and they're limited in many respects, by the fact they are having to use forts, and in some cases were constructed 30 or 40 years earlier. But broadly, the Ottomans number six groups of defenses here, but they really break down into three separate blocks. There's the outer forts that we're talking about at the moment. And these are a bit exposed. They don't benefit from forcing the Allied fleet into a narrow area. They can be engaged with the Allied fleet, as you say, Steve, at a very long range. And the Ottoman forts can't really do much to the Allies at that range. These forts are really out of date by this stage. Some of the guns in the outer forts are completely obsolete, old, smooth bore pieces. So useful if they fleet is enclosed, but hopeless at this range. The forts themselves are not particularly modern. And then, as you say, they give an impression that, well, all the forts up the channel are going to be like this. And they're not, of course, because as you get deeper in, you start to encounter more and more tougher approaches as you start to get to the narrow, as better sighted heavier guns, including some mobile howitzers that can be moved around, they're not tied into the fort system. And these howitzers are no joke, because they fire in a high angle. If they can plunge a shell onto a battleship's deck, it can do damage. And then when you get right up to the narrows themselves, then you have very formidable fortifications there. There's some big Ottoman artillery pieces here, up to 15-inch caliber, more than capable of inflicting serious damage on a battleship here. And this is that formidable. So on the out of the exterior, the Allied fleet can look at these forts and seem to be doing lots of damage to them far at them. The incoming fire from the Ottoman forts isn't that impressive. And it can create this impression, well, once we get in there, it's going to be like that too. But it's important to remember, the defenses get tougher and tougher and tougher with their toughest point being the narrows much further into the diagonals, about four miles into the diagonals itself. So the early operations, and so we've established, they seem somewhat encouraging, limited by the range and the fact that huge amounts of dust and smoke being kicked up by the gunfire. But certainly the Ottoman return fire isn't that impressive either. And once the Allied fleet works out, well, if we get closer, get into about 4,000-5,000 yard range. We can really bring some firepower into these forts. They do that on the 25th of February. And the Ottoman forts at the exterior, which aren't well-sighted, they're not well-equipped. They get smashed, they get pounded out. Raw Marines go ashore to finish things off. And for a moment, everything looks brilliant. The 25th of February, the outer defenses have been silenced in one spectacular day of action. But it's very deceptive. It's very deceptive. - Yeah, I think that's the time, isn't it, that Cardin signals back that he could be in Constantinople within two weeks, or something ridiculous like that, because it was looking positive for the Allies. They destroyed some of the outer forts, had big success there. And a key point you mentioned there, Spencer, is little-and-a-draw Marine Demonition Parties Assure, who got ashore with, I think, the first one, with very few of any casualties at all, walked into the forts, spiked the guns, destroyed the searchlights in the area, and anything called military value, caught back onto their boats, sell back or rode back rather in this context. Back to their mothership, thumbs up. Could the following weeks be like this? Is it gonna be a pushover? And I think the British, you know, the morale was very high out that early part between the 19th and the other 20, if what you said, it's only 6th of February, 1915. Things were looking quite positive, I think, for the Allies at that time. - And this really brings us, I think, to this kind of crucial moment with regards to the naval operations in around this area, because we do see, as you've both mentioned now, you know, some forts getting knocked out, we also, I think, something that we can't really overplay in terms of the importance of this, is that short 20-minute bombardment that happens in November 1914, that really rings the alarm bells for the defenders of the, of the Dardanelles. In particular, it results in a massive increase in the numbers of mines that are laid. I think it's something like a single lane of mines prior to that, and it's about 10 by the time the Ottomans get there. And something else that we've previously mentioned before is gonna play into this quite, quite importantly. One is the fact that the British are gonna be using trawlers to try and clear mines, which is not an ideal situation. And secondly, there's a current operating, quite a strong one sometimes, in the Dardanelles themselves. And those combination of things, lots of mines, inadequate minesweepers, and a regular currency, they're gonna change things in quite a drastic way as far as the operation goes. Yes, things start going wrong. So the current is a very interesting one. So at the mouth of the Dardanelles, the current flows like north to south, coming out of the Dardanelles at around two knots. As you approach the minefields, they're around four knot current. Now, some of these fishing trawlers that have been converted to minesweep probably have a forward speed of six to eight knots. So it's not unusual for those boats to be static. Now, Spencer