Gallipoli I.

This is coolbert:

From the excellent Internet web site Isegoria.net we have this critique of Gallipoli that battle occurring one hundred years ago. Well worth reading in entirety.

"The Gallipoli Campaign may go down in history as one of the great military blunders, but it stemmed from a reasonable strategic aim to restore the line of communication with Russia via the Dardanelles to keep the Eastern Front active. Further, the original plan was rather different":

"There were three ways that the Allies could employ to gain control of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorous. One method was to send a fleet to force the Strait and then, presumably, bombard Constantinople itself from long range."

The naval bombardment of Constantinople requiring allied warships to first run a gauntlet of Turkish forts all the way while subjected to concerted and continuous fire.

Gunners [Turks] ashore by the rule of thumb "one shore-based gun equalled three naval guns of the same caliber". Allied warships "running the gauntlet" their casualties unacceptably heavy!!

"the Bouvet [French], the Irresistible [British], and the Ocean [British] were sunk. The Inflexible [British], the Suffren [French], and the Galois [French] were damaged enough that they were out of action. The Albion [English], the Agamemnon [English], the Lord Nelson [English] , and the Charlemagne [French] were heavily damaged"

Bouvet, Irresistible and Ocean having hit and been sunk by naval sea mines!! 

That combined [allied] naval task force for the most part consisting of antiquated and out-of-date warships nonetheless having significant firepower, that ability of those warships to hit the target questionable. THAT PARTICIPATION OF THE FRENCH AT GALLIPOLI MORE CONSIDERABLE THAN WHAT I HAD THOUGHT!

NAVAL TASK FORCE ALL THE WAY TO CONSTANTINOPLE UNSUCCESSFUL!

coolbert.