Posted on May 16, 2017
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After a first attempt to capture the village of Krithia, on the Gallipoli Peninsula, failed on April 28, 1915, a second is initiated on May 6 by Allied troops under the British commander Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston.
Fortified by 105 pieces of heavy artillery, the Allied force advanced on Krithia, located at the base of the flat-topped hill of Achi Baba, starting at noon on May 6. The attack was launched from a beach head on Cape Helles, where troops had landed on April 25 to begin the large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula after a naval attack on the Dardanelles failed miserably in mid-March. Since the first failed attempt on the village, Hunter-Weston’s original force had been joined by two brigades of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) to bring the total number of men to 25,000. They were still outnumbered, however, by the Turkish forces guarding Krithia, which were under the direct command of the German Major-General Erich Weber. Weber had been promoted from the rank of colonel after supervising the closure and mining of the Dardanelles six months earlier.
Facing superior enemy numbers and suffering from a shortage of ammunition, the Allies were able to advance some 600 yards, but failed to capture either Krithia or the crest of Achi Baba after three attempts in three days. Hunter-Weston’s troops suffered heavy losses, with a total of 6,000 casualties. Two British naval brigades engaged in the battle saw half their number, some 1,600 soldiers, killed or wounded.
The British regional commander in chief, Sir Ian Hamilton, after pushing for more supplies and ammunition, ordered Hunter-Weston to continue the pressure on Achi-Baba; a third attack on the ridge was launched in early June. As heavy casualties continued to be sustained across the region, with little real gains for the Allies, it became clear that the Gallipoli operation—an Allied attempt to break the stalemate on the Western Front by achieving a decisive victory elsewhere—had failed to achieve its ambitious aims.
Fortified by 105 pieces of heavy artillery, the Allied force advanced on Krithia, located at the base of the flat-topped hill of Achi Baba, starting at noon on May 6. The attack was launched from a beach head on Cape Helles, where troops had landed on April 25 to begin the large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula after a naval attack on the Dardanelles failed miserably in mid-March. Since the first failed attempt on the village, Hunter-Weston’s original force had been joined by two brigades of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) to bring the total number of men to 25,000. They were still outnumbered, however, by the Turkish forces guarding Krithia, which were under the direct command of the German Major-General Erich Weber. Weber had been promoted from the rank of colonel after supervising the closure and mining of the Dardanelles six months earlier.
Facing superior enemy numbers and suffering from a shortage of ammunition, the Allies were able to advance some 600 yards, but failed to capture either Krithia or the crest of Achi Baba after three attempts in three days. Hunter-Weston’s troops suffered heavy losses, with a total of 6,000 casualties. Two British naval brigades engaged in the battle saw half their number, some 1,600 soldiers, killed or wounded.
The British regional commander in chief, Sir Ian Hamilton, after pushing for more supplies and ammunition, ordered Hunter-Weston to continue the pressure on Achi-Baba; a third attack on the ridge was launched in early June. As heavy casualties continued to be sustained across the region, with little real gains for the Allies, it became clear that the Gallipoli operation—an Allied attempt to break the stalemate on the Western Front by achieving a decisive victory elsewhere—had failed to achieve its ambitious aims.
Second Battle of Krithia, Gallipoli - May 06, 1915 - HISTORY.com
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Thanks TSgt Joe C. for reminding us about the Second Battle of Krithia, Gallipoli on May 06, 1915 in the Gallipoli Peninsula campaign where the allies of the Entente did their best to clear the Dardanelles strait in Turkey. The Russians where allies of the Entente who were working to control the Black Sea and the western allies hoped to link up with them by clearing the Dardanelles.
My paternal grandfather fought in this campaign as a British Army Lance Corporal.
