Every Warship at Gallipoli (One Small Boat With 26 Mines Beat Them All)
Bold History
11,172 views
The Ottoman navy could not fight for the Dardanelles and everyone knew it. Two
worn-out German battleships from 1891, one ironclad older than most of the men
aboard her, and a battlecruiser too valuable to risk. Against that, Britain and
France brought eighteen capital ships including the newest and most powerful
battleship in the world.
So the Ottomans did not defend the strait. They closed it. Eleven lines of
mines, forts on both shores to keep the minesweepers away from the mines, and
howitzer batteries that moved every night so they could never be silenced.
This is every warship sent to Gallipoli, on both sides.
On the Allied side it is mostly a list of ships Britain had already written off.
With one exception, every capital ship in that fleet was there because it was
worth nothing in the North Sea. The operation was cheap because the ships were
expendable, which is exactly why nobody looked hard at whether they were
suitable. Queen Elizabeth, the one modern ship, was sent to calibrate her guns
on live targets, could not hit what actually mattered, and was pulled out
altogether after a submarine displacing one four-hundredth of her tonnage sank
two of her companions in three days.
It is also where a surprising amount of naval history starts. The first Victoria
Cross awarded to a submariner in any navy. The first submarine to get under a
minefield and out again. The first ship in the world completed as an aircraft
carrier. The first ship in history sunk by a torpedo dropped from an aircraft.
The first purpose-built landing craft, whose descendants went to Normandy. All
of it happened in this one strait, in 1915.
And underneath all of it are the fishing boats. To force the Dardanelles the
fleet had to sweep the mines, and to sweep the mines it sent North Sea steam
trawlers crawling upstream at walking pace, at night, in searchlights, under
howitzer fire. They could not do it. The forts existed to protect the mines. The
howitzers existed to drive off the sweepers. The entire Ottoman defence was
built around stopping a few dozen fishing boats from finishing their job, and it
worked.
On the eighteenth of March 1915 the fleet went in to force the strait. The forts
fired all day and sank nothing at all. Three capital ships were destroyed and
three more crippled, every one of them by mines, and every one of those mines
came from a line laid eleven days earlier by a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-ton
minelayer with a crew of about thirty, in water the Royal Navy had already swept
and certified clear.
The strait stayed shut for another two and a half years. That is the part usually
left on the beach, and it should not be, because the Dardanelles were the road by
which Russia sold what it grew and bought what it needed.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The boat, the mines, and the night
0:39 The strait, and why the Ottoman navy never fought for it
2:20 HMS Queen Elizabeth, the only modern ship there
4:57 HMS Inflexible, the Falklands victor
6:44 Lord Nelson class, the last pre-dreadnoughts
8:16 Canopus class, five sent and three destroyed
10:37 Formidable and London classes
12:07 Duncan class, and the last shots of the campaign
13:02 Majestic class, twenty years old and still on the line
14:20 Swiftsure and Triumph, two battleships built for Chile
15:43 The monitors, and the guns borrowed from a Greek battleship
17:23 Bouvet, gone in under two minutes
19:21 Suffren, Gaulois and the rest of the French division
22:18 HMS B11, the first boat under the minefields
23:45 HMAS AE2, the first through the Narrows
25:10 E14 and E11, two Victoria Crosses in the Marmara
26:44 The French submarines, four sent and four lost
27:41 HMS Ark Royal, the first aircraft carrier ever built
28:45 Ben-my-Chree, and the first torpedo dropped from an aircraft
30:13 River Clyde, six Victoria Crosses in one morning
31:56 The X lighters, the ancestors of every landing craft
33:03 The minesweeping trawlers, and the real reason it failed
35:02 Askold, the only Russian ship there
36:02 Yavuz Sultan Selim, the ship that stayed home
38:02 Barbaros Hayreddin and Turgut Reis, battleships used as land guns
39:25 Mesudiye, Hamidiye and Mecidiye
40:58 Muavenet-i Milliye kills a battleship
42:18 The forts, and Corporal Seyit
44:28 The mobile howitzers, the entry with no monument
45:31 Eleven lines of mines
46:39 U-21 and UB-14, the boats that ended the naval campaign
48:09 Nusret
51:48 The eighteenth of March
55:08 The door that stayed shut
The land campaign is deliberately not in this video. Anzac, Lone Pine, Suvla and
the winter belong to the army and they deserve their own. This one stops at the
waterline.
