miletus12
Squadron vice admiral
To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.
Posts: 7,470 
Likes: 4,295
|
Post by miletus12 on Jun 4, 2023 10:24:28 GMT
The purpose of the landing is to cut off the Gallipoli Peninsula. You are definitely shifting the goalposts here to create your own irrelevancies. Again, the purpose is to cut off the peninsula, pocket the cut off Turkish forces there, then occupy said peninsula. He who holds the northern shore controls the narrows. One shore does not control a strait. It denies a strait. That is basic naval geography. Sinai 1973. The Turks don’t have time or space; they are being hit with a surprise blow in a confined area, without space to move by the very definition. They have an infantryman's pace time per day to dig in. 15 km a day if you face nothing but snipers, 100 meters if you go by WWI West-front movement rates against moderate opposition. You get to see what a cartographer sees and then what an infantryman see and then what a naval planner sees. Sorry, but these are extremely relevant images since I cannot fly you there to look with your own eyes as to the nature of the problem. Swimming out mines? Letting them loose? That simply isn’t going to achieve anywhere near the necessary concentration. This is simply grasping at straws. Wild Mines are a mine-sweeping problem in the Straits of Hormuz as I write this. We are speaking of low tech stuff dating back to 1898 type Hertz Horn mines. It does not take many to paralyze WWI shipping or make a landing attempt RECKLESS. Breaking it down: - No, I work within the bounds of the OP rather than trying to twist a discussion to particular hobby horses. - It is an infantry fight, but not over ‘terrible defensive terrain’ by any stretch of the imagination. - Tanks, mortars etc are all irrelevant - The neck of the peninsula is a little over 6km and is within the limited range of naval gunfire - They are on their home ground, but they are limited in numbers, firepower and cover and the Bulair division isn’t even their best one in the area. Home ground advantage isn’t some magical thing. Indeed, they lost a battle there two years previous en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bulair- This patently isn’t Western Front conditions. This goes beyond hyperbole into outright falsification. www.geliboluyunusemlak.com/portfoy-goster/satilik-arsa-araziler/canakkale-gelibolu-bolayir-da-7-480m2-imarli-arsaThat is not worse terrain than Paschendaele, Arras, the Somme or elsewhere. Good heavens - The Turks have a division of ~12000 to cover a 5 mile front of open beach - The Orient Express goes to Constantinople, not Bulair, and is a passenger service. Considering that you are talking about the 1700 mile railway, though, at 30mph gives us ~56.67 hours for a fortuitously preloaded train to make it from Berlin to Constantinople. The better part of two and a half days, in the most unrealistic of circumstances. In that time, the landings will be over and done with and, based on the correlation of forces, firepower and terrain, the terrain seized. Your point here verges upon the nonsensical. Look at the OP. a. You have three rills to cross. Flanders was a cakewalk by comparison. b. Against machine guns nests and barbed wire, tanks and or mortars are extremely relevant. Let us not do a Blackjack Pershing here. That man was an idiot. c. But the naval gunfire cannot hit anything with precision. d. If you know your terrain and I don't, then I have to waste time and lives to find out the hard way what you know and exploit. THAT is what doomed Galipolli in the first place. e.  Close enough to the Western Front for the same stupidity to be noticed. f. The Turks have TIME. They have an infantryman's pace time per day to dig in. 15 km a day if you face nothing but snipers, 100 meters if you go by WWI West-front movement rates against moderate opposition.g.  1913 that one was. And it achieved nothing. h. Are you serious? It is a RAILROAD track line. On it moved people and cargo. A locomotive cares not what it hauls. 