Images: Gallipoli campaign map; 1915-05-06 A Turkish machine gun position at Gallipoli. Costly Allied Attack at Gallipoli Gains Only 500 Yards towards Krithia. Since the landings on April 25, the Allied forces on Gallipoli had still yet to achieve the goals of the first day; British Motorcyclists. Gallipoli, 1915; ANZAC cove the Gallipoli Campaign begins
Below is Blu Ray version of the entire Mel Gibson Gallipoli movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onp-cm_k-x4
Background from the aAustralian government
"The British landings at the tip of the peninsula on 25 April were no more successful than those at Anzac. The initial objective -- the capture of the height of Achi Baba behind the village of Krithia (modern Alcitepe) -- was nowhere near reached. A determined push at the so-called First Battle of Krithia on 28 April gained little. Sir Ian Hamilton then ordered that two brigades -- the 2nd Australian Brigade (5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Battalions, from Victoria) and the New Zealand Infantry Brigade -- be sent to assist British and French troops in a second attempt to capture Achi Baba. The Second Battle of Krithia commenced on 6 May, and after two days of fighting little progress had been made.
On the morning of 8 May, the New Zealanders tried to advance towards Krithia, but were soon pinned down by Turkish fire and took heavy casualties. In general, nobody was really clear where the Turkish positions were, and this situation still prevailed in mid-afternoon when the Australians were suddenly ordered to attack. The Victorians were camping and cooking a meal when the order came for the advance across ‘wide, dry, level grassland’.
They soon ran into intense Turkish fire. ‘The heavily loaded brigade’, wrote Charles Bean, ‘hurried straight on, heads down, as if into fierce rain, some men holding their shovels before their faces like umbrellas in a thunderstorm’. During one hour they advanced about 900 metres, but had nowhere reached the Turkish front line, and the houses of Krithia were still far off. In this tragic advance, which gained no ground, the AIF lost nearly 1000 men killed, wounded and missing. Among the dead was 52-year-old Lieutenant Robert Gartside, the commanding officer of the 7th Battalion. Struck in the stomach by machine-gun bullets, he was heard to call as he rose to lead his men forward, ‘Come on, boys, I know it’s deadly but we must go on’. After this action, decried by one historian as ‘one of the most misconceived episodes in a misconceived battle’, Australians never fought again in any numbers on the Helles front."
Why did Anzacs land at Gallipoli?
Overview: events leading up to the landing
On 19 February 1915, the sea off the entrance to the strait of the Dardanelles in Turkey was calm; there was no wind and the sun shone. A few kilometres offshore from the old Ottoman imperial forts guarding either side of the entrance -- Seddulbahir at the toe of the Gallipoli peninsula and Kumkale on the Asian side -- a small fleet of British and French warships took station. From there they opened a leisurely bombardment of the forts. All day shells fell on Seddulbahir and Kumkale without reply. Then, as the Allied ships came to within three kilometres, the Turkish gunners fired back, showing that the forts had not been destroyed.
The British and French attempt to knock the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) out of World War One had begun. It became known as the ‘Gallipoli campaign’ and it lasted until 8 January 1916, when the last British soldiers left the Gallipoli peninsula from positions near Seddulbahir.
Russia appeals for assistance
The attack on Gallipoli was one of the more imaginative strategies of the First World War. The German army had delivered a crushing blow to Russia at Tannenberg at the start of the war and had been driving eastwards. The Russians were threatened by a Turkish advance through the Caucasus and appealed to their allies for assistance. Gaining control of the narrow straits of the Dardanelles leading to the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish capital, Constantinople would re-establish communications with Russia and release wheat and shipping locked in the Black Sea by Turkey.
On 2 January 1915, the British government received an urgent appeal from Russia, asking for a British attack on Turkey to divert the Turks from the Caucasus where Russian forces were in danger of being overrun.
Besides this, British strategists had for many years before the war believed that the best defence of Egypt and the Suez Canal was an attack on Turkey.
Could Constantinople be taken by naval forces alone?
The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had for some time been concerned over the comparatively inactive role played by the Royal Navy, and there was growing anxiety within the War Council about the military situation on the Western Front, where there seemed to be little headway against the German advance.
