How did the Battle of Da Daniil Strait happen?

The Battle of Da Daniil Strait (1965438+February-June 2005), also known as the Battle of Gallipoli Peninsula, was the first large-scale amphibious campaign launched by the allied forces led by Britain to break the deadlock in World War I. ..

War background

19 14 By the end of the first world war, the battlefield on the western front had completely changed from mobile warfare to positional warfare, and the whole war entered a stalemate stage. In order to break this deadlock and win the war as soon as possible, Germany intends to attack Britain's maritime lifeline, while Britain decides to launch an amphibious attack. Turkey has become its preferred attack point. As a bridge connecting the European continent and the Asian continent, Turkey's strategic position is very important, especially in the Daniil Strait. The ridge of the strait is steep and there are many cliffs along the coast, which is convenient for preventing risks. It is the throat that blocks the Black Sea and controls the passage from Europe to the Middle East. Germany and Turkey have built a large number of fortifications and coastal artillery positions here, and the stone cliffs are covered with bunkers, forming a solid "dungeon". All areas that can land on the shore are blocked by fire, and minefields abound. If the Allies want to open the road to the east, they must capture the Daniil Strait, so as to block the land contact between Turkey and Germany and force Turkey to withdraw from the war. 19 15 1.2, the Russian army asked the British army to send an army or navy to make a feint on the Turkish army, so as to alleviate the pressure of the Turkish army on the Russian army in the Caucasus, and this request just aroused the idea that Churchill, then the navy minister, wanted to seize the Daniil Strait. Later, Churchill actively advocated that Carden vice admiral, who was then in command of Da Daniil's blockade of the sub-fleet, should make corresponding capture plans, that is, the British-French joint fleet first destroyed the coastal artillery company and fortress of the Turkish army with naval gun fire, swept away mines in the strait, forced through the Da Daniil Strait and captured Constantinople. 1915 65438+1On October 28th, the British War Committee approved this battle plan. The British army began to make full preparations for the battle.

In this war, the British * * * invested in 15 battleships (including the latest battleship "Queen Elizabeth" equipped with 15 inch guns and 4 French battleships), 1 battle cruiser, 4 light cruisers, 16 fleet destroyers, 7 submarines and 65436. The strength of the British-French joint fleet is quite strong, and its biggest deficiency lies in the lack of a suitable forward base. And its target-Da Daniil Strait is jointly defended by German and Turkish Lu Haijun, with strong fortifications and powerful firepower. The peripheral battery (26 guns) is deployed on both sides of the entrance to the Strait, followed by the middle battery (85 guns) and the internal battery (88 guns) is deployed in canakkale. From the entrance of the strait to the coast between Kepez, howitzers with movable positions were also installed. Two minefields, nine mine barriers and 334 mines were set at the narrowest part of the Strait and under Kepez. In the minefield, a new battery was set up to defend the minefield, and searchlights were installed to deal with minesweepers operating at night. Its biggest shortcoming is that the large-caliber artillery shells are far inferior to those of Britain (Turkey:/KOOC-0/02 ~/KOOC-0/9/KOOC-0/mm artillery/KOOC-0/90, Britain: 92 artillery 234~380 mm).

War process

1965438+On February 9, 2005/kloc-0, the British launched a surprise operation aimed at destroying Turkish forts and other fortifications. More than 20 warships took advantage of the night, from the Aegean Sea to the north, arrived at the entrance of the Da Daniil Strait, and began to attack. However, due to the extremely bad weather conditions, it is difficult for soldiers to aim at the enemy in the storm. So the first day's attack only destroyed some beachheads and did not achieve substantial results. The army troops on board could not land at all, so they had to fight and retreat from the Da Daniil Strait. Five days later, the weather improved, and the British began to bomb the Turkish naval gun position at the entrance of the Daniil Strait for the second time, which lasted for a week. The Turkish border guards were forced to retreat under the fierce attack of the British army. The British took the opportunity to make a surprise landing, blew up the intact Turkish shore guns and occupied a small landing site. At the same time, the British army also paid a certain price. Just after it landed, the artillery of the Turkish army kept coming from behind the cliff, causing serious casualties of British soldiers, so the British army was forced to retreat on March 3. The attack destroyed most of the Turkish battery, but it still failed to satisfy Churchill. Carden resigned, and Derobeck took over the command, and decided to launch a general attack on March 18. In order to cope with the possible British attack at any time, Germany and Turkey further strengthened their defense. Defensive forces increased from 2 divisions to 4 divisions, and artillery increased. At the same time, we dug trenches to avoid the attack of enemy naval artillery, and laid 10 mine line and ***20 mine along the Asian coast. On March 18, the British-French joint fleet launched a general attack. First, Derobeck commanded the fleet to enter the Da Daniil Strait to prepare artillery fire, clearing the way for its landing soldiers to land. Under the cover of the air force, the minesweeper first cleared the mines laid by the Turkish army on the waterway and opened up a safe passage. The large warships then approached the shore of the strait and fired fiercely at the coastal defense positions of the Turkish army. By 4 pm, the Turkish coastal artillery units had become speechless and the fortifications of the Turkish army were completely destroyed. However, just as Derobeck satisfactorily commanded the fleet to return, something unfortunate happened. When the French navy battleship Bouvet retreated along the Asian side, it ran into a mine previously laid by the Turkish army and sank into the sea. Derobeck, on the other hand, mistakenly thought it was an attack by the army artillery on the shore, and ordered the whole fleet to stop retreating, concentrating all the artillery to bombard the remaining artillery positions of the army until the artillery launched by the army was out of sight. But at this moment, the British battleship Invincible sank when it touched the mine, and the unyielding was seriously injured by the mine. At 6 pm, in order to prevent more warships from being killed, Derobeck ordered to return to the Aegean Sea. On the way, the warship suffered losses continuously. The battleship "Ocean" was sunk by a mine, the "Giant" was seriously injured, and the "Sufulong" was seriously injured by heavy artillery shells. The attack ended in the defeat of the British army. However, after the event, relevant data showed that if the British army insisted on or launched a powerful attack soon, the Turkish army could not resist at all, but Derobeck was satisfied with a temporary victory and mistakenly commanded the fleet to sail into the newly laid minefield of the Turkish army, letting the cooked ducks fly like this.

