WW1 Infantry equipment grogs

[Sergei]

That's nothing, nowadays if you disobey the Lieutenant might take the platoon's Nintendo Wii away for a day, and then you'd have no other choice but to go to the canteen to play pinball. I think your daughter might agree that this constitutes an unusual and cruel punishment!

[JonS]

Good idea re the weight. If I stick them with about 15 kilos in a pack and make them run round the hall for a minute that will be fun. Shame I can't make them do it in knee deep mud.

Just had a thought - you could get them to re-enact that scene from "Gallipoli" (1981) where the sprinter jumps the bags and sprints towards the Turks opposite on the field outside the Scout Hall. To make it extra interesting, you could have one kid running in the opposite direction - if he gets to the "HQ" in time the 'attack' across the field is called off, otherwise the rest of them have to run across the field at Johhny Turk.

(there are a couple of different versions on YouTube, showing more or less of the end).

[Affentitten]

Better yet, we could go up the local kebab shop and invade it. First one to get to the top of the counter and knock off a few Ottomans wins. Meanwhile the Sea Scouts could float around ineffectively worried that might lose a kayak forcing the Dardanelles.

[JonS]

Meanwhile the Sea Scouts could float around ineffectively worried that might lose a kayak forcing the Dardanelles.

[aside]To be fair, the Navy *did* get spanked when they tried that[/aside]

[aside]Then again, I'm not really clear what was supposed to happen if they'd successfully forced the Dardenelles anyway. The planning seems to have been along the lines of:

1) Force Dardenelles

2) ... ?

3) We win!

[/aside]

[costard]

Don't forget to give the medal to a dead 'un. Makes it all the more worthwhile somehow.

[Affentitten]

[aside]To be fair, the Navy *did* get spanked when they tried that[/aside]

[aside]Then again, I'm not really clear what was supposed to happen if they'd successfully forced the Dardenelles anyway. The planning seems to have been along the lines of:

1) Force Dardenelles

2) ... ?

3) We win!

[/aside]

They didn’t get spanked. The Brits had a couple of battleships damaged and (some hours afterwards) another old battleship hit a mine and sunk. The French lost the Bouvet quite quickly and de Robeck lost his nerve. The tragedy was that they had already won. The Turkish forts were knocked out, no more mines were available and the Turkish torpedoes used up. The field pieces left to the Turks had almost no ammo and couldn’t penetrate the ship armour. Royal Marine demolition parties were moving about onshore with impunity to destroy strong points. The only think protecting Constantinople were a few muzzle loading bronze cannon that faced the wrong way.

Occupying Constantinople was not a military intention. It was a political one. The Turkish capital was awash with civil unrest and the Sultan pretty much had his bags packed. The Young Turks were pushing hard to depose him. The thought was that if Constantinople could be taken, revolution would ensue and Turkey would at the very least become neutral or a client state. It was only after a few more weeks of stuffing around and the land invasion of Gallipoli that Turkish resolve stiffened through nationalism.

It’s interesting to me how far the Royal Navy had come since the days of Nelson. With no major surface engagements since the Napoleonic times, the RN had developed an almost fetishistic wariness of losing vessels. In Nelson’s time, captains who lost their ships faced a routine court martial. This was to make sure that their ship had not been lost through negligence. Losses in battle and through following orders were quite acceptable and the officers were exonerated. But over the next hundred years this developed into an obsession that no ship must ever be lost under any circumstances and any captain who did so was guilty of the most heinous crime. “Going down with the ship” was pretty much the equivalent of the revolver at the temple as a way of avoiding disgrace.

De Robeck, when the British minesweepers started coming under fire, began to get jumpy. The loss of the Bouvet and the damaging of the two British battleships freaked him out at a time when he was already bringing his second line up to cruise through the Straits and on to victory. He panicked about losing more ships and even remarked that this would be the end of his career. He then signalled a general withdrawal and over the following weeks kept revising upwards his estimates of what it would take him to force the Straits. The Admiralty concurred with their man on the spot and refused to sanction the operation unless the Army committed land forces....and there we have it.

The same chariness of loss can be seen at Jutland. In a way, the British Army and the RN had opposite experiences in WW1 and resolved different lessons about what constituted acceptable losses that were then applied in WW2.