The Russian request spurred Churchill to ask the Commander of the British Squadron in the Aegean if the Dardanelles could be forced and Constantinople taken by naval forces alone, i.e. without a substantial land contribution. The answer Churchill received was heavily qualified, but he did not inform the War Council of these reservations, and on 19 February 1915 the naval attack on the Dardanelles began.
Bombarding the forts
The British Royal Navy could have gone a long way towards achieving these goals by steaming through the Dardanelles straits in November 1914 and shelling Constantinople (now Istanbul) and perhaps putting the government to flight. Instead, they cautiously tested the range of the Turkish guns by bombarding the shore batteries.
The Turkish commanders immediately became aware of their vulnerability to further attacks and strengthened their defences to include carefully laid minefields, well-sited guns and searchlights that swept the narrows at night.
Naval attack fails
Three months later, a British and French fleet that included 18 battleships, attempted to force its way through to Constantinople. Three capital ships were lost and three crippled. It was an utter failure, the combination of Turkish mines and mobile howitzers being more than a match for the fleet of ageing battleships that had been committed to the operation.
Unknown to the Allies, the Turkish gun batteries had almost exhausted their ammunition supplies in this effort, and the fleet could have sailed on through the straits with little further damage. Instead, the naval commanders came to the conclusion that they could not force their way through the Dardanelles unless troops were first sent to occupy the Gallipoli Peninsula in force to silence the Turkish guns. Planning for the landing of troops on Gallipoli commenced.
AIF diverted to Egypt
The AIF was raised to fight against German forces, but en route to Britain in October 1914 it was diverted to Egypt because of a shortage of suitable accommodation and training areas in Britain. It was fortuitous, therefore, that the AIF was on the spot when British attention turned to the possibility of attacking Turkey through the Dardanelles.
Troops would have to land
Although one of the initial attractions of the Dardanelles operation had been that it would not require a significant number of troops, and even then mainly in a garrison role on the Gallipoli peninsula once the straits had been forced and the Turks cleared from the area, the War Council gradually came to the view that troops would have to be landed on the peninsula to overcome the Turkish defences so that mine clearing operations could proceed with minimal interference, thus allowing the fleet to force the straits and advance towards Constantinople. The only regular British division not committed to the Western Front, the 29th, was not deemed sufficient by itself to carry out the land operations against the Turks. Churchill added the Royal Naval Division, the French committed a division, and the Australian and New Zealand forces, then training in Egypt, were conveniently on hand to swell the available numbers.
The landings are planned
The Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, General Sir Ian Hamilton, decided to mount his main attack at the base of the Gallipoli peninsula, landing the bulk of his forces on five beaches around Cape Helles, with a secondary landing by Australian and New Zealand troops designed to seize the Sari Bair Ridge, thereby providing cover for the remainder of the force to move to the eastern side of the peninsula thus cutting it off from Turkish reinforcements. The Royal Naval Division would mount a diversionary attack, and the French would land on the Asiatic coast to prevent heavy Turkish batteries from interfering with the British landings at Cape Helles.
Sir William Birdwood, General Officer Commanding Australian and New Zealand forces, had little time to prepare. The 3rd Brigade had been on the island of Lemnos, off the coast of Gallipoli, since early March; it was joined on April 12th by the 1st and 2nd Brigades, and together they carried out a number of practice landings. Time was short, however, and the operation, originally scheduled for April 23rd, was postponed by bad weather until the 25th."
LTC Stephen C. LTC Greg Henning LTC Ivan Raiklin, Esq. Capt Seid Waddell Capt Tom Brown CW5 (Join to see) SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC William Farrell SSgt Robert Marx SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4" SSgt (Join to see) TSgt Joe C. SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski SPC (Join to see) SrA Christopher Wright CPT Gabe Snell MSG Andrew White
My paternal grandfather fought in this campaign as a British Army Lance Corporal.