mentioned the shore base how it's this. So their primary role is to protect those minefields. Now, a shell, a shell onto a battleship, you know, whilst the armor on the deck is probably less than that around the hull itself, think about those wooden minesweepers. One shell from that would destroy those minesweepers and they were suffering casualties. They lost two minesweepers, mid February. Two more were heavily damaged and a few others were damaged but still usable. So they changed tactics a bit. Instead of doing this in daylight, they decided to do it at night and sweep again with the protection of one of the battle cruises, one of the British battle cruises. But the Turks had spotlights, so they could illuminate a whole of the Dardanelles. As soon as the Dardanelles is illuminated, those shells are coming down, small arms fire from the shore because it's that close. We're talking 1.2 kilometers at its narrowest point, probably two kilometers where most of the fleet were. So you would be under fire from both sides, almost surrounded from behind you, your left and right flanks and in front of you as well. I would not want to be on one of those mine sweepers in February 1915. It's worth mentioning too that the bulk of the crews on these mine sweepers are civilians and they are not, you know, they, they when they've joined up, they're not necessarily expecting to be under such intense fire. Secondly, they're. The art of mind sweeping in 1915 is incredibly crude. It's dangerous, it's crude, and it's slow. And there's different methods tried to learn how to sweep minds here. This is before an experiment before the Dodd-Nells begins. Can include cutting the mind and defusing it while it's against the side of your ship. Well, that's fine. If you've got a calm sea and nothing's happening, there's attempts to shoot a mind with either a rifle. That doesn't really work. A mind to rip too heavily armoured with a very small caliber gun. Like a pom-pom gun, one pound of gun, things like this. Just try and detonate it. That's harder than you think. If you're too close to it, the explosion is going to overturn your mind sweeper. It's really, really difficult and unscientific work. Carried out, not with dedicated mind sweeping craft, but with repurposed North Sea trawlers, with overwhelmingly civilian crews, in conditions that are incredibly difficult and dangerous. I'm glad you made that point to you about how often the mind sweepers are straining every, you know, with it, to just try and push through the current under fire with a time-sensitive mission to actually clear mind fields in front of the fleet. That is really, really difficult work. And of course, this creates this tension in the advanced down the Dodd-Nells. It's not just a case of silence the thoughts and then sail through. It's a case of silence the thoughts to allow the mind sweepers to clear the minds, which are then allowed the battleships to go a bit further to silence more thoughts. And that's really difficult. That's a really difficult set of contrasting tasks. And it's interesting, of course, after the initial cardin's initial success on the 25th, this excitement, there's things moved in proves. Then you have really two weeks up to, really the 17th of March, of just almost grinding a traditional fighting through the Dodd-Nells, as the fleet slowly but surely tries to batter its way down here. Different styles are made by the 10th of March. The Royal Naval Officers are getting put on board the trawlers to try and stiff on them around and stop their skippers turning around and disappearing when they come under fire. Constantly, it doesn't relieve the pressure on them, but it's designed to press forward a bit more, keep pressed forward and so on. Those have mobile howitzers are a real problem. HMSAG Menmon, which is a pre-dread nor battleship, with a very appropriate name for fighting in this part of the world, takes some direct hits from howitzers takes about 14 hits straight onto its deck. It takes this, but it's an ominous indicator of what's to come. So this is a grueling fighting. Turks taking or the Ottomans, I should say, taking heavy fire from the fleet, but giving plenty back. And as this period goes on, I think it's worth reflecting about the pressure that is on Caden. He's under enormous strain because not only is he trying to carry out a very difficult campaign, he himself is not experienced in handling major fleet actions like this. He's never had the chance to do it. He's got Winston Churchill cabling him almost every single hour asking him for progress updates. And by the 15th of March, he gets inspected by his doctor and he's told he's suffering from dyspepsia, which we would now say is acute stress. He's a man under tremendous strain. We'd read about some people who met him at this time and they say, "Oh my goodness, he does not look well. He's clearly unwell." And I think the fact that he's feeling the strain so heavily tells us everything about what a difficult campaign this is. Absolutely. I think one thing as well is, Kahn has not only fighting the Turks there. He's also fighting the politicians as you've rightly said, Spencer, and the weather because the weather turns and this slows down that naval offensive as well. What started off really positive, after you highlighted, does quickly deteriorate to the stage where Kahn literally has a nervous breakdown and resigns his post. Things have to start not all over again, but change of naval command there, where