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WWI: Gallipoli - The Beginning
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign, the Battle of Gallipoli or the Battle of Çanakkale, was a campaign of World War I that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916. The peninsula forms the northern bank of the Dardanelles, a strait that provides a sea route to what was then the Russian Empire, one of the Allied powers during the war. -
Declaration of war from Germany
On the 3rd of August 1914, two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany declares war on France, moving ahead with a long-held strategy, conceived by the former chief of staff of the German army, Alfred von Schlieffen, for a two-front war against France and Russia. Hours later, France makes its own declaration of war against Germany, readying its troops to move into the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which it had forfeited to Germany in the settlement that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1 -
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The French Fall Back
The French desire to score a quick victory ignites the first major French-German action of the war. The French Army invades Alsace and Lorraine according to their master strategy known as Plan XVII. However, the French offensive is met by effective German counter-attacks using heavy artillery and machine-guns. The French suffer heavy casualties including 27,000 soldiers killed in a single day, the worst one-day death toll in the history of the French Army. The French then fall back toward Paris -
Ottoman navy raids Russian Black Sea ports
The Battle of Odessa was an Ottoman naval attack against the Russian held port of Odessa, Ukraine in October 1914. At the time of battle the Ottoman Navy had just launched a major raid into the Black Sea to destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet and to attack targets on land. In response to the raid Russia declared war on the Ottomans -
The Western Front in Europe stabilizes
The Western Front in Europe stabilizes in the aftermath of the First Battle of Ypres as the Germans go on the defensive and transfer troops to the East to fight the Russians. The 450-mile-long Western Front stretches from the Channel Coast southward through Belgium and Eastern France into Switzerland. Troops from both sides construct opposing trench fortifications and dugouts protected by barbed wire, machine-gun nests, snipers, and mortars, with an in-between area called No Man's Land. -
Comprimises
The Western Front comprises the Franco-German-Belgian front and any military action in Great Britain, Switzerland, Scandinavia and Holland. The Eastern Front comprises the German-Russian, Austro-Russian and Austro-Romanian fronts. The Southern Front comprises the Austro-Italian and Balkan (including Bulgaro-Romanian) fronts, and Dardanelles. The Asiatic and Egyptian Theatres comprises Egypt, Tripoli, the Sudan, Asia Minor (including Transcaucasia), Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Persia, Afghanista -
Turkey defeats the final attempt
Turkey defeats the final attempt by the British and French fleet to force the straits. Three battleships are sunk by mines. Three battleships and the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible are badly damaged. -
Landing on Gallipoli
At a conference between Hamilton and de Robeck aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth, it is decided to make an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula. The dawn 'Landing' was carried out by the four infantry battalions of the 3rd Brigade, First Australian Division. These men came from what Charles Bean, Australia's official historian, called the 'outer states' – Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and Queensland. -
British Empire and French Forces
British Empire and French forces make amphibious landings on the Gallipoli peninsula.
Landing at Cape Helles made by the British 29th Division and elements of the Royal Naval Division.
Landing at Anzac Cove made by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC).
French forces make a diversionary landing at Kum Kale on the Asian shore. -
Artois Offensive in the spring
Forming part of French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre's Artois Offensive in the spring of 1915 - his second large-scale infantry assault following the Champagne Offensive in December 1914 - the Battle of Festubert, in the Ypres Salient, was fought by the Allies (British, Canadian and Indian troops) against the Germans from 15-27 May 1915. -
The Turkish Attack at ANZAC Cove
Although the focus of activity on the Gallipoli peninsular in the wake of the Allied landings of 25 April 1915 had been at Helles - including two failed attacks upon the village of Krithia and its nearby prominent hill feature Achi Baba in April and early May - the Turk defenders at Anzac Cove launched a concerted attack on 19 May 1915. -
Truce between the Turks and the ANZAC
An armistice is declared from 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. in which time Turkish and Anzac dead are buried. The truce allowed the Turks to bury their dead lying in no-man's-land between the trenches. -
The Capture of Amara
The Capture of the important Turkish administrative base of Amara in late May 1915 was a remarkable triumph for both the British and its commander of the Amara expedition, Sir Charles Townshend. Also an important commercial centre Amara was sited on the Tigris river, and some 160km north of Qurna which British forces had captured in December 1914. -
Battle of Lone Pine
The Battle of Lone Pine, along with the Battle of Sari Bair, was planned by Allied regional Commander-in-Chief Sir Ian Hamilton as a diversionary operation intended to shift focus away from the planned Allied landings at Suvla Bay on 6 August 1915.The Battle of Lone Pine diversion commences at 6.30 a.m. with the Australian 1st Division capturing Turkish trenches. -
Battle on Hill 60
The Battle of Hill 60, conducted by Anzac commander William Birdwood, was designed to support General Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle's far larger attack at Scimitar Hill on the same day in what comprised the final British attack at Gallipoli. Both attacks were intended as a last-ditch Allied attempt to break northwards out of the restricted beachhead at Anzac Cove and link up with the Allied force sited at Suvla Bay. -
The Destruction of Louvain
Between Liege and Brussels, the Belgian city of Louvain was the subject of mass destruction by the German army over a period of five days from 25 August 1914. The city itself fell to the German First Army on 19 August 1914 as part of the German strategy to overrun Belgium during the month of August 1914. -
The Battle of Loos
The Battle of Loos formed a part of the wider Artois-Loos Offensive conducted by the French and British in autumn 1915, sometimes referred to as the Second Battle of Artois. The Artois campaigns comprised the major Allied offensive on the Western Front in 1915. -
The Third Battle of the Isonzo
Initiated some two-and-a-half months following the Second Battle of the Isonzo, the third battle was initiated on 18 October 1915 and, like the two earlier battles, lasted around two weeks before once again being called off in failure by Italian Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna. -
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The Evacuation of Anzac Cove, Suvla Bay and Helles
In the wake of the failure of the Allied attacks at Scimitar Hill and Hill 60 beginning 21 August 1915, intended to link the two Allied sectors of Anzac Cove and Suvla Bay, Mediterranean Commander-in-Chief Sir Ian Hamilton telegraphed London in a state of increasing despondency.