[Stalins Organ]

Ah, Jon..no...the plan was simple - bombard Istanbul, turkey leaves the war in 1915, trade routes to Ukrainian grain are reopened...russia is not bankrupt....

And they came within the proberbial gnat's probiscus of succeeding - average number of shells left for the Turkish guns on 19 March was 4 each, the day after the 1st attack.

Remember the purpose of the bombardment on 18 March was to allow minesweepers to clear mines unmollested by the forts. So running them out of ammo was a good move!!

but the Admiral lost his bottle - he'd just lost more battleships than any British admiral for 100 years or more & he panicked. But the loss of the pre-dreadnoughts was trivial - there was little loss of life, and the crews replaced the north Sea trawlermen on the trawlers being used to sweep mines...which made them a lot better (although still mostly useless.....)

as for "might have been"'s - the Trawlers could barely make any progress against the Dardanelles current - but the Brits had destroyers fitted with sweeping wires they could have used that would have had no problem but never did.

In fact the Turkish forts didn't hit anything anyway - their guns were old, most had no sights, their spotting positions were out of communication with the guns, etc.

the delay to the landings on 25 April allowed the turks to bring up ammo & troops and more guns and scuttled the plan.

And why would Turkey have surrendered if there weer warships shooting at Istanbul?

Basically Turky was a totally entralised state - everything had to come from the capital, troops, supplies, etc - cut the Empire's Asian forces (ie those not on hte European side of the Bosphorous) off from ther and they would have run out of ammo in short order, even had they scrounged locally for food.

It was a great plan....let down by inadequate planning (sic), short sightedness, and lack of bottle.

the subsequent land campaign was an afterthought and a total screw up....but the initial naval attack should have succeeded.

And wouldn't the world be a different place if it had!

[Stalins Organ]

lol - snap!

[JonS]

Ah' date=' Jon..no...the plan was simple - bombard Istanbul, turkey leaves the war in 1915, trade routes to Ukrainian grain are reopened...russia is not bankrupt....[/quote']

Yes, that much I know.

It's the bit between "bombard Istanbul" and "Turkey leaves the war" that I sumarised as "2) ... ?" I didn't realise that Turkey was so shaky.

Well, I'm sure that appeared to be a spanking to him at the time. Combine that with what Aff said, and it's not too surprising that he lost his bottle. It's arguable that he shouldn't have, or that perhaps he hadn't thought through the number and type of losses he'd have and was therefore surpised when his ships started acquiring holes. Still, losing 1/3 of your big ships, while still facing unbreached mine barriers and active batteries ... ? It's a tough call to push on under those circumstances. He wasn't to know how much ammo the Turks had left, or their other problems. All he *knew* was he'd lost 1/3rd of his main force, without breaking through.

(And, yes, having just read Wiki I'm aware that other British commanders in the Narrows nevertheless felt they'd won a major victory that just required a little exploitation)

[Affentitten]

The other tragedy of the whole thing was how Churchill got stuck carrying the can for it all, despite the prevarication of Jackie Fisher and Kitchener.

I think the obsession with capital ships was part of the issue. They had become such symbols of prestige. Perhaps de Robeck wouldn't have been as rattled by the loss of smaller ships.

It's all easy in hindsight, but the obvious conclusion is that faint-heartedness lost one of the truly great opportunities of the war. The what-ifs from this one are exponential considering that Russia may not have been in the same social situation in 1917 had this "3rd front" been successfully opeend against Austria-Hungary.

[Michael Emrys]

Interesting thought that if the war hadn't gone so badly for Russia the Bolsheviks might not have gained the upper hand with all that followed from that. There might not have been a civil war and transitioned more or less peaceably into a more liberal constitutional monarchy. Or maybe not.

But in any event, the war would have probably ended a year or two earlier without the intervention of the USA. It's hardly a wonder that in the next war Churchill was nervous about his generals messing up his beautiful plans, whether that was what was happening or not.

Michael

[Stalins Organ]

Jon the Turkish batteries were silent before the 1st ship had struck a mine.....by 1.30 pm in the afternoon!!

Given that the purpose of het bombardment was to silence the batteries for the minesweepers there was no reason not to carry on minesweeping with the battleships in "distant" support and not threatened.

de Robeck's decision was not well thought through - he lost sight of his objective, didn't understand his own resources, and failed to act rationally.