Apple Weems, I believe, comes in who assigns the Robeck then to replace Kahn and continue the offensive through the Dardanelles. And of course, at the same time, we absolutely shouldn't forget this. The Ottoman defenders are not just standing still. They're not just sitting there waiting, thinking, "Oh, well, let's just do nothing until the fleet reaches us." There is of course very, very active defence. In fact, if you were to go to the Dardanelles today, it's really Steve, one of those areas where modern Turkey or Turkey is extremely proud of the defence has put up. There's a couple of famous heroes who, I think perhaps rather than being individual characters, it's perhaps more representative of the defenders of that area. Few classic characters, maybe you could just touch on very briefly, but it does raise a good point, doesn't it? Ottoman defenders are really working hard to keep the alloy ships at bay. Absolutely. And sometimes we don't give the Ottomans enough focus within history because we do see it from the Western sort of speaking world. Yeah, there's some huge heroes there. Corporal Siet is one big local hero and there's statues all round Turkey, particularly along the Dardanelles. And you can buy your little key rings with a little Corporal Siet, so the shape on there of him holding this big shell and the story there goes that his battery and the forties in, the forties in gets knocked out and the gun gets knocked out. Been a little bit more accurate here. The loading mechanism of the gun gets knocked out. So using manpower alone, he lifts one of these shells, loads it in, shuts the breach and fires the shell, which is allegedly the shell as the story goes that hits HMS Ocean. Now how true that is, I'll leave that to the scuba divers who've actually looked at the wrecks and is it a mine or is it a shell. But these Turkish gunners were firing from the West Bank, from the Eastern Bank there, and hitting these ships over and over again. Now whilst some of these larger battle cruises could take a lot of punishment, it was causing casualties. You mentioned the agoname on. It's 40, I think, 50 casualties alone doing that. You know, what one of the operations? So whilst it wasn't necessarily impacting the performance of these ships, it was grind in the British and the French down, because every single time they went into this gauntlet, as such, they were getting hammered, you know, left, right and center. And this is an important point that this is one of the reasons Cardin has his nervous breakdown. This is brutal fighting where the Ottomans are working hard to repair damaged their thoughts. They're bringing fresh ammunition up. They're bringing up replacement gunners as well because there are casualties on the Ottoman side. And the fighting in the straight in that first fortnight in March is intense. Here's deafening booming guns, lots of smoke. British and French ships under fire taking hits, trawlers being sunk casualties, ammunition expenditure, coal expenditure. This is turning into a grinding operation. Listen to us if you listen to our first episode. You might remember Cardin said it's going to take on methodical operation of at least a month. But after effectively 17 days of entering into this, he can see we're not getting anywhere. We can't clear the the minefields fast enough for the Turks to keep relaying them. These mobile howitzer batteries, they're being served really efficiently. They're constantly pressuring us. And they're very difficult for Royal Naval and French gunneries to actually find. It's easy, comparatively easy to shoot at a fort. It's in one place. But moving batteries, moving through the ridges, over the ridges through the gullies or anglipli, really difficult to find. They can open fire, fire a whole bunch of shells, then move again. So they're really difficult to identify. So Cardin gives that he's gone. He nervous breakdown. He's out of action. Eventually John Michael Derrobeck, British Admiral takes over, vice-abnormal, I should say, takes over. And he's basically got a matter of hours to actually decide, well, what are we going to do? I'm back in London, the Churchill and the war council. They're still committed to this operation. And in fact, pressure to do something to make a decisive strike is now absolutely, it's reaching its peak here. And Derrobeck is energetic and he is decisive in a way that Cardin isn't. He's a different style of personality. And he decides, and he's not necessarily wrong in this, he says, well, the outer defense is their gone. We've smashed them. The intermediate defense is what I was calling sort of group two or zone two. I think they're worn down enough. We can go at the narrows. For the 18th of March, we've spent enough time shooting at these intermediate force. Let's breach the toughest point on the Ottoman defences. And he's got some thinking behind this. He says, well, okay, we're taking hits. We're taking damage. But we the Ottomans haven't knocked out any of our ships yet. We can take damage, but we're not, we seem confident. We seem to be inflicting damage back. Let's do it. And so he also thinks that if this grinding battle carousel, then morale is going to start falling, especially amongst the trawlers. So pressure from London, some concerns about morale in the fleet. And also his own nature, which is aggressive. And he's very much a sort of doer in a way that Cardin was perhaps a thinker. He thinks, right, we're going to go for it. And this is going to set