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BRAW LADDIES AMIDST THE CLASH OF THE EMPIRES
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Navies to reach Constantinople,then the
capital of the Ottoman Empire, and so
possibly force theTurks out of the war.
The main British champion for this
was the First Lord of the Admiralty,
Winston Churchill. He won Cabinet
support on 13 January 1915 for a purely
naval attack through the Dardanelles
using older but heavily gunned
battleships to attack and destroy the
Turkish forts on the peninsula.
Churchill clinched the issue by
offering the services of the Navy’s latest
dreadnought the mighty HMS
Queen
Elizabeth,
which would test her 15-inch
guns against the enemy targets.
At that time there was little up-to-
date intelligence about the strength
of the Turkish defences; all that was
known was that British warships had
successfully bombarded the entrance
to the Dardanelles in November 1914,
causing panic amongst the Turkish
defenders. The planners in
L
ondon
did not know that the attack had
encouraged the Turks, under German
command, to increase their minefields
and to strengthen the Gallipoli defences
with modern mobile howitzers.
THE 12-INCH GUNS OF THE ROYAL NAVY BATTLESHIP HMS CANOPUS
FIRE AT TURKISH BATTERIES DU
R
ING OPERATIONS IN THE
DARDANELLES DURING 1915