Turkish mines and the disaster in the Dardanelles

1915 - Mines and the disaster in the Dardanelles

Mines: The Devil at 2½ Fathoms.

Turkish mines, WW1

Despite its own prowess with mines, as the power most interested in projecting military power from the sea, the British were most interested in countering these weapons. The need to do so was driven home to British naval leaders after mines helped Turkish forces thwart a major British expedition in the Dardanelles in 1915 - an event that had strategic consequences for the conduct of the war.

In August 1914, Turkey and Germany signed an agreement giving German forces control over the Dardanelles between the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara. German Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, commander of a task force consisting of the cruisers Goeben and Breslau that had evaded British forces and slipped into Constantinople harbor, became commander-in-chief of the Turkish navy. Assisting him were two other German officers, including Vice Admiral Guido von Usedom, and four hundred naval gunners and mine warfare experts who had been dispatched from Germany.

Together, the Germans and Turks built formidable defensive works. The Germans added to the minefields that Turks had already laid, generating a defensive belt consisting of more than 300 mines arrayed in ten lines across the narrowest part of the Dardanelles. These minefields were defended by outer, intermediate, and inner shore-based fortifications, which in turn were reinforced with mobile artillery batteries, searchlights, and land-based torpedo tubes.

Looking for a quick and decisive action, the British War Cabinet ordered the Royal Navy to force this Dardanelles without any sort of land-based support. The move was designed to assist Russia and help that country maintain an active second front against Germany. Opening the Dardanelles also would free shipping trapped in the Black Sea, restore sea lines of communication to southern Russia, and allow grain shipments to pass from Russia's wheat fields to Great Britain.

Royal Navy and French operations, under the command of Admiral Sir Sackville Carden, began in February 1915. Carden's first priority was to silence the Turks' outer ring of forts through naval bombardment, which British and French forces effectively did.

The next move was on the intermediate ring, but here Carden's forces had to deal with the Turks' formidable minefields. When the British bombardment of the intermediate forts from beyond the mine lines proved ineffective, Carden ordered that the mines be swept before operations resumed. Seven of Carden's 35 converted fishing trawlers, manned by civilian crews, began to sweep the channel early in March 1915. However, these non-military crews could not stand up to the fire of mobile Turkish batteries - and the loss of one of their number to a mine - and withdrew from their night time sweeping tasks. Faced with this situation, the British started replacing civilian trawler crews with military personnel and made plans to conduct a combined daytime sweep and bombardment.

That operation got underway on 18 March, now under the command of Vice Admiral John de Robeck (Admiral Carden resigned in the aftermath of the first sweep attempt). The operation started off well, with British and French battleships silencing the forts. However, as the Allied ships rotated through their firing positions in the narrow strait, the French battleship Bouvet hit a mine (some reports stated that she was hit by shellfire) and sank with most of her crew in an area that the British believed had been swept earlier. Unbeknownst to them, the small Turkish freighter Nusret had taken advantage of bad weather earlier in the month and laid a fresh batch of twenty mines.

Things continued to get worse after Bouvet's demise. As the trawlers moved in to begin their sweeps they came under fire from mobile batteries and again withdrew. The British battle cruiser Inflexible struck another mine and was badly damaged, although she eventually made it to Malta for repairs. Four minutes later, the battleship HMS Irresistible struck a mine and sank three hours later. When de Robeck ordered all his capital ships to disengage and withdraw from the area, yet another British battleship - the already shell-damaged Ocean - hit a mine and sank later that night.


The British battleship Irresistible (left) and the French battleship Bouvet (right), both victims of Turkish mines in the Dardanelles.

After this debacle, Vice Admiral de Robeck informed London that he intended to renew the attack in several days, after he had completed re-manned and reorganized his minesweeping force. The British replaced the remaining civilian crews with survivors from the sunken battleships and fitted eight destroyers with minesweeping gear to augment the trawlers. But before the Allies could test these modifications under fire, de Robeck changed his plans and informed the War Cabinet that he now believed that a joint naval and land operation was the best way to proceed. A divided British Cabinet instead backed the plan for landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula. These ground operations ultimately failed as well and the British withdrew their ground forces early in 1916.

Though the naval push through the Dardanelles was effectively over in March 1915, mines continued to have an effect on Aegean operations for some time to come. British and French subs repeatedly tried to run the Dardanelles gauntlet into the Sea of Marmara, often unsuccessfully. In May 1915, one casualty was the French submarine Joule, which hit a mine and was lost, along with her crew.

Ironically, the German cruisers Breslau and Goeben were also victims of mines. The two warships broke out of Constantinople and into the Aegean in January 1918, where they sank two British monitors. As the cruisers proceeded toward Mudros harbor on the island of Lemnos, Breslau hit a mine and had to be taken under tow by Goeben, which struck a mine herself a short time later.

Minutes later, Breslau detonated another four mines and sank with most of her crew. Goeben abandoned her consort and headed back to the Dardanelles, but once there she too hit another mine and her crew ran the ship aground to prevent her from sinking. Despite British attempts to finish her off, Goeben was patched and towed into a Turkish port. She remained in service as the Turkish warship Yawuz until 1960.