Although initially successful, against only light opposition, the landing at Suvla was mismanaged from the outset and quickly reached the same stalemate conditions that prevailed on the Anzac and Helles fronts. On 15 August, after a week of indecision and inactivity, the British commander at Suvla, Lieutenant-GeneralSir Frederick Stopford, was dismissed. His performance in command is often considered one of the most incompetent feats of generalship of the First World War.
However, just as the original landing site at Helles in April had insufficient space to land all the troops available, and so a secondary landing was to be made north of Gaba Tepe, now in July there was insufficient room to accommodate all the new troops within the congested Anzac perimeter, nor was there room to manoeuvre them in battle, and so a new landing at Suvla was planned which would link up with the forces at Anzac.
The Suvla landing was to be made by the newly formed British IX Corps, initially comprising two brigades of the 10th (Irish) Division and the entire 11th (Northern) Division. Command of IX Corps was given to Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stopford. British military historianJ. F. C. Fuller said of Stopford that he had "no conception of what generalship meant" and indeed he was appointed not on his experience (he had seen little combat and had never commanded men in battle) or his energy and enthusiasm (he was aged 61 and had retired in 1909) but because of his position on the list of seniority. Hamilton had requested either Lieutenant-General Julian Byng or Lieutenant-General Henry Rawlinson, both experienced Western Front corps commanders, but both were junior to Lieutenant-General Sir Bryan Mahon, commander of the 10th Division. The only available generals of appropriate seniority were Spencer Ewart whom Hamilton thought too "stout of girth" and lacking recent experience with troops, and Stopford who was selected by a process of elimination.
Planning
The offensive was to open on 6 August 1915 with diversions at Helles (the Battle of Krithia Vineyard) and Anzac (the Battle of Lone Pine). The landing at Suvla was to commence at 10:00 pm, an hour after the two assaulting columns had broken out of Anzac heading for the Sari Bair heights. The original plan at Suvla was to put the 11th Division ashore south of Nibrunesi Point, the southern headland of the bay, as it was not considered safe to land in the dark within the bay itself where there were uncharted shoals. The 30th and 31st Brigades of the 10th Division would land the following morning. The objective of IX Corps was to seize the ring of hills that surrounded the Suvla plain; Kiretch Tepe to the north along the Gulf of Saros, Tekke Tepe to the east and the Anafarta Spur to the south-east.
When Stopford was first shown the plan on 22 July he declared, "It is a good plan. I am sure it will succeed and I congratulate whoever has been responsible for framing it." Stopford's chief-of-staff, Brigadier GeneralHamilton Reed was not so supportive and his doubts and prejudices succeeded in swaying Stopford. Reed was an artillery officer who had won the Victoria Cross during the Boer War. Having served on the Western Front, he believed no assault on entrenched positions could be made without artillery support. Reconnaissance had revealed no prepared fortifications at Suvla and yet Stopford proceeded to limit the objectives of the landing and Hamilton failed to stop him. The final orders issued by Stopford and the 11th Division commander, Major GeneralFrederick Hammersley, were imprecise, requiring only that the high ground be taken "if possible".
Stopford and Reed also wanted the 34th Brigade of the 11th Division to be landed within Suvla Bay itself. Unlike the April landings, IX Corps was supplied with purpose-built landing craft known as "Beetles" which were armoured and self-propelled. This fleet of landing craft was commanded by CommanderEdward Unwin who had captained the SS River Clyde during the April landing on V Beach at Cape Helles.
The commander of the Fifth Army, General Otto Liman von Sanders, was well aware a new landing was imminent through reports of troop build-ups in the Greek islands, however he was unsure of where the landing would be made. British deceptions made a landing on the Asian shore possible so three divisions were located there while three more were stationed 30 miles (48km) north of Suvla at Bulair on the neck of the peninsula. Suvla was defended by three battalions, the "Anafarta Detachment", under the command of a Bavarian cavalry officer, MajorWilhelm Willmer, whose task was to delay any enemy advance until reinforcements arrived. Willmer had no machine guns and few field artillery pieces. Willmer constructed three strong points; one on Kiretch Tepe to the north, one on Hill 10 in the centre and one on Chocolate Hill, near the southern end of the salt lake that lay behind the beach. Small pickets were positioned elsewhere, including on Lala Baba, a small hill between the beach and the salt lake.