up Steve, of course, the greater salt, as it is termed at the time of the 18th of March, which in some ways is the decisive day of the naval side of the Dardanelles. It is, you know, and it has to be successful. So the RobEx plan there is to send in 18 battleships in three lines. So the first line would contain four British battleships of the most modern ones, spear pointing that assault behind them. The second wave would come comprise four French battleships and then another four British battleships behind with supporting cruisers and destroyers as well. So they then literally go into that gauntlet of fire with everything they had. So tactics do change where some of the previous bombardments have been single guns firing at forts. We're not necessarily getting broadsides, but we're getting multiple guns at the same time hammering those Turkish defences. The first line goes in and quite successful, very noisy, a lot of dust, a lot of smoke, and it's looking like they're making some progress. Where are you saying making some progress? Some of the Ottoman batteries go silent and they think they've knocked them out completely. What happens then is one gun starts again from the Asian shore, maybe two from the European shore, and then the Turks account of battery fire again. So the British and the French are opening up those fire again trying to suppress that. As the four-flying goes forward, they start to make a turn then to allow the French to come through them to carry on that bombardment. Whilst that first line is basically re-arming themselves behind, and this is the point very much like land battles, then the third line would go through that first line and carry on that pressure, keep that pressure on those Ottoman guns, those Ottoman forts. At first, it does look like it's hopeful, but then things start to go wrong. It's interesting at this moment as well, if we can just zero in on this, because this is one of the great and some of his turning points of the first world war that are round about 1pm with the first British line line A has gone forward, carried out on bombardment, French line B then comes forward with four pre-Dreadnoughts, and between about 1pm and roughly 2pm, this might be the high watermark of the entire Allied assault here, lots and lots of fire pouring into the narrow's forts, and at the time this is absolutely brutal if you're a Turkish defender, shells vibrating as they smash into the ground, smash into the fortress walls, shaking the ground, locking people to the ground, concussing people, leaving people stunned and deffined by the firing, you start getting some reports from Turkish batteries saying we can't fire, we're out of action. So the battery of Chanat reports it, all my guns are out, they're temporarily silenced and the temporary is an important point, just can't open fire. Sure, search lights are getting smashed and broken down, there's concern, and we know this from the Ottoman side that some of the defenders are saying, this is it, we can't hold them off, the battleships are going to go through, there's an enormous amount of ammunition consumption on the Ottoman side as well, and some batteries are basically running out of ammunition, they're throwing everything back at the fleet, doesn't seem to be having a lot of effect, this will become a point of contention later because it's argued the Ottomans are completely out of ammunition, the natural fact is just some batteries are running low and supplies aren't that far away, but in terms of what's happening that day, it's pretty critical, there's this is not looking great at this moment, this is a moment of crisis, but then of course Steve, the French squadron turns and begins to withdraw between around about 145 and 2pm, this is their turning to make way for the third line to come forward, which is a British line to continue this pounding of the Turkish forts and this is where everything is going to go wrong. Yes, and as we know the Dardanelles is quite narrow, but there's one distinct turning area around a place called Eryn Koi Bay, so the Turks had actually observed the fleet's prior to this big attack on the 18th of March using that to turn, so what they did about a week before the 18th of March attack is to lay a line of mines not horizontal across the Dardanelles from the European side to the Asian side, but parallel, so this parallel mines then became the big obstacle within Eryn Koi Bay, an obstacle with the French and the British did not know about because up to that stage the naval air service that were flying over the minefields to identify them had already I had already basically ticked that area as clear of mines safe to maneuver in, so your hummusant right there is soon as the French fleet led by the pre-dechnote and quite an old ship, the bouve started turning it hit a mine and in around two minutes it sunk, it totaled over and 95% of its crew were killed almost straight away as one of the ammunition supplies within the ship exploded and took that to the depths of the Dardanelles. The British were also turning in there, a HMS inflexible, hit a mine or possibly hit by a shell, that was wounded, HMS Ocean goes to its rescue much against the captain's wishes because he was having a good gun battle ship against Fort and Fort again ship at the time and he was a little bit annoyed I think they had to go and rescue his teammates there on the inflexible and went into aid that ship and take off those who had survived it and hit a mine as well, so now