4 days to move needed supplies and the Turks have that kind of time (actually 2 weeks by best possible outcomes), because we are dealing with complete idiots who thought Gaipolli was a good idea. Yes; I wrote "idiots", because that was what they were. WI Gallipoli landing works & progresses but the Turks still fight for every subsequent bottleneck to the limits of the physical capability? What if the the Gallipoli landing works in terms of the Alled forces establishing their beach-head, getting supplying going, being able to finish taking the peninsula and then expand beyond the peninsula, and destroying the Ottoman guns and forces in the way... ...but not having a 'cooperative' enemy that panics and gives up the war over this. Instead the Ottoman enemy continues to feed reinforcements from wherever it can to the battle, especially urban warfare, defends additional bottlenecks after Gallipolli and fires upon the Entente from the Asian shore? Would the Entente need to do a series of consecutive serious operations, from Gallipoli east across Thrace to besiege Constantinople --> storming Constantinople------> crossing the Bosporus into the Asian side at Istanbul Bogazi to clear Turkish infantry and slience Turkish guns ------> cross from Gallipoli to the Asian side in Cannakale to clear the Turkish infantry and silence the Turkish guns----> and possibly unite the Asian wings to seize the back-up Ottoman capital at Bursa, in order to: 1. Restore the straits as a reliably working waterway 2. Destroy completely the Turkish ability to resist Allied terms or to contest the straits What are the longer and shorter timeframes this might take? Once the British led Entente forces capture (and repair) any loading docks or wharves at the Bosporus/Black Sea end of the straits, would the Russians transport any infantry units to the city or Thrace to take part in the remaining clean-up of Ottoman resistance? Or to take on garrison duties in areas where fighting is done? Or would wartime operations and garrisons be left entirely to the British led forces that did most of the conquering, with the Russians awaiting handover of the straits at the end of the war, per treaty. If the Russians do send reinforcements or garrisons in wartime, would it be more because of them volunteering, or the British asking? If there is no Entente agreement to send Russians in wartime to the straits, will that be because of Russia being lazy or Britain being exclusionary? If it is Russia being lazy but still expecting a hand over at the end of the war, is that not super naive on their part? If it is the British being is exclusionary, what does that mean for Russian morale and Entente relations overall for the rest of the war? With great achievements come great problems. Or at least questions. The purpose of the landing is to cut off the Gallipoli Peninsula. You are definitely shifting the goalposts here to create your own irrelevancies. Again, the purpose is to cut off the peninsula, pocket the cut off Turkish forces there, then occupy said peninsula. He who holds the northern shore controls the narrows. That objective is nonsensical. If you want to kill men to no measurable gain, then by all means duplicate Gallipoli at Saros. If you want to get Russian wheat out of and Allied arms into Russia then you need both shores from the Dardenelles to the Bosporus, WWI style air superiority, a naval traffic control regime and Istanbul. Cutting off the gooseneck of the peninsula gives you nothing of those minimums. Do you not understand the objective and the scale of the problem? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I suggest you research just how many Union warships were sunk by mines in the ACW. 10% of the Union navy by those swimouts and wild mines and serruptitious planted Confederate mines. . |
|
stevep
Fleet admiral
Posts: 24,832 
Likes: 13,222
|
Post by stevep on Jun 4, 2023 12:01:15 GMT
The rail line goes to Constantinople, and at this date via Romania rather than Serbia. However Romania is neutral as technically is Bulgaria at this point. Shipping large amounts of munitions and military equipment through them is going to be difficult, especially since with the pro-German king of Romania dead by this time that state is leaning more towards the allies.
To get full use of the straits then you do need to occupy both sides but things develop incrementally. The idea was securing Gallipoli [by whichever route] enables guns there to disable those on the Asian side, or at least suppress them and hence allow mine-sweeping and the entry of the fleet to the Sea of Marmara which would enable physical attacks on the Turkish munitions production there - which supplied most of the country - and supplies to the city. It also is a big morale hit to the Turkish regime, with hostile warships sitting outside the capital.
As said before if the more hard line units decided to retreat into the interior, which was their plan if the capital looked under threat, enabling the allies to set up a friendly regime then their no longer in a position to seriously affect shipping through the straits.