7 Comments
the mines used might even have been ''free'' recycled mines from russia.
the turks used to grab them from the black sea
and reposition them down in the Dardanelles
Das Wiederholen der Verben am Ende des Satzes ist nicht auszuhalten, auszuhalten.
Every Warship at Gallipoli (One Small Boat With 26 Mines Beat Them All)
Bold History
11,172 views
The Ottoman navy could not fight for the Dardanelles and everyone knew it. Two
worn-out German battleships from 1891, one ironclad older than most of the men
aboard her, and a battlecruiser too valuable to risk. Against that, Britain and
France brought eighteen capital ships including the newest and most powerful
battleship in the world.
So the Ottomans did not defend the strait. They closed it. Eleven lines of
mines, forts on both shores to keep the minesweepers away from the mines, and
howitzer batteries that moved every night so they could never be silenced.
This is every warship sent to Gallipoli, on both sides.
On the Allied side it is mostly a list of ships Britain had already written off.
With one exception, every capital ship in that fleet was there because it was
worth nothing in the North Sea. The operation was cheap because the ships were
expendable, which is exactly why nobody looked hard at whether they were
suitable. Queen Elizabeth, the one modern ship, was sent to calibrate her guns
on live targets, could not hit what actually mattered, and was pulled out
altogether after a submarine displacing one four-hundredth of her tonnage sank
two of her companions in three days.
It is also where a surprising amount of naval history starts. The first Victoria
Cross awarded to a submariner in any navy. The first submarine to get under a
minefield and out again. The first ship in the world completed as an aircraft
carrier. The first ship in history sunk by a torpedo dropped from an aircraft.
The first purpose-built landing craft, whose descendants went to Normandy. All
of it happened in this one strait, in 1915.
And underneath all of it are the fishing boats. To force the Dardanelles the
fleet had to sweep the mines, and to sweep the mines it sent North Sea steam
trawlers crawling upstream at walking pace, at night, in searchlights, under
howitzer fire. They could not do it. The forts existed to protect the mines. The
howitzers existed to drive off the sweepers. The entire Ottoman defence was
built around stopping a few dozen fishing boats from finishing their job, and it
worked.
On the eighteenth of March 1915 the fleet went in to force the strait. The forts
fired all day and sank nothing at all. Three capital ships were destroyed and
three more crippled, every one of them by mines, and every one of those mines
came from a line laid eleven days earlier by a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-ton
minelayer with a crew of about thirty, in water the Royal Navy had already swept
and certified clear.
The strait stayed shut for another two and a half years. That is the part usually
left on the beach, and it should not be, because the Dardanelles were the road by
which Russia sold what it grew and bought what it needed.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The boat, the mines, and the night
0:39 The strait, and why the Ottoman navy never fought for it
2:20 HMS Queen Elizabeth, the only modern ship there
4:57 HMS Inflexible, the Falklands victor
6:44 Lord Nelson class, the last pre-dreadnoughts
8:16 Canopus class, five sent and three destroyed
10:37 Formidable and London classes
12:07 Duncan class, and the last shots of the campaign
13:02 Majestic class, twenty years old and still on the line
14:20 Swiftsure and Triumph, two battleships built for Chile
15:43 The monitors, and the guns borrowed from a Greek battleship
17:23 Bouvet, gone in under two minutes
19:21 Suffren, Gaulois and the rest of the French division
22:18 HMS B11, the first boat under the minefields
23:45 HMAS AE2, the first through the Narrows
25:10 E14 and E11, two Victoria Crosses in the Marmara
26:44 The French submarines, four sent and four lost
27:41 HMS Ark Royal, the first aircraft carrier ever built
28:45 Ben-my-Chree, and the first torpedo dropped from an aircraft
30:13 River Clyde, six Victoria Crosses in one morning
31:56 The X lighters, the ancestors of every landing craft
33:03 The minesweeping trawlers, and the real reason it failed
35:02 Askold, the only Russian ship there
36:02 Yavuz Sultan Selim, the ship that stayed home
38:02 Barbaros Hayreddin and Turgut Reis, battleships used as land guns
39:25 Mesudiye, Hamidiye and Mecidiye
40:58 Muavenet-i Milliye kills a battleship
42:18 The forts, and Corporal Seyit
44:28 The mobile howitzers, the entry with no monument
45:31 Eleven lines of mines
46:39 U-21 and UB-14, the boats that ended the naval campaign
48:09 Nusret
51:48 The eighteenth of March
55:08 The door that stayed shut
The land campaign is deliberately not in this video. Anzac, Lone Pine, Suvla and
the winter belong to the army and they deserve their own. This one stops at the
waterline.