When the attack at Lone Pine commenced, Willmer was ordered to send one battalion as reinforcements so that when 20,000 British began landing at Suvla, they were opposed by only 1,500 Ottoman soldiers.
Landing
Suvla Bay in 1915
The 32nd and 33rd Brigades of the 11th Division began to come ashore at "B Beach" south of Nibrunesi Point shortly before 10 pm. In the first action fought by a New Army unit, two companies from the 6th Battalion, The Yorkshire Regiment, drove the Ottoman defenders off the small hillock of Lala Baba which overlooked the beach. In doing so, the British took heavy casualties, with all but two of the Yorkshires' officers being killed or wounded, along with one third of the unit's other ranks.
Shortly afterwards the 34th Brigade attempted to land at "A Beach" within Suvla Bay but the landing went awry from the start. The destroyers conveying the brigade anchored 1,000 yards (910m) too far south, facing shoal water and on the wrong side of the channel that drained the salt lake into the bay. Two lighters grounded on reefs and the men had to wade ashore submerged up to their necks. The 9th Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers waded ashore in darkness and were pinned down between the beach and the salt lake by sniper fire and shelling. The CO was shot in the head around dawn and 9th Battalion lost 6 other officers killed and 7 wounded. The 11th Battalion, The Manchester Regiment, having come ashore from the destroyer HMSGrampus, had the greatest success of the landing, managing to find its way to the Kiretch Tepe ridge and fight its way some distance along it to the east for the loss of 200 casualties.
Elsewhere the landing was in chaos, having been made in pitch darkness which resulted in great confusion with units becoming mixed and officers unable to locate their position or their objectives. Later, when the moon rose, the British troops became targets for Ottoman snipers. Attempts to capture Hill 10 failed because no one in the field knew where Hill 10 was. Shortly after dawn it was found and taken, the Ottoman rearguard having withdrawn during the night.
Stopford had chosen to command the landing from HMS Jonquil but as the landing was in progress, he went to sleep. The first news he received was when Commander Unwin came aboard at 4 am on 7 August to discourage further landings in Suvla Bay.
British war correspondentEllis Ashmead-Bartlett witnessed the landing shortly after dawn from the transport Minneapolis. While he could hear the fighting continuing at Anzac, Suvla was comparatively quiet and "no firm hand appeared to control this mass of men suddenly dumped on an unknown shore." The British official history, written by CaptainCecil Aspinall-Oglander who was on Hamilton's staff, was blunt in its assessment; "It was now broad daylight and the situation in Suvla Bay was verging on chaos."
The Royal Australian Naval Bridging Train, a 300-strong engineering and construction unit (and the only Australian presence at Suvla), landed early in the first day, but was left without orders until late in the afternoon, when they were set to building piers to receive the men and supplies of the later stages of the landing.
Progress on 7 August was minimal. The two brigades of the 10th Division came ashore, adding to the confusion. In the heat of the day, the soldiers became desperate for drinking water. Towards evening two hills east of the salt lake were captured; these represented the sole gains for the first day ashore at Suvla. IX Corps had suffered 1,700 casualties in the first 24 hours, a figure exceeding the total size of Willmer's detachment. At 7 pm, Willmer was able to report to Von Sanders: "No energetic attacks on the enemy's part have taken place. On the contrary, the enemy is advancing timidly."[citation needed]
Stopford did not go ashore from Jonquil on 7 August. By the end of the day, the British chain of command had completely broken down.
Lethargy
Stopford was satisfied with the results of the first day. On the morning of 8 August, he signalled Hamilton:
"Major-General Hammersley and troops under him deserve great credit for the result attained against strenuous opposition and great difficulty. I must now consolidate the position held."[citation needed]
He had no intention of advancing to the high ground.[citation needed] The British staff had estimated that it would take the Ottoman divisions at Bulair 36 hours to reach Suvla – they could be expected to arrive on the evening of 8 August. Hamilton was dismayed by the lack of progress so far and the absence of any drive from Stopford or his subordinates. He had already dispatched Captain Aspinall to discover first-hand what was happening at Suvla. Aspinall was accompanied by Lieutenant-ColonelMaurice Hankey, Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence, who was to report on the progress of the campaign to the British Cabinet. When he received Stopford's signal, Hamilton decided to see Suvla for himself.
Aspinall and Hankey initially found the ease and inactivity at Suvla encouraging, assuming it meant the fighting was now far away amongst the hills. Once on the beach, they were warned to keep their heads down as the front line was only a few hundred yards away – and that Stopford was still aboard the Jonquil. Aspinall found Stopford "in excellent spirits", well satisfied with progress. When Aspinall pointed out that the men had not reached the high ground, Stopford replied, "No, but they are ashore."
