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The Test of War
the entry to the Black Sea could be achieved, then western supplies could equip the Russian armies. But to do that it would be necessary to force the Dardanelles. Until then Churchill had not been very lucky in the Mediterranean. On the outbreak of war he had taken over the great battleship Sultan Osman I under construction for the Turks on the Tyne, and renamed her Agincourt. This was taken as an insult by the Turks, and at the same time the German battlecruiser Goeben and the cruiser Breslau evaded allied patrols to reach the Dardanelles, where they were presented to Turkey, reinforcing the wavering nation in declaring war against the allies. Perhaps there was a personal element in Churchill’s desire to knock Turkey out of the war. It had always been naval doctrine that ships could not engage land forts directly unless they had overwhelming superiority, either in numbers or in technique and morale. The navy had been quite successful in bombarding Algiers and Alexandria in the past, and it is possible that they thought that the Turks, from a similar culture, would give in just as easily. Moreover, the modern battleship, with its huge guns and heavy armour, was a different animal from the old wooden walls. In March 1915 a large allied fleet had some success in knocking out the Turkish forts at the entrance to the strait, but soon ran up against mines. The battlecruiser Inflexible was damaged, three pre-Dreadnoughts were sunk and the attempt was abandoned. It was decided to launch an amphibious operation on the Gallipoli Peninsula, using largely Australian and New Zealand, or ANZAC troops. There was no experience of an opposed landing on such a scale. George Butoft, a gunlayer in the pre-
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