If they do decide to fight for every inch and the Bulgarians aren't tempted to back-stab them, which would get Sofia most of E Thrace, then there could be tough fighting ahead. However Turkey is physically isolated from its allies and would now be fighting on 4 fronts. [5 if you count those slaughtering the Armenians at this point]. After Enver Pasha's cock up the previous winter when he largely annihilated his own army by trying an offensive in the Armenian mountains in mid-winter they are fairly short of troops and good equipment is probably an even bigger issue. The Turkish army is nothing like as well equipped as the German army nor trained to anything like the same standards, albeit that if properly supplied and fed its ordinary PBIs will fight hard. The key issue is how long will the hard liners carry enough support to stop them being removed by more rational elements?
|
|
|
|
Post by simon darkshade on Jun 4, 2023 13:10:19 GMT
The purpose of the landing is to cut off the Gallipoli Peninsula. You are definitely shifting the goalposts here to create your own irrelevancies. Again, the purpose is to cut off the peninsula, pocket the cut off Turkish forces there, then occupy said peninsula. He who holds the northern shore controls the narrows. One shore does not control a strait. It denies a strait. That is basic naval geography. Sinai 1973. The Turks don’t have time or space; they are being hit with a surprise blow in a confined area, without space to move by the very definition. They have an infantryman's pace time per day to dig in. 15 km a day if you face nothing but snipers, 100 meters if you go by WWI West-front movement rates against moderate opposition. You get to see what a cartographer sees and then what an infantryman see and then what a naval planner sees. Sorry, but these are extremely relevant images since I cannot fly you there to look with your own eyes as to the nature of the problem. Swimming out mines? Letting them loose? That simply isn’t going to achieve anywhere near the necessary concentration. This is simply grasping at straws. Wild Mines are a mine-sweeping problem in the Straits of Hormuz as I write this. We are speaking of low tech stuff dating back to 1898 type Hertz Horn mines. It does not take many to paralyze WWI shipping or make a landing attempt RECKLESS. Breaking it down: - No, I work within the bounds of the OP rather than trying to twist a discussion to particular hobby horses. - It is an infantry fight, but not over ‘terrible defensive terrain’ by any stretch of the imagination. - Tanks, mortars etc are all irrelevant - The neck of the peninsula is a little over 6km and is within the limited range of naval gunfire - They are on their home ground, but they are limited in numbers, firepower and cover and the Bulair division isn’t even their best one in the area. Home ground advantage isn’t some magical thing. Indeed, they lost a battle there two years previous en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bulair- This patently isn’t Western Front conditions. This goes beyond hyperbole into outright falsification. www.geliboluyunusemlak.com/portfoy-goster/satilik-arsa-araziler/canakkale-gelibolu-bolayir-da-7-480m2-imarli-arsaThat is not worse terrain than Paschendaele, Arras, the Somme or elsewhere. Good heavens - The Turks have a division of ~12000 to cover a 5 mile front of open beach - The Orient Express goes to Constantinople, not Bulair, and is a passenger service. Considering that you are talking about the 1700 mile railway, though, at 30mph gives us ~56.67 hours for a fortuitously preloaded train to make it from Berlin to Constantinople. The better part of two and a half days, in the most unrealistic of circumstances. In that time, the landings will be over and done with and, based on the correlation of forces, firepower and terrain, the terrain seized. Your point here verges upon the nonsensical. Look at the OP. a. You have three rills to cross. Flanders was a cakewalk by comparison. b. Against machine guns nests and barbed wire, tanks and or mortars are extremely relevant. Let us not do a Blackjack Pershing here. That man was an idiot. c. But the naval gunfire cannot hit anything with precision. d. If you know your terrain and I don't, then I have to waste time and lives to find out the hard way what you know and exploit. THAT is what doomed Galipolli in the first place. e. Close enough to the Western Front for the same stupidity to be noticed. f. The Turks have TIME. They have an infantryman's pace time per day to dig in. 15 km a day if you face nothing but snipers, 100 meters if you go by WWI West-front movement rates against moderate opposition.g. 1913 that one was. And it achieved nothing. h. Are you serious? It is a RAILROAD track line. On it moved people and cargo. A locomotive cares not what it hauls. 