Can the U.S. Navy be useful in a 1917 Allied attack on Turkey?

CaliGuy

Banned
Can the U.S. Navy be useful in a 1917 Allied attack on Turkey?

Basically, I am curious about this considering that the U.S. Navy is largely the only thing that the U.S. would be able to quickly provide in WWI; after all, U.S. troops would need to be trained before they can be sent to Europe.

Thus, I was thinking of a joint Franco-British-Russian attack on Turkey in 1917 (in place of the Kerensky Offensive) together with the help of the U.S. Navy. Basically, the goal of this would be to weaken the Turkish military and to unblock the Straits so that Russia could once again import and export various goods through them.

Anyway, how would such an offensive go and how much would the U.S. Navy be able to help the Entente/Allies in such an offensive?
 
You're essentially describing a second Gallipoli, and that didn't fail due to a lack of ships.

The straits were extensively mined and surrounded by artillery and coastal guns, so they can't really be forced by any amount of naval power, unless you have a few thousand ships and use them as expendable meatshields.
 
Problem might be the USN was ill equipped at the time for any amphibeous sort of operation, as most, if not all attention had been gone to the enlargment of the big gun battlefleet, resulting in a absense of other, more usefull types of vessels required for such operations. Battelships and battlecruisers (not in service yet, but on the designboards and some laid down already) are poorly suited for putting troops ashore, as well as doing little more than providing enemy coastal artillery and other defenses, big lumbering targets to shoot at.

The USN of 1917 was on paper perhaps a strong navy, but it lacked the allround charataristics of other wesern navies, basically due to lack of interest in other aspects of naval warfare, other than big gun duels.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The US would need to declare war on Turkey first. OTL it never did.
I was thinking that Wilson could do this in early 1917 if he realized the importance of trying to knock Turkey out of World War I.

You're essentially describing a second Gallipoli, and that didn't fail due to a lack of ships.

The straits were extensively mined and surrounded by artillery and coastal guns, so they can't really be forced by any amount of naval power, unless you have a few thousand ships and use them as expendable meatshields.
So, it's a lost cause? :(

Problem might be the USN was ill equipped at the time for any amphibeous sort of operation, as most, if not all attention had been gone to the enlargment of the big gun battlefleet, resulting in a absense of other, more usefull types of vessels required for such operations. Battelships and battlecruisers (not in service yet, but on the designboards and some laid down already) are poorly suited for putting troops ashore, as well as doing little more than providing enemy coastal artillery and other defenses, big lumbering targets to shoot at.

The USN of 1917 was on paper perhaps a strong navy, but it lacked the allround charataristics of other wesern navies, basically due to lack of interest in other aspects of naval warfare, other than big gun duels.
How much time do you think that it would have taken to make the U.S. Navy more equipped in regards to this?
 
I was thinking that Wilson could do this in early 1917 if he realized the importance of trying to knock Turkey out of World War I.

Was it all that important?

Even Spring 1917 is almost certainly too late to make much difference to Russia. Being able to send supplies through the Black Sea might have made a difference two years earlier, but by now the rot has set in far too deeply.

Also, is knocking out Turkey (or indeed any of Germany's allies) a serious possibility as long as Germany is able to prop them up? OTL they collapsed only during the final "Hundred Days" when Germany was under too heavy pressure to be able to rescue them. Wouldn't such an attack just be "Gallipoli with Yanks" and have a similar outcome?
 
Was it all that important?

Even Spring 1917 is almost certainly too late to make much difference to Russia. Being able to send supplies through the Black Sea might have made a difference two years earlier, but by now the rot has set in far too deeply.

Agreed once the February revolution happens the October revolution and exit from the war is guaranteed. That said there was large British armies employed against the Turks that could have been freed up for use on the western front.

Also, is knocking out Turkey (or indeed any of Germany's allies) a serious possibility as long as Germany is able to prop them up? OTL they collapsed only during the final "Hundred Days" when Germany was under too heavy pressure to be able to rescue them. Wouldn't such an attack just be "Gallipoli with Yanks" and have a similar outcome?
If the Darndelles can be seized it's game over for the Ottomans. Germany can't prop up Turkey if they can't reach Turkey.

