I haven't seen any Gallipoli postings in awhile, so I thought I'd toss this one in:
On March 18, 1915, a combined British and French naval force attempted to force their way through the Dardanelles, pounding the Turkish forts to pieces along the way. However, several ships hit mines and were sunk. The attack, planned to continue the next day, was called off. In following months, of course, the Allies landed an army which became bogged down in one of the greatest fiascoes of the war, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
What was not known on the evening of March 18 was that the Turkish defenders were nearly out of ammunition and were terrified at the prospect of a renewed naval assault. Had the Allies pressed on with their attack on March 19, it is very likely that they would have succeeded. Without interference from Turkish artillery, the minesweepers could have dealt with the mines. By March 20 or 21, powerful British and French battleships would have been able to anchor off Constantinople.
What might have the results been? Would Turkey sue for peace? Would renewed supplies to Russia have made a difference on the Eastern Front? Would Greece, Bulgaria and Romania have joined the Allies, thus opening up a third front and saving Serbia? What subsequent course would the war have taken?
Good God, how many times do we have to go over this, again, and again, and again? The Ottomans were not, not, not, not anywhere near running out of ammunition. This is a persistent myth, for which there is no basis whatsoever, fabricated largely by Churchill to cover the stupidity of his plan and it's utter failure.
The Ottomans, in the entire naval campaign, had not expended one-sixth of their ammo, their minefields had not been scratched, and the heaviest defenses of the Dardanelles had not even been reached by the Entente. They had not the slightest fear that the naval assault would continue and were disappointed it was called off before they got to sink more battleships.
Sending pre-Dreadnoughts into a narrow straight commanded from the heights by howitzers, full of minefields, and 150 miles long isn't a strategy, it's suicide.
Even if the ships had gotten through, then what? You're trapped in an inland see and sitting ducks for subs and torpedo craft, you have to supply your ships though straits that are still controlled by enemy troops, and to get to the Black Sea you have to go through ANOTHER straight, nearly equally well defended, with the added problem of the enemy CAPITAL being alongside it. Now I suppose you could shell Constantinople, and become the most infamous force since the Fourth Crusade, but that would not really accomplish much but killing hundred and thousands of civilians, half of them Christian, possibly doing serious harm to your war effort in the way of Russian and Greek opinion, but even then you're still stuck with a fleet operating in an inland sea with access on both sides controlled by the enemy.
So what do you do now? How do you fuel this fleet? Colliers are not going to do well trying to force the Straits. Both of them. Landings at Gallipoli are likely to be more successful because the Ottomans will now have to depend on land transport.
There are a lot of amazing assertions in here about the Ottomans. How was the government shaky? It was not in the slightest shaky. Loss of Istanbul will not cause the empire to collapse. In OTL it did nothing to harm the Nationalist war effort. The government will just move inland - but it's a moot point, since the naval attack on the Dardanelles had virtually no chance of success. It was dependent on the Ottomans being equivalent in military technology and organization as African tribesmen. The idea was "fire some big guns, and they'll cave". Once it was clear that was not the case, they should have called off what can only be characterized a crazy and foolhardy attack.
Seriously, we have this discussion monthly. Let's use our search functions.
If the Entente wanted to pursue an Ottoman strategy, they should have landed near Alexandretta where they could have cut off the Arab provinces from the empire, largely trapped the armies there, and been in a position to support the Russians in the Caucasus.