At this point, the British army completely abandoned the battle plan of landing from the sea, and decided to implement the joint campaign of Lu Haijun, that is, the landing soldiers seized the fortifications of Gallipoli Peninsula and Daniil Strait to ensure that the fleet broke into Marmarahy, and then carried out surprise attacks from land and sea to capture Constantinople. The secretary of the army, Kiki, was in charge of the whole campaign and appointed Hamilton as the commander of the Aegean theater. For further actions, the British side was in a hurry and did not make all preparations. For example, more than 60,000 troops from Britain, France, India, Australia, New Zealand and other countries who participated in the war did not have a pre-war coordinated training. After the war, it was found that the allies lacked artillery for mountain operations, and the senior commanders did not have a decent military map, nor did they make a unified operational plan, or even chose a landing site. The Turkish side has strengthened its defense. Its commander, von Saunders, mobilized all artillery to build artillery positions in the peninsula highlands, and the strength increased from the original four divisions to six divisions, digging trenches behind all beaches where the Allied forces might land, and using barbed wire and machine guns to cover them. All these indicate that the British landing war did not go smoothly as expected.

On April 23, the British army set out from the port of Muzlos in Greece. On April 25-26, the landing troops reached the sand dune area on the shore after encountering slight resistance. However, the success of this landing brought a worthless deadlock. The allies were trapped in a beach area 2 miles long and less than 2 miles wide, and both ends were blocked by cliffs. The troops were in a mess and were constantly attacked by Turkey. From the end of April to the beginning of May, the British army launched three attacks in this area, all of which ended in failure, with 4500 casualties. On the land after May,

In the sea area, the weather is getting hotter and hotter, and tens of thousands of bodies on the battlefield are beginning to rot. Boredom, heat and illness made life more difficult for the troops, and the two sides were deadlocked. The British and French navies at the beginning of the campaign also suffered heavy losses. Before the end of May, Britain lost three battleships in a row. On May 3rd, 1 Turkish destroyer torpedoed the British battleship Goliath. On May 25th and 27th, the German submarine "U-2 1" sank the British battleships "Victory" and "Magnificence" respectively. In order to fight against German submarines, Britain decided to send 1 shallow heavy gunboats and 13 submarines to assist in the operation. These British submarines have achieved certain results by destroying Turkish ships carrying goods, attacking their logistics forces and carrying out small-scale attacks on the coast, but these cannot fundamentally change the deadlock on land. In early June, Britain decided to send five more divisions to support land operations. On August 6th, in order to cut off the Gallipoli Peninsula, Hamilton decided to launch a new offensive at Gaba Point, and at the same time sent two divisions to land in Souvraz Bay for surprise attack. On the night of August 6th, the British army landed in Souvraz Bay, and the British and French allied forces turned to attack. By August 10, the Turkish army stopped the attack of the British and French allied forces, and the first full-scale attack was temporarily ended. In the battle, the British and French allied forces lost about 45 thousand people, which is roughly equivalent to the loss of the Turkish army. In September, Hamilton, commander-in-chief of the British army, was recalled to London and General Charles Monroe took office. The fighting between the two sides is intermittent. In 10, the weather is getting worse and worse. The sudden attack of thunderstorm and snowstorm submerged more than 1000 British and Turkish troops in trenches. General Monroe realized that going on like this would be tantamount to self-destruction, and the battle of gallipoli was doomed to failure, so he decided to retreat. 19 on the night of February 19, under extremely secret circumstances, the allies began to retreat, and the retreat was completed on 19 16 10/9, with no casualties in the process. At this point, the Battle of Da Daniil Strait came to an end.

War results and evaluation

The Battle of the Daniil Strait lasted for 259 days, with 250,000 casualties of British and French allied forces and 654.38+086,000 casualties of Turkish troops. The British-French joint fleet lost six battleships and Turkey lost 1, which ended in the failure of the British-French joint fleet. The main reasons for the defeat in the Battle of Da Daniil Strait are that the British and French allied forces underestimated the enemy's defensive ability, the attack lacked suddenness and full preparation, the organization was chaotic, the enemy's situation was unclear, and the command was hesitant. In addition, the clever use of the obstacles of the army, coastal guns and anti-landing mines by the German-Turkish high command, and the effective operation of the German fleet in the maritime communication lines are all important reasons for the defeat of Britain and France in the battle of the Daniil Strait. The Battle of Da Daniil Strait is the largest amphibious offensive battle in history, which provides enough experience and lessons for future wars and has far-reaching influence. After this war, people began to re-explore the methods of preparing and implementing the invasion of coastal defense and fortified areas, and formulated new methods of preparing and implementing the landing campaign.