Images: Gallipoli campaign map; 1915-05-06 A Turkish machine gun position at Gallipoli. Costly Allied Attack at Gallipoli Gains Only 500 Yards towards Krithia. Since the landings on April 25, the Allied forces on Gallipoli had still yet to achieve the goals of the first day; British Motorcyclists. Gallipoli, 1915; ANZAC cove the Gallipoli Campaign begins
Below is Blu Ray version of the entire Mel Gibson Gallipoli movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onp-cm_k-x4
Background from the aAustralian government
"The British landings at the tip of the peninsula on 25 April were no more successful than those at Anzac. The initial objective -- the capture of the height of Achi Baba behind the village of Krithia (modern Alcitepe) -- was nowhere near reached. A determined push at the so-called First Battle of Krithia on 28 April gained little. Sir Ian Hamilton then ordered that two brigades -- the 2nd Australian Brigade (5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Battalions, from Victoria) and the New Zealand Infantry Brigade -- be sent to assist British and French troops in a second attempt to capture Achi Baba. The Second Battle of Krithia commenced on 6 May, and after two days of fighting little progress had been made.
On the morning of 8 May, the New Zealanders tried to advance towards Krithia, but were soon pinned down by Turkish fire and took heavy casualties. In general, nobody was really clear where the Turkish positions were, and this situation still prevailed in mid-afternoon when the Australians were suddenly ordered to attack. The Victorians were camping and cooking a meal when the order came for the advance across ‘wide, dry, level grassland’.
They soon ran into intense Turkish fire. ‘The heavily loaded brigade’, wrote Charles Bean, ‘hurried straight on, heads down, as if into fierce rain, some men holding their shovels before their faces like umbrellas in a thunderstorm’. During one hour they advanced about 900 metres, but had nowhere reached the Turkish front line, and the houses of Krithia were still far off. In this tragic advance, which gained no ground, the AIF lost nearly 1000 men killed, wounded and missing. Among the dead was 52-year-old Lieutenant Robert Gartside, the commanding officer of the 7th Battalion. Struck in the stomach by machine-gun bullets, he was heard to call as he rose to lead his men forward, ‘Come on, boys, I know it’s deadly but we must go on’. After this action, decried by one historian as ‘one of the most misconceived episodes in a misconceived battle’, Australians never fought again in any numbers on the Helles front."
Why did Anzacs land at Gallipoli?
Overview: events leading up to the landing
On 19 February 1915, the sea off the entrance to the strait of the Dardanelles in Turkey was calm; there was no wind and the sun shone. A few kilometres offshore from the old Ottoman imperial forts guarding either side of the entrance -- Seddulbahir at the toe of the Gallipoli peninsula and Kumkale on the Asian side -- a small fleet of British and French warships took station. From there they opened a leisurely bombardment of the forts. All day shells fell on Seddulbahir and Kumkale without reply. Then, as the Allied ships came to within three kilometres, the Turkish gunners fired back, showing that the forts had not been destroyed.
The British and French attempt to knock the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) out of World War One had begun. It became known as the ‘Gallipoli campaign’ and it lasted until 8 January 1916, when the last British soldiers left the Gallipoli peninsula from positions near Seddulbahir.
Russia appeals for assistance
The attack on Gallipoli was one of the more imaginative strategies of the First World War. The German army had delivered a crushing blow to Russia at Tannenberg at the start of the war and had been driving eastwards. The Russians were threatened by a Turkish advance through the Caucasus and appealed to their allies for assistance. Gaining control of the narrow straits of the Dardanelles leading to the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish capital, Constantinople would re-establish communications with Russia and release wheat and shipping locked in the Black Sea by Turkey.
On 2 January 1915, the British government received an urgent appeal from Russia, asking for a British attack on Turkey to divert the Turks from the Caucasus where Russian forces were in danger of being overrun.
Besides this, British strategists had for many years before the war believed that the best defence of Egypt and the Suez Canal was an attack on Turkey.
Could Constantinople be taken by naval forces alone?
The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had for some time been concerned over the comparatively inactive role played by the Royal Navy, and there was growing anxiety within the War Council about the military situation on the Western Front, where there seemed to be little headway against the German advance.