Aspinall and Hamilton both converged on the light cruiserHMS Chatham, the flagship of Rear-AdmiralJohn de Robeck who commanded the landing fleet. Finally, on the afternoon of 8 August, nearly two days after the landing commenced, Hamilton gained a clear picture of events. Accompanied by Aspinall and CommodoreRoger Keyes, he crossed to the Jonquil to confront Stopford who had finally been ashore to consult with Hammersley.
Stopford and Hammersley planned to order an advance the following morning, 9 August. Hamilton insisted that an advance be made immediately and so, at 6.30 pm, the 32nd Brigade was ordered to march two and a half miles to the Tekke Tepe ridge. The march, in darkness over unfamiliar, rough terrain, was difficult and the brigade did not approach the summit until 4 am on 9 August. The Ottoman reinforcements had reached the ridge shortly before them and met the exhausted British infantry with a bayonet charge. The 32nd Brigade was virtually annihilated in a matter of minutes and the remnants of the battalions scattered back towards the beach.
Hamilton had watched the battle from the Triad. He wrote in his diary:
"My heart has grown tough amidst the struggles of the peninsula but the misery of this scene wellnigh broke it... Words are of no use."
Dismissal
Feizi Bey's troops began to arrive, as expected by the British, on the evening of 8 August. Von Sanders wanted to attack immediately but Feizi Bey objected, saying that the men were exhausted and without artillery support, so Von Sanders dismissed him. In his place he put Mustafa Kemal, the commander of the Ottoman 19th Division, which had been fighting at Chunuk Bair. Kemal assumed authority over the "Anafarta section" which spanned from Suvla south to Chunuk Bair.
Kemal, who had proved aggressive and capable at ANZAC, held the high ground and was content to remain on the defensive at Suvla while he dealt with the threat to the Sari Bair ridge. The intensity of the fighting escalated at Suvla on 9 August but the opportunity for the British to make a swift advance had now disappeared. Around midday the gunfire set scrub alight on Scimitar Hill, and Ashmead-Bartlett, watching from Lala Baba, saw the British wounded trying to escape the flames:
"I watched the flames approaching and the crawling figures disappear amidst dense clouds of black smoke. When the fire passed on little mounds of scorched khaki alone marked the spot where another mismanaged soldier of the King had returned to mother earth."[citation needed]
Reinforcements were arriving, the 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division had started coming ashore on the night of 8 August, and the 54th (East Anglian) Division arrived on 10 August, but command remained paralysed. Some of the reasons that Stopford gave for his inaction were surreal, such as that the Ottomans were "inclined to be aggressive."[citation needed]
Hamilton finally cabled Kitchener that the IX Corps generals were "unfit" for command. Kitchener swiftly replied on 14 August, saying:
"If you should deem it necessary to replace Stopford, Mahon and Hammersley, have you any competent generals to take their place? From your report I think Stopford should come home. This is a young man's war, and we must have commanding officers that will take full advantage of opportunities which occur but seldom. If, therefore, any generals fail, do not hesitate to act promptly. Any generals I have available I will send you."[citation needed]
Before receiving a response, Kitchener made Lieutenant-General Julian Byng available to command IX Corps. On 15 August Hamilton dismissed Stopford and, while Byng was travelling from France, replaced him with Major-GeneralBeauvoir De Lisle, commander of the British 29th Division at Helles. Hammersley was also dismissed but Hamilton intended to retain Mahon in command of the 10th Division. However, Mahon was incensed that de Lisle, whom he disliked, was appointed above him and quit, saying "I respectfully decline to waive my seniority and to serve under the officer you name." He abandoned his division while it was in the thick of the fighting on Kiretch Tepe. The commander of the 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division, Major-General John Lindley, voluntarily resigned.[3]
Aftermath
General Stopford is blamed for the failure of the Suvla operation but responsibility ultimately lay with Lord Kitchener who, as Secretary of State for War, had appointed the elderly and inexperienced general to an active corps command, and with Sir Ian Hamilton who accepted Stopford's appointment and then failed to impose his will on his subordinate. On 13 August Hamilton had written in his diary, "Ought I have resigned sooner than allow generals old and inexperienced to be foisted up on me." By then it was too late and Stopford's departure contributed to Hamilton's downfall which came on 15 October when he was sacked as the commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.
