page_title: Naval operations in the Dardanelles campaign
section_title: Gallipoli landings
hierarchical_section_title: Naval operations in the Dardanelles campaign / Military operations / Gallipoli landings
caption_attribution_description: Map of the actual landing of the covering force (3rd Brigade, Australian 1st Division) at Anzac Cove on April 25, 1915 during the Battle of Gallipoli. The red dotted lines are the paths of the first wave in the battleship tows, the orange dotted lines are the paths of the second wave from the destroyers' boats. The red solid lines mark progress of the force after landing.
context_page_description: The naval operations in the Dardanelles campaign took place against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Ships of the Royal Navy, French Marine nationale, Imperial Russian Navy and the Royal Australian Navy, attempted to force the defences of the Dardanelles Straits, a narrow, 41 mi long waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Sea of Marmara and further north to the Black Sea.
  The Dardanelles campaign began as a naval operation but the success of the Ottoman defence led the Allies to initiate the Gallipoli campaign, an attempt to occupy the Gallipoli peninsula with land forces supported by the navies, to open the sea route to Constantinople. The Allies also tried to pass submarines through the Dardanelles to attack Ottoman shipping in the Sea of Marmara.
context_section_description: The Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (General Sir Ian Hamilton) was established on 12 March with about 70,000 men. At a conference on 22 March, four days after the failed attempt by the navy, it was decided to use the infantry to seize the Gallipoli peninsula and capture the forts, clearing the way for the navy to pass through into the Sea of Marmara. Preparations for the landing took a month, giving the Ottoman defenders ample time to reinforce. The British planners underestimated the Ottomans and expected that the invasion would be over swiftly. The initial landings were made at Gaba Tepe by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac). The landing miscarried and the troops went ashore too far north at a place now known as Anzac Cove. In both landings, the covering force went ashore from warships with the exception of V Beach at Helles where the SS River Clyde was used as an improvised landing craft for 2,000 men. In the landing at Anzac Cove, the first wave went ashore from the boats of three Formidable-class battleships, HMS London, Prince of Wales and Queen. The second wave went ashore from seven destroyers. In support were HMS Triumph, Majestic and the cruiser HMS Bacchante as well as the seaplane carrier Ark Royal and the kite-balloon ship, HMS Manica, from which a tethered balloon was trailed to provide artillery spotting.
  The landing at Cape Helles by the 29th Division was spread over five beaches with the main ones being V and W Beaches at the tip of the peninsula. While the landing at Anzac was planned as a surprise without a preliminary bombardment, the Helles landing was made after the beaches and forts were bombarded by the warships. The landing at S Beach inside the straits was made from the battleship Cornwallis and was virtually unopposed. The W Beach force came from the cruiser HMS Euryalus and the battleship HMS Implacable which also carried the troops bound for X Beach. The cruiser HMS Dublin and battleship Goliath supported the X Beach landing as well as a small landing to the north on the Aegean coast at Y Beach, later abandoned.
  The navy was to support the landing, using naval guns as substitutes for field artillery, of which there was a severe shortage. With a few spectacular exceptions, the performance of naval guns on land targets was inadequate, particularly against entrenched positions. The guns lacked elevation and so fired on a flat trajectory which, coupled with the inherently unstable gun platform, resulted in reduced accuracy. The battleships' guns did prove effective against exposed lines of troops. On 27 April, during the first Ottoman counter-attack at Anzac, the Ottoman 57th Infantry Regiment attacked down the seaward slope of Battleship Hill within view of Queen Elizabeth which fired a salvo of six fifteen in (380 mm) shells, halting the attack. On 28 April, near the old Y Beach landing, Queen Elizabeth sighted a party of about one hundred Turks. One 15 inch shrapnel shell containing 13,000 shrapnel bullets was fired at short range and killed the entire party.
  On 27 April, an observer on a kite-balloon ship had spotted an Ottoman transport ship moving near the Narrows. Queen Elizabeth, stationed off Gaba Tepe, had fired across the peninsula at a range of over ten mi (8.7 nmi; 16 km), and sank the transport with the third shot. For much of the campaign, the Ottomans transported troops via rail, though other supplies continued to be moved by ship on the Sea of Marmara and Dardanelles. At Helles, which was initially the main battlefield, a series of costly battles only managed to edge the front line closer to Krithia. The navy continued to provide support via bombardments but in May, the battleship Goliath was sunk by the Ottoman torpedo boat Muâvenet-i Millîye in Morto Bay on 12 May and U-21 torpedoed and sank Triumph off Anzac on 25 May and Majestic off W Beach on 27 May.
  Permanent battleship support was withdrawn with the valuable Queen Elizabeth recalled by the Admiralty as soon as the news of the loss of Goliath arrived. In place of the battleships, naval artillery support wa
caption: Map of the landing of the covering force from battleships (red) and destroyers (orange) at Anzac Cove, 25 April 1915.
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