Sure this is all hindsight....but it is, unfortunately for his reputation, also a serious potential turning point of world history.

plus I did a year 2 paper on it way back about 1992 or 3...

[John Kettler]

Affentitten,

I'm most curious as to what you decided to do after we all made our informational contributions and oft peculiar suggestions.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Affentitten]

Well here is the AAR:

Went pretty well, but the attention span of the kids was limited to say the least! There was a quick talk done by another of the dads that he probably let go a bit too long. Getting 8 year olds to comprehend “In Flander’s Fields” is tough.

I chimed in with a few things. I think the key take out for many at that point was that peeing on a scarf and putting it over your face could help against chlorine gas.

We then did a simulation of what would happen to a group of 1914’ers who had joined up from the same school district. What was fantastic was that someone earlier had asked if joining the army for WW1 was compulsory. I said no, not in Australia, but lots of people joined anyway. But then when we did the demo I called for volunteers for my ‘army’. About half the kids sprang up and came straight away. Another quarter saw that so many others were going and slunk over. The remaining quarter I admonished and said things like “You’ll get a free trip to France. You might get a medal.” A few drifted over. Then the last couple of hold outs I said “Chicken, hey?” And up they sprang.

Perfect WW1 enlistment!!

I then killed them, wounded them, blinded them etc. Only 4 from the cub pack made it home unscathed. That really sunk in for a lot of them.

Then we did the exercise carrying the heavy pack and rifle and they had a lot of fun with that.

I’d give the evening an 8/10.

[John Kettler]

Affentitten,

And who, I wonder, is footing the psychiatric bills after that harrowing childhood introduction to the meatgrinder that is modern warfare?! Sounds like the message got through. Bravo Zulu!

Regards,

John Kettler

[JonS]

Parenting: +1

[Affentitten]

Affentitten,

And who, I wonder, is footing the psychiatric bills....

Actually a concern I had at one point was the physio bills. The backpack was very heavy and some of the kids were being a bit too exuberant in the way they were trying to throw it on and swing around. I had fears for ruptured disks!

[costard]

Actually a concern I had at one point was the physio bills. The backpack was very heavy and some of the kids were being a bit too exuberant in the way they were trying to throw it on and swing around. I had fears for ruptured disks!

Nah, the little buggers bounce and stretch like Gumby at that age. It's only old farts like thee and me that get sore backs.

[JonS]

They didn’t get spanked. The Brits had a couple of battleships damaged and (some hours afterwards) another old battleship hit a mine and sunk. The French lost the Bouvet quite quickly and de Robeck lost his nerve. The tragedy was that they had already won. The Turkish forts were knocked out, no more mines were available and the Turkish torpedoes used up. The field pieces left to the Turks had almost no ammo and couldn’t penetrate the ship armour. Royal Marine demolition parties were moving about onshore with impunity to destroy strong points. The only think protecting Constantinople were a few muzzle loading bronze cannon that faced the wrong way.

Aff,

apparently that bit about the forts being out of ammo isn't true.

http://www.awm.gov.au/journal/j36/traversreview.asp

Jon

[Stalins Organ]

The amount of ammo they had was pretty much irrelevant - they weren't hitting the ships with guns anyway. Most of the guns were obsolete and lacked effective fire control.

The ammunition he is refering to is probably that for het guns at the narrows - further into the straights and where the main 10 minefields were. these were not engaged on the 18th, but AFAIK there is no reason to expect they would have been any more lethal than the outer guns....that is to say not at all.

However the nature of the minesweeping forces was significant - IIRC they were North Sea Trawlers, manned by civilians, who pretty much point blank refused to sail into any gunfire at all. With maximum speeds in the order of 7-8 knots, and with a 2-3 knot current against them that's probably a reasonable attitude forsomeone used to catching cod! A few sweepers had already been destroyed on mines, so any extra risk was not really what they had signed up for!

Paradoxically the sinking of the old battleships freed up hundreds of military sailors who replaced the civies as crew for the trawlers.