Under General de Lisle's command, the Suvla front was reorganized and reinforced with the arrival of the 29th Division from Helles and the 2nd Mounted Division from Egypt (minus their horses). The fighting climaxed on 21 August with the Battle of Scimitar Hill, the largest battle of the Gallipoli campaign. When it too failed, activity at Suvla subsided into sporadic fighting until it was evacuated by the British in late December. Conditions during the summer had been appalling because of heat, flies, and lack of sanitation. On 15 November there was a deluge of rain and again on 26/27 November a major rainstorm flooded trenches up to 4 feet deep. This was succeeded by a blizzard of snow and two nights of heavy frost. At Suvla, 220 men drowned or froze to death and there were 12,000 cases of frostbite or exposure. In surprising contrast to the campaign itself, the withdrawals from Gallipoli were well planned and executed, with many successful deceptions to prevent the Turks realising that withdrawals were taking place. Minimal losses were experienced, and many guns and other equipment were also taken off.
English physicist Henry Moseley, famous for the discovery of the atomic number, died in this battle to a sniper bullet.
Air actions
Following the appointment of Wing Captain Frederick Sykes to the command of Royal Naval Air Service units in the eastern Mediterranean in July 1915, plans were put in place for air reinforcements to be made available to Sykes. However, the landing at Suvla Bay began before the reinforcements arrived. Nonetheless, Sykes's aviators did succeed in destroying several Ottoman ships which hindered the resupply of Ottoman troops. This interdiction forced the Ottomans to depend on land resupply over an extended route. While this did have a diminishing effect on Ottoman ammunition stocks, the failure to close the land routes meant that it was not decisive.[4]
Commemoration
The landing has been commemorated in song on several occasions. Two of the best-known songs contain historical contradictions that confuse the landings at Suvla and Anzac.
A song "Suvla Bay," which is believed to have been written during World War I but first copyrighted and published in 1944, has been recorded by many artists.[5] It tells the story of an Australian girl who receives the news that her sweetheart or husband has been killed at Suvla. However, in a recurring line the song implies that he was killed in April, four months before the Suvla landing. He might have been killed at some point after the April landing at Anzac, but not at Suvla; there was no one there who had "played their part" in April.
Suvla Bay is ostensibly the setting for the song And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, written by Eric Bogle in 1971, although Bogle admits to having changed the location from Anzac Cove to Suvla, for several reasons, one of them being that he found many Australians mistakenly believed that the ANZAC landing had taken place at Suvla.[6] The song has been recorded by numerous artists, including the Clancy Brothers, Joan Baez, the Pogues, The Dubliners, June Tabor and Nathan Lay.
In the climax of the Peter Weir movie Gallipoli, the third and final wave of Australian troops at the Battle of the Nek is ordered into a suicidal advance, supposedly to divert Ottoman and German attention from the landing at Suvla, despite rumours that the landing has been successfully completed. The fictional character General Gardiner orders the advance reconsidered, with the line "at Suvla ... the [English] officers are sitting on the beach drinking cups of tea". In fact, the Australian attack at the Nek was a diversion for the New Zealanders' attack on Sari Bair, not the British landing at Suvla.
The Dreadnoughts' album track "The Bay of Suvla" commemorates the battle, although where the men described in the song originate from is not absolutely clear.[7]
The Gallipoli campaign, the Dardanelles campaign, the Defense of Gallipoli or the Battle of Gallipoli was a military campaign in the First World War on the Gallipoli peninsula from 19 February 1915 to 9 January 1916. The Entente powers, Britain, France and the Russian Empire, sought to weaken the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers, by taking control of the Ottoman straits. This would expose the Ottoman capital at Constantinople to bombardment by Entente battleships and cut it off from the Asian part of the empire. With the Ottoman Empire defeated, the Suez Canal would be safe and the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits would be open to Entente supplies to the Black Sea and warm-water ports in Russia.
The 13th (Western) Division was one of the Kitchener's Army divisions in the First World War, raised from volunteers by Lord Kitchener. It fought at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia and Persia.
The New Zealand and Australian Division was a composite army division raised for service in the First World War under the command of Major General Alexander Godley. Consisting of several mounted and standard infantry brigades from both New Zealand and Australia, it served in the Gallipoli Campaign between April and December 1915.