That said I doubt the feasibility of a second attempt to force the Darnedelles. The first attempt was doable because the gunnery forts defending the Darndelles was light and the main defences were mines. Of course Britain messed up and put civilians in the minesweepers. The Darndelles was much better defended in 1917. Sure America can force the straits if they hold their nose and commit the fleet in force accepting significant naval casualties.
 
I was thinking that Wilson could do this in early 1917 if he realized the importance of trying to knock Turkey out of World War I.


So, it's a lost cause? :(


How much time do you think that it would have taken to make the U.S. Navy more equipped in regards to this?


The USA at the time of 1917 was not yet the same as the USA of 1942, so flexibility and mass production were not yet on simmilar level. A USA of 1917 would need 2, or 3 years to both produce a lift capacity for and train enough troops for an amphibeous grand scale operation oversea. Even then is would need allied support in the region as staging area. Without support on her own, there was no possibility to do things alone. simply as the distance from USA to the Dardanelles was beyond the reach to transfer combattrops in battleworthy condition directly.

In other words: The 1917 USA was not able to do such a thing, before war was ending anyway.
 
Agreed once the February revolution happens the October revolution and exit from the war is guaranteed. That said there was large British armies employed against the Turks that could have been freed up for use on the western front.


If the Darndelles can be seized it's game over for the Ottomans. Germany can't prop up Turkey if they can't reach Turkey.

Can't they?

If naval bombardment makes Contantinople's railway station unusable, that would be a handicap, but would it necessarily be a fatal one? To cut off Turkey from German support it would be necessary to force the Bosphorus as well as the Dardanelles, and iirc the Bosphorus is narrower and probably a harder task.

There seems to be a widespread assumption that a few salvoes of shells fired into Constantinople would cause the Turks to just throw up their hands and surrender, but it's not at all obvious that they would have to, and even if they did, there might still be time for the Germans to seize Constantinople and Thrace, and maybe a bridgehead acrosss the Bosphorus, so that the Black Sea remains sealed off. After all, the RN never forced its way into the Baltic, and getting into the Black Sea wouldn't necessarily be any easier.
 
Can't they?

If naval bombardment makes Contantinople's railway station unusable, that would be a handicap, but would it necessarily be a fatal one? To cut off Turkey from German support it would be necessary to force the Bosphorus as well as the Dardanelles, and iirc the Bosphorus is narrower and probably a harder task.

There seems to be a widespread assumption that a few salvoes of shells fired into Constantinople would cause the Turks to just throw up their hands and surrender, but it's not at all obvious that they would have to, and even if they did, there might still be time for the Germans to seize Constantinople and Thrace, and maybe a bridgehead acrosss the Bosphorus, so that the Black Sea remains sealed off. After all, the RN never forced its way into the Baltic, and getting into the Black Sea wouldn't necessarily be any easier.

Constantinopolis is a damn bit far away east from the Dardanelles approach. How do you want to get there at first to start shelling it? The Allies never came in reach of the capital due to the narrow strait that IS the Dardannelles. It was filled with mines and many coastal batteries on both sides. Anyone trying to sail through it was in for a very hard time. If yu want the enitre USN sunk as blockships in these straits to block it as a main route of transportation, it was brilliant idea, but not for anything else.
 
All the USN can provide in April, 1917 would be ships for shore bombardment and converted merchant ships for troop transport. The USMC in 1917 was quite small, and no better equipped with materiel or doctrine for an amphibious landing than the British and Imperial forces had been. In 1917 NOBODY had any specialized landing craft or other amphibious shipping, and there was not even "napkinwaffe" designs around. As other have stated, by 1917 and the failure of the Gallipoli assault the straits were simply impassable for a naval assault. Theoretically you could land a force on the Asian mainland and attack towards Constantinople/Istanbul or get Greece in and attack that way. Both of those mean the necessity for a very large force and logistic tail and facing the bulk of the Ottoman military. Aside from the issue of where the Allies would get such a force, the USA will not be able to contribute a land force of any size for at least a year, the more important issue is why.
 

Deleted member 94680

By 1917 any attack by any of the WAllies on anything other than Germany directly is a sideshow.
 
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