The Russian request spurred Churchill to ask the Commander of the British Squadron in the Aegean if the Dardanelles could be forced and Constantinople taken by naval forces alone, i.e. without a substantial land contribution. The answer Churchill received was heavily qualified, but he did not inform the War Council of these reservations, and on 19 February 1915 the naval attack on the Dardanelles began.
Bombarding the forts
The British Royal Navy could have gone a long way towards achieving these goals by steaming through the Dardanelles straits in November 1914 and shelling Constantinople (now Istanbul) and perhaps putting the government to flight. Instead, they cautiously tested the range of the Turkish guns by bombarding the shore batteries.
The Turkish commanders immediately became aware of their vulnerability to further attacks and strengthened their defences to include carefully laid minefields, well-sited guns and searchlights that swept the narrows at night.
Naval attack fails
Three months later, a British and French fleet that included 18 battleships, attempted to force its way through to Constantinople. Three capital ships were lost and three crippled. It was an utter failure, the combination of Turkish mines and mobile howitzers being more than a match for the fleet of ageing battleships that had been committed to the operation.
Unknown to the Allies, the Turkish gun batteries had almost exhausted their ammunition supplies in this effort, and the fleet could have sailed on through the straits with little further damage. Instead, the naval commanders came to the conclusion that they could not force their way through the Dardanelles unless troops were first sent to occupy the Gallipoli Peninsula in force to silence the Turkish guns. Planning for the landing of troops on Gallipoli commenced.
AIF diverted to Egypt
The AIF was raised to fight against German forces, but en route to Britain in October 1914 it was diverted to Egypt because of a shortage of suitable accommodation and training areas in Britain. It was fortuitous, therefore, that the AIF was on the spot when British attention turned to the possibility of attacking Turkey through the Dardanelles.
Troops would have to land
Although one of the initial attractions of the Dardanelles operation had been that it would not require a significant number of troops, and even then mainly in a garrison role on the Gallipoli peninsula once the straits had been forced and the Turks cleared from the area, the War Council gradually came to the view that troops would have to be landed on the peninsula to overcome the Turkish defences so that mine clearing operations could proceed with minimal interference, thus allowing the fleet to force the straits and advance towards Constantinople. The only regular British division not committed to the Western Front, the 29th, was not deemed sufficient by itself to carry out the land operations against the Turks. Churchill added the Royal Naval Division, the French committed a division, and the Australian and New Zealand forces, then training in Egypt, were conveniently on hand to swell the available numbers.
The landings are planned
The Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, General Sir Ian Hamilton, decided to mount his main attack at the base of the Gallipoli peninsula, landing the bulk of his forces on five beaches around Cape Helles, with a secondary landing by Australian and New Zealand troops designed to seize the Sari Bair Ridge, thereby providing cover for the remainder of the force to move to the eastern side of the peninsula thus cutting it off from Turkish reinforcements. The Royal Naval Division would mount a diversionary attack, and the French would land on the Asiatic coast to prevent heavy Turkish batteries from interfering with the British landings at Cape Helles.
Sir William Birdwood, General Officer Commanding Australian and New Zealand forces, had little time to prepare. The 3rd Brigade had been on the island of Lemnos, off the coast of Gallipoli, since early March; it was joined on April 12th by the 1st and 2nd Brigades, and together they carried out a number of practice landings. Time was short, however, and the operation, originally scheduled for April 23rd, was postponed by bad weather until the 25th."
LTC Stephen C. LTC Greg Henning LTC Ivan Raiklin, Esq. Capt Seid Waddell Capt Tom Brown CW5 (Join to see) SGM David W. Carr LOM, DMSM MP SGT SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SFC William Farrell SSgt Robert Marx SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4" SSgt (Join to see) TSgt Joe C. SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski SPC (Join to see) SrA Christopher Wright CPT Gabe Snell MSG Andrew White
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Thanks TSgt Joe C. i have a plaque that has a Victoria Cross (copy) and a vile of sand from Gallipoli. Its a beautiful tribute to this terrible battle. As an aside note, in the UK and Auz you can buy and sell originals and copies of their highest medal. We can't do it here as collectors and that is why much of our medals are going overseas.
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