we've got a situation where we have one French ship sunk disappeared from the Dardanelles, we've got one badly wounded capsizing at another just freshly hit as well, so the tide has turned now literally and there's panic within the British because what is happening are these shells hitting the ships, are the Ottomans floating mines down the Dardanelles and this was truly believed at the time that they had these floating mines that the current was coming north to south into the ships, it was only later I believe it was post-war that I found out no it wasn't, it was through very tactical thinking that this new line of mines were laid by the Ottomans during the night which in a way brought the attack to quite a sudden close and prevented any of the British fleet and the French fleet going any further forward. So it's a really good point and I think quite rightly the newsred of this mine sweep, but the mine sweep is responsible for the laying of that north-south minefield which is almost on the shore, actually almost on the eastern side of the the Asian side of the shore, is really held up as being the the saviour of the of this big great attack and I think it's a absolute truth in it. There's also something to mention here which is I think we can't I've rest of make them a rower effect that this kind of damage does because not only we seeing ships up in the lead big heavy ships getting knocked out which is it's got a tremendous effect but also imagine the effect of hundreds or thousands of sailors being spilled into the into the relatively narrow dard nails and then being swept down past these remaining ships that now have to stop and try and pick up guys that are getting swept right out to sea beyond them on this very fast current. It really creates chaos in the rear areas and the rear echelons of this of this concerted efforts try and drive through the narrows but it's not long spent to come back to you for a second before it becomes absolutely clear that quite simply there is going to be no way to force the narrows in anything like what needs to be done the mines are still there in very large numbers you've got now it's clear that somebody's managing to penetrate the British line and set down new mines in unexpected locations already terribly difficult to maneuver the terrain itself isn't really conducive to flat trajectory fire to knock out forts as you get further up the straight all kinds of problems is the right in on the wall as early as 18th of March. Well this is a big question and I glad you mentioned about the the sort of the human aspect of this you know the the bouvets sinks in no maximum speed of 120 seconds and then he's lost with hundreds of casualties and then from that point on everything starts falling apart very very quickly so between as the the bouvets sinking another French vessel the galoise takes absolutely gets gets the range gets found on it by the Turkish guns they really pound it in fact it's so badly shot of it has to beach on its way out it's that badly shot up with hits below the waterline mine sweepers go forward to try and make something happen but they're being shot at as well then in the midst of all this the British pre-Jetnaught HMIS irresistible strikes a mine and starts to sink and flounder HMIS ocean goes over to assist irresistible because it's not clear if it's being taken out by gunnery or if it's hit a mine and in the process HMIS ocean hits a mine as well irresistible actually sinks after HMIS ocean which is you're interesting sort of about how quickly or otherwise ships can actually sink the broadcrowse of HMIS inflexible has been badly shot up it takes a lot of hits coming in as well and it gets damaged as well but later in the action it gets hit by a mine it too has to limp out under very heavy fire as well and so what this means is by by sort of nightfall by the time durobek orders or says it's it's time to go he's lost of the fleet that goes into attack he has lost irresistible he's lost ocean is he's lost bouve galois is badly damaged inflexible is badly damaged and there's also another French battleship suffering which has also been repeatedly hit and that's basically out of action so he's lost six effectively he's lost six warships including three that are completely lost sunk two that are going to be out of action for a long time including his only modern battle cruiser so there's there's all this it's been an absolute nightmare and it's happened so fast from the bouve striking a mine it's brand about five minutes past four minutes for two derobach ordering a generally draw, it's about three and a half hours, very, very fast. And what's intriguing though, from this situation collapsing, derobach has to pull out, having lost these ships, is to look at it from the Turkish side. And I'm glad you we've mentioned the Nusra because that is now a museum ship. You can go and see it at the Naval Museum near Shana restored and displayed. I sort of Turkish naval icon in many respects that achieved so much, but there is this fascinating argument that's going to be important for derobach and for Churchill and everybody else at this point because okay, the assault has failed. But the Ottomans have also had a rough day. The supply of armor piercing shell is really low, is critically low. They fired up most of their armor piercing rounds during this. And although they're encouraged because they've seen three ships sink, they know they've inflicted a lot of hits. They also know it's been really brutal