4 days to move needed supplies and the Turks have that kind of time (actually 2 weeks by best possible outcomes), because we are dealing with complete idiots who thought Gaipolli was a good idea. Yes; I wrote "idiots", because that was what they were. WI Gallipoli landing works & progresses but the Turks still fight for every subsequent bottleneck to the limits of the physical capability? What if the the Gallipoli landing works in terms of the Alled forces establishing their beach-head, getting supplying going, being able to finish taking the peninsula and then expand beyond the peninsula, and destroying the Ottoman guns and forces in the way... ...but not having a 'cooperative' enemy that panics and gives up the war over this. Instead the Ottoman enemy continues to feed reinforcements from wherever it can to the battle, especially urban warfare, defends additional bottlenecks after Gallipolli and fires upon the Entente from the Asian shore? Would the Entente need to do a series of consecutive serious operations, from Gallipoli east across Thrace to besiege Constantinople --> storming Constantinople------> crossing the Bosporus into the Asian side at Istanbul Bogazi to clear Turkish infantry and slience Turkish guns ------> cross from Gallipoli to the Asian side in Cannakale to clear the Turkish infantry and silence the Turkish guns----> and possibly unite the Asian wings to seize the back-up Ottoman capital at Bursa, in order to: 1. Restore the straits as a reliably working waterway 2. Destroy completely the Turkish ability to resist Allied terms or to contest the straits What are the longer and shorter timeframes this might take? Once the British led Entente forces capture (and repair) any loading docks or wharves at the Bosporus/Black Sea end of the straits, would the Russians transport any infantry units to the city or Thrace to take part in the remaining clean-up of Ottoman resistance? Or to take on garrison duties in areas where fighting is done? Or would wartime operations and garrisons be left entirely to the British led forces that did most of the conquering, with the Russians awaiting handover of the straits at the end of the war, per treaty. If the Russians do send reinforcements or garrisons in wartime, would it be more because of them volunteering, or the British asking? If there is no Entente agreement to send Russians in wartime to the straits, will that be because of Russia being lazy or Britain being exclusionary? If it is Russia being lazy but still expecting a hand over at the end of the war, is that not super naive on their part? If it is the British being is exclusionary, what does that mean for Russian morale and Entente relations overall for the rest of the war? With great achievements come great problems. Or at least questions. The purpose of the landing is to cut off the Gallipoli Peninsula. You are definitely shifting the goalposts here to create your own irrelevancies. Again, the purpose is to cut off the peninsula, pocket the cut off Turkish forces there, then occupy said peninsula. He who holds the northern shore controls the narrows. That objective is nonsensical. If you want to kill men to no measurable gain, then by all means duplicate Gallipoli at Saros. If you want to get Russian wheat out of and Allied arms into Russia then you need both shores from the Dardenelles to the Bosporus, WWI style air superiority, a naval traffic control regime and Istanbul. Cutting off the gooseneck of the peninsula gives you nothing of those minimums. Do you not understand the objective and the scale of the problem? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I suggest you research just how many Union warships were sunk by mines in the ACW. 10% of the Union navy by those swimouts and wild mines and serruptitious planted Confederate mines. . 1.) The basic naval geography of the Dardanelles in particular means that control of one shore allows suppression of the other. Such has been the way since the 1300s. 2.) Here you are being simply obtuse. The area has been rendered in photographs linked in the previous post. Its dimensions are also clearly laid out. However, you persist in irrelevant references to infantry pace of advance. What is being proposed is a full assault landing with covering fire of a thin and relatively flat neck of the peninsula. 3.) You are comparing apples with oranges. The Turks did not have a supply of free floating mines and Hormuz is not the Gulf of Saros. Further, the Turks don't have ships or ports on either shore to float mines out. The area has been quite heavily mapped. 4.) You post a picture of a completely different part of the peninsula to support your continual shifting of goalposts. It isn't working. That is not the area being discussed. Your attempts at distraction are irrelevant. The Turks did not have a surfeit of wire and machine guns at the beginning of the campaign, which is when this assault would take place. 5.) Selective quoting, particularly when removing the second part of the point which contained the main substance of it, is not a sign of good manners, good argument or good faith. The section deliberately excluded describes the length of what was indeed a railroad track line, the speed of the trains and the approximate time taken. You then make up some figures that have absolutely nothing to do with what is being proposed - an assault on the southern shore of the Gulf of Saros. 6.) It is not nonsensical, but rather represents a use of the oblique approach to the problem of taking the Gallipoli Peninsula. Once the Turks there are forced to surrender, being cut off from their lines of supply, then the forts on the southern shore of the Dardanelles can be reduced, allowing clearance of the minefields. At this point, the fleet is clear into the Sea of Marmara, whereupon it can use that naval advantage and options against a fundamentally limited Ottoman enemy. Now, I personally don't hold with the idea that the Turk would throw in the towel the moment that the fleet cruises up to Constantinople and starts shelling it, but it is part of the way forward. 7.) No. I do have better things to do with my time than devote my very few hours off to pointless research of one particular conflict. We all do. |
|
lordroel
Administrator
Posts: 67,964
Likes: 49,369
|
Post by lordroel on Jun 4, 2023 13:28:35 GMT
Seeing post that are not related to this thread, so can we go back to it, thanks.