I seem to recall (I did a paper on the possiblities of the 18th of March, since lost it alas) also that the RN contingent included a couple of handfulls of destroyers (10-12?) that were equipped with 1.5" sweep wires. As I recall, normal sweeping used 2.5" wire to break mine chains, but 1.5" was adequate to find mines and lift them, but they would then remain hung on the wire until destroyed.

also something thatis often forgotten is that ANZAC cove was notwhere the ANZACs were supposed to land - they were supposed to land across about 4 miles of beach that went almost as far south as Gabe Tepe - a mile or 2 south. There the peninsular is low and flat across its entire width - note the lack of terrain shown on the map from there to Maidos on the opposite coast on the map linked to.

AS it was the troops who were supposed to land on the south part of the beach (9 & 10 bn's) actually ended up on the northern section of ANZAC Cove!

There were more Turks there defending it, as it was an obvious landing area, but at least the terrain wouldn't have screwed them as badly!

Just another cock up among many

[JonS]

from the link:

Travers also dispels the long-standing myth, still repeated in modern accounts, that the Turkish defenders were desperately low in ammunition after the major combined allied naval assault of 18 March (pp.31-2). This knowledge is not new to most scholars, as Robin Prior first established it in his 1983 work, Churchill's "World Crisis" as History; more recently it received further confirmation from Turkish sources in an article by Edward J. Erickson, "One more push: forcing the Dardanelles in March 1915", The Journal of Strategic Studies, (September 2001). Travers' evidence now makes the case irrefutable that further naval assaults upon the Dardanelles defences would have been folly.

I trust Travers and Prior.

[Affentitten]

But the question still remains as to what damage these shore batteries could have done. Certainly when they were firing they were not able to harm the warships.

[gunnergoz]

I love this forum! Went from lecturing kids to the alternative history of the world in, what, 4 pages?

[Elmar Bijlsma]

With my forum settings, they managed to do that on page 1. This thread is barely 2 pages long.

My opinion on Gallipoli? It was worth a shot, pity it got bungled. But what else were the Brits going to do?

Churchill got a raw deal on this one. Was always going to happen though. Between "hating on the Poms" and "talking smack about a great man" it's just too much fun for people to keep on repeating that Churchill was an incompetent meanie.

[Stalins Organ]

Aff they didn't damage any trawlers eiether AFAIK - the trawler losses I know of were from mines.

john I have no trouble with hte conclusion teh Turks had ammo left - but it is a long leap from there to saying that moer assaults "would have been folly" - I'd like to know a lot more about why they think that, given the ineffectiveness of the turkish artilelry vs teh ships up to that date.

Certainly the ships weren't doing much damage either.......but they didn't have to - only 1 thing was important - could the trawlers sweep the mines? If the shore batteries weren't hitting ships then they'd eventually run out of ammo, the trawlers would sweep the mines, and the fleet would get through the straights.

Now to modern sensibilities a fleet in the Sea of Marama looks liek a sitting duck - but there are considerations regarding the nature of het Ottoman Empire that most people probably are not aware of.

For example it was centralised to an extent we would find difficult to believe a country could be - almost everything important had to come from Istanbul - and the Sea of Marama was its highway to Anatolia - cutting off Istanbul from the Asian part of the Empire means no reinforcements and no ammunition to Asia. Some could have gone across the Bosphorous.....but not nearly as much as otherwise.

Also the Sultan asn't actualy all that keen on war, and neither was the general population - a few 6" shells anywhere near the palace and he's gone - either out of the war, or out of the city (possibly causing a revolution by fleeing) or both.

the Goeben is also not a major consideration - it is outgunned by any 3 pre-dreadnoughts - it often fled from Russian ones, and hte sea is limited in size so it lacks space to make best use of its speed - there is no flank for it to get around an allied fleet to attack any transports coming behind.

And hte consequences of Turkey out of the war by mid 1915 are just stupendous - Russia can export its grain from the Ukraine and pay for its war, Bulgaria does not stab Serbia in the back and likely joins the allies (those were 2 specific aims of Churchill's plan.....), Rumania does not get over run, the Arab revolt becomes something competely different - agaisnt the British and French mandates perhaps.

I leave it to you to consider other possibilities.

So continuing the attack, at least on the surface, seems like an extremely worthwhile gamble - the rewards are immense. I'd like to see a lot more information about why it might be considered "folly" before leaping to support such a position.