The Battle of Sari Bair, also known as the August Offensive, represented the final attempt made by the British in August 1915 to seize control of the Gallipoli peninsula from the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
The Battle of Hill 60 was one of the last major assault of the Gallipoli Campaign. It was launched on 21 August 1915 to coincide with the attack on Scimitar Hill made from the Suvla front by Major-General H. de B. De Lisle's British IX Corps, Frederick Stopford having been replaced in the few days previous. Hill 60 was a low knoll at the northern end of the Sari Bair range which dominated the Suvla landing. Capturing this hill along with Scimitar Hill would have allowed the Anzac and Suvla landings to be securely linked.
The Battle of Scimitar Hill was the last offensive mounted by the British at Suvla during the Battle of Gallipoli in World War I. It was also the largest single-day attack ever mounted by the Allies at Gallipoli, involving three divisions. The purpose of the attack was to remove the immediate Ottoman threat from the exposed Suvla landing and to link with the ANZAC sectors to the south. Launched on 21 August 1915 to coincide with the simultaneous attack on Hill 60, it was a costly failure, in which the Turks were forced to use all their reserves in "severe and bloody fighting" far into the night, with some Turkish trenches lost and retaken twice.
The Battle of Chunuk Bair was a World War I battle fought between the Ottoman defenders and troops of the British Empire over control of the peak in August 1915. The capture of Chunuk Bair,, the secondary peak of the Sari Bair range, was one of the two objectives of the Battle of Sari Bair.
The First Battle of Krithia was the first Allied attempt to advance in the Battle of Gallipoli during the First World War. Starting on 28 April, three days after the Landing at Cape Helles, the defensive power of the Ottoman forces quickly overwhelmed the attack, which suffered from poor leadership and planning, lack of communications, and exhaustion & demoralisation of the troops.
The Battle of Gully Ravine (Zığındere) was a World War I battle fought at Cape Helles on the Gallipoli peninsula. By June 1915 all thoughts the Allies had of a swift decisive victory over the Ottoman Empire had vanished. The preceding Third Battle of Krithia and the attack at Gully Ravine had limited objectives and had much in common with the trench warfare prevailing on the Western Front. Unlike previous Allied attacks at Helles, the Gully Ravine action was largely successful at achieving its objectives, though at a typically high cost in casualties.
Lieutenant General Sir Aylmer Gould Hunter-Weston, was a British Army officer who served in the First World War at Gallipoli in 1915 and in the very early stages of the Somme Offensive in 1916. He was also a Scottish Unionist MP.
The Battle of Krithia Vineyard was fought during the Gallipoli Campaign during the First World War. It was originally intended as a minor British action at Helles on the Gallipoli peninsula to divert attention from the imminent launch of the August Offensive, but instead, the British commander, Brigadier General H.E. Street, mounted a futile and bloody series of attacks that in the end gained a small patch of ground known as "The Vineyard".
IX Corps was a corps-sized formation of the British Army that existed during the First and the Second World Wars.
The landing at Anzac Cove on Sunday, 25 April 1915, also known as the landing at Gaba Tepe and, to the Turks, as the Arıburnu Battle, was part of the amphibious invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula by the forces of the British Empire, which began the land phase of the Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War.
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 a passage through the Dardanelles Straits, a narrow, 41 mi-long (66 km) waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea further north.
This article presents the timeline of the Gallipoli Campaign. The period of the proper battle is considered to be 19 February 1915 to 9 January 1916; however, a number of events took place between August 1914 and January 1915 that are relevant to the battle.
Lieutenant General Sir Frederick William Stopford, was a British Army officer, best remembered for commanding the landing at Suvla Bay in August 1915, during the Gallipoli Campaign, where he failed to order an aggressive exploitation of the initially successful landings.
The Royal Australian Naval Bridging Train was a unique unit of the Royal Australian Navy. It was active only during the First World War, where it served in the Gallipoli and the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns. The Train was formed in February 1915 and stood down in May 1917. Throughout its existence, it was composed of Royal Australian Naval Reservists under the command of Lieutenant Commander Leighton Bracegirdle. Normally under the command of the British IX Corps, the Train also supported the I ANZAC Corps and Imperial Camel Corps in the defence of the Suez Canal.
They were the only Australian naval unit serving in a European theatre of war. They were therefore bent on proving, both to the Royal Navy and to the British Army, that they could overcome any difficulties.
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Ottoman Empire 
Frederick Stopford 
Otto Liman von Sanders 