|
|
miletus12
Squadron vice admiral
To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.
Posts: 7,470
Likes: 4,295
|
Post by miletus12 on Jun 4, 2023 16:08:39 GMT
Seeing post that are not related to this thread, so can we go back to it, thanks. Agreed, but that is why If you are going to carry out the OP conditions, you still have to... meet those minimums. If you do not, then your mission failed. |
|
lordroel
Administrator
Posts: 67,964
Likes: 49,369
|
Post by lordroel on Jun 4, 2023 16:31:07 GMT
Seeing post that are not related to this thread, so can we go back to it, thanks. Agreed, but that is why If you are going to carry out the OP conditions, you still have to... meet those minimums. If you do not, then your mission failed. |
|
miletus12
Squadron vice admiral
To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.
Posts: 7,470
Likes: 4,295
|
Post by miletus12 on Jun 4, 2023 17:14:21 GMT
Reply to various. See MAP.  The rail line ran this way. It certainly supplied the Ottomans with the only transfer through "neutral" territory being Bulgaria, and that officially was not a problem after October 1915. The previous year, it was a look the other way and not be too concerned about the cargo going through situation. |
|
stevep
Fleet admiral
Posts: 24,832
Likes: 13,222
|
Post by stevep on Jun 5, 2023 8:28:14 GMT
Reply to various. See MAP. The rail line ran this way. It certainly supplied the Ottomans with the only transfer through "neutral" territory being Bulgaria, and that officially was not a problem after October 1915. The previous year, it was a look the other way and not be too concerned about the cargo going through situation.
Except that we're talking about early 1915 so that route is a non-option.
According to the wiki page the Orient Express at that date went through Austria-Hungary and then Romania and Bulgaria rather that through Serbia.
|
|
miletus12
Squadron vice admiral
To get yourself lost, just follow the signs.
Posts: 7,470
Likes: 4,295
|
Post by miletus12 on Jun 5, 2023 8:45:36 GMT
Reply to various. See MAP. The rail line ran this way. It certainly supplied the Ottomans with the only transfer through "neutral" territory being Bulgaria, and that officially was not a problem after October 1915. The previous year, it was a look the other way and not be too concerned about the cargo going through situation.
Except that we're talking about early 1915 so that route is a non-option.
According to the wiki page the Orient Express at that date went through Austria-Hungary and then Romania and Bulgaria rather that through Serbia.
MAP.  See that branch line snaking out of southeast AH twisting across northeast Serbia then across southwest Bulgaria and headed toward Istanbul? Date on Map...1911. |
|
stevep
Fleet admiral
Posts: 24,832
Likes: 13,222
|
Post by stevep on Jun 5, 2023 16:40:12 GMT
Except that we're talking about early 1915 so that route is a non-option.
According to the wiki page the Orient Express at that date went through Austria-Hungary and then Romania and Bulgaria rather that through Serbia.
MAP. See that branch line snaking out of southeast AH twisting across northeast Serbia then across southwest Bulgaria and headed toward Istanbul? Date on Map...1911.
Which is what I said. Unless your arguing that was the route the Orient Express was following at this point, contrary to what its wiki entry says? Which would still be irreverent as the route is closed to the CPs while Serbia fights.
|
|
