On the following day there occurred at Smyrna an incident that is hard to explain. Even British experts have not made any attempt to solve the puzzle. Vice Admiral Peirse with a British and French fleet, appeared off the city and opened a bombardment. The Turkish command did not reply and, after doing considerable damage, Peirse and his ships sailed away. He made no attempt to land, indeed he is not believed to have had a force for that purpose with him. The only reasonable explanation of the bombardment is that it was in the nature of a diversion intended to keep as many troops as possible from Gallipoli.
In the Dardanelles the operations were rapidly coming to a head. The Anglo-French command believed the time had now arrived for an attack in force upon the forts at the Narrows, the real defenses of the straits. Accordingly, on March 6, 1915, the Albion, Prince George, the Vengeance, the Majestic and the Suffern steamed well up the straits and opened a direct fire on the big forts. It was not upon the work of these ships, however, that great hopes rested. A new experiment was being tried from the Gulf of Saros on the other side of the Peninsula of Gallipoli, at the same time. With their long range guns the Queen Elizabeth, the Agamemnon, and the Ocean stood well out and, by indirect fire, threw shell after shell over the heights of the peninsula into the land works. All the while circling aeroplanes, under the constant fire of the Turkish antiaircraft guns, watched and corrected the firing, while a captive balloon, sent up from the Agamemnon, did additional and valuable service in this respect.
It was found that, because of the angle of fire of the big naval guns, it was not possible to score any hits from the Gulf of Saros on the Turkish forts on the European side of the straits and the attempt was soon abandoned. Modern big gun ammunition was too expensive to be lightly thrown away. Furthermore, the life of one of the big guns of these battleships is strictly limited, especially if full charges are being used. Ultimately, the three battleships in the Gulf shifted their fire to the forts near Chanak, on the Asiatic side, where the works were on low ground, almost at sea level.
It was confidently hoped that, by means of this indirect fire, it would be possible to put the 14-inch guns of these forts out of action, without giving them a chance to reply. The idea of trying to force a way past these great guns, exposing the relatively frail sides of precious battleships to their direct fire, was not relished by the allied command.
But if the Turks could not reply to the fire of the three battleships in the Gulf of Saros with their 14-inch guns, they could and did do effective work with smaller guns concealed on the heights of the peninsula overlooking the gulf, and the Queen Elizabeth was hit three times.
On the following day, March 7, the attack was renewed. The four French battleships, the Charlemagne, Gaulois, the Bouvet and the Suffern took the post of greatest danger inside the straits and finally again silenced the Dardanos fort. The Agamemnon and the Lord Nelson, behind them, made a long range attack upon the forts fringing the Narrows. Three of the allied battleships, the Gaulois, the Agamemnon and the Lord Nelson were hit by Turkish shells but, as an offset, it was believed that the great forts at Chanak, as well as the works at Dardanos, had been permanently silenced.
This confidence, as we shall see later on, was not justified. Inside the great forts, it is true, the Turks and their German officers were suffering terribly from the bombardment. That they stood it in some cases for periods of seven hours at a stretch, and continued firing effectively for the whole of that time, is testimony to their courage and devotion to duty. As the great shells of the Queen Elizabeth landed in the forts they did frightful havoc. The shrapnel shells contained something like 12,000 separate bullets and it is on record that one of these shells wounded or killed no less than 250 Turkish soldiers. As the high explosive shells struck the works and exploded they threw up tons of earth and cement a hundred feet in the air, plainly visible to the allied observers on the warships in the straits.
But this was not the worst that the defenders had to endure. The exploding shells gave off poisonous gases that filled the underground passages of the redoubts. The heroic Turks worked under such conditions as long as it was humanly possible, but eventually their German officers were compelled to withdraw their men from each fort in turn to allow the gases to clear away. These circumstances undoubtedly account for the fact that almost every one of the forts was reported permanently silenced, only to resume action a few days later, much to the surprise and consternation of the allied command.
Furthermore, there is abundant evidence that the Turks were economizing ammunition, especially big gun shells. They had made up their minds that there would be a direct naval attack upon the forts sooner or later, and their instructions were to reserve their fire "until they saw the whites of the enemy's eyes," so to speak.
From March 6 to March 18, 1915, there was a lull in activity at the straits. Momentous events were transpiring in London and at the island of Lemnos, and upon the outcome of these events depended the future course of the operations at the Dardanelles. While the individual ships of his fleet conducted minor bombardments intended to harass the Turks, Vice Admiral Carden, pleading ill health, had been allowed to relinquish the command of the allied fleet, and Vice Admiral John de Robeck, newly promoted to his rank, succeeded him. Almost immediately the latter steamed away to Mudros to engage in a fateful conference.[Back to Contents]