Author Topic: What happened at Gallipoli?  (Read 705 times)

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Offline TomSea

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What happened at Gallipoli?
« on: March 18, 2017, 03:46:00 pm »
The Ottomans defeated the World War I allies in this battle.

Quote
What happened at Gallipoli?
In a military disaster 100 years ago, about 58,000 allied soldiers died. What was the plan, exactly what went wrong, and what is Gallipoli’s legacy?
 Mark Tran and Jon Henley Friday 24 April 2015 05.06 EDT

In a military disaster 100 years ago, about 58,000 allied soldiers – including 29,000 British and Irish soldiers and 11,000 Australians and New Zealanders – lost their lives on the Gallipoli peninsula. A further 87,000 Ottoman Turkish troops died fighting the allies and at least 300,000 more on both sides were seriously wounded.

What was the objective?

Conceived by Winston Churchill as the First Lord of the Admiralty, the plan was to knock out Ottoman Turkey, Germany’s ally, out of the war. The goal of the naval and land operation was to open up the Dardanelles straits, heavily mined and defended on its western shore by Turkish coastal forts and gun batteries on the 50-mile Gallipoli peninsula, to allied ships, capture Constantinople – present-day Istanbul – and so link up with Russia. Churchill saw the campaign as a way of breaking the attritional deadlock on the western front. “Are there not other alternatives?” he said at the time.


What went wrong?


The repeated British and French bombardments beginning in mid-February against Turkish positions proved ineffective. A final attempt to force a passage up the Dardanelles in March ended in three allied battleships being sunk and three badly damaged. The two landings – one by British troops at Cape Helles, at the base of the peninsula, and the other on the western Aegean coast, in the area later known as Anzac Cove, by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps – were met by fierce and disciplined Turkish opposition. Well dug in and heavily fortified on higher ground, they had been reinforced six times over. The allies had badly underestimated the capacity of the Turkish forces.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/24/gallipoli-what-happened-military-disaster-legacy

geronl

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Re: What happened at Gallipoli?
« Reply #1 on: March 18, 2017, 10:42:21 pm »
 :thumbsup:

Online Fishrrman

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Re: What happened at Gallipoli?
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2017, 01:43:53 am »
Eric Bogle's song stands as the most enduring monument of the battle:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG48Ftsr3OI

This one's worth your time.