here. And it's interesting that Lehman von Saunders, the German commander, who is leading the German military mission in the Ottoman Empire, he writes in his memoirs after the war that he didn't expect the Allied fleet to withdraw after the 18th. He thought they were going to come again on the 19th. And he was beginning to consider, according to his memoirs, we're going to have to evacuate because the Allies are just going to force their way through with sheer weight of fire. And further, you know, even Mustafa Kemal, who isn't there, will hear a lot more about him in future episodes, he regards that there was a possibility here that the Allied fleet might have gone through. In reality, though, Steve, is it ever likely that the assault might get renewed or the casualties too heavy? Well, there was, you know, as soon as that, attacking the 18th March was called off, it was getting dark, it was late in the afternoon. And then if you, as you already mentioned, spent certainly in the print into context with the loss of the ship losses, that's a third of the fleet sunk or severely damaged. They could not go back into action again. So they had a very difficult decision to make their evening of the 18th is do they go again or do they call it off and wait for reinforcements to come? And that's the plate goes into the night, you know, do they go again? And you know, a few of the senior naval personnel, like come keys, for example, was very keen to go again. But in the end, Derobick said, no, we're not to go again. And this is quite interesting because not jumping ahead too far here, there's two witnesses to that naval attack on the 18th of March, two military officers, senior military officers, and they look at each other. And one of them is Sir William Birdwood, Commander of Anzac, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. And the new newly appointed commander of the Mediterranean Exhibitory Force, Sir Ian Hamilton, they look at each other and they know then that now the campaign is going to be passed over to them. The naval had had their chance. The 18th of March was really the last effort. The navy would go through and they would need the army, or sure, before any subsequent naval attack would go in. So yep, they needed boots on the ground, which from the early stages of the planning of this operation was there would be no boots on the ground. So quite quickly, this is already escalating from a navy only campaign to something I don't think anyone wanted from the war office back home in the UK. Your great point Stephen, and does this, does this meeting the point of no return really, aboard the flagship John Derobick meets with some of his captains and he meets with General Sir Ian Hamilton of the army who'd arrived just a few days earlier with the idea of taking command of land forces that are starting to be assembled in Egypt. And I think it's a meeting that's always cinematic in its consequences because in the first few days after the the reports on the 18th, Derobick cables back to London and he says, I think I can go again, but we've got to reorganize the fleet. We've lost half the fleet, heavy losses, and he's told no problem reinforcements are on their way. There's already some reserve battleships that are nearby, we'll get you ready. So do this. But in that intervening time from him, I'm literally saying I'm going to go again to the 22nd of March. He does a lot of thinking and he tells Hamilton the army commander, I don't think I can do it just with Navy alone. And the correct course from now is going to be a combined operation. The army can land that gliply, there's silence, especially the mobile howitzer batteries, which are causing so much havoc, they'll get behind the narrow's forts, which aren't designed to be defended from the landward side. There's silence those, that allow the mines to be swept, the fleet will go forward and victory will follow. It's interesting that Churchill is absolutely furious about this. Your Churchill gets a lot of criticism. He's furious because Derobick has initially said, I'm going to go again, then he gets a message back saying, no, we're going to need the army. So Churchill wants to order Derobick to go in and attack with Navely, but they rest of the war cabinet turns against him. The first sea lord, Jack Fischer says, no, I'm not back, we refuse to back you. Kitchener actually starts to support the combined operation concept. And the war cancels off seeing that the army and the navy are both united against Churchill. They're not going to allow Churchill to order Derobick to do things. And so the Dardenells operation is over. And the land campaign, a clock has now started for that. And just over a month later on the 25th of April, the British and Anzac forces will hit the beaches and the consequences of that. Well, we're going to cover that in our very next episode. And don't forget the French. You can keep that in as well. That's a good shot. That's a good shot. You've been listening to Not So Quiet on the Western Front, a battle guide production. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to the Battleguide YouTube channel for more military history. To support us and access bonus content, want to check out our supporter platform, The Dugout, link available in the show notes. That's all this time. See you again soon. The recommendation on the spot from the from. Did that again? Yes, you got an outtake. Finally. I've had the last one though, no doubt. Finally, you're having that one.