hello

pls forgive me for my ignarance but ,could any of our gallipoli experts fill me up a wee bit of information as to the main purpose of the landing in kumkale?,i remember reading in a book that it was to silence the turkish artilary firing upon the allied forces in seddulbahir,if this was the reason,im wondering,what was the main reason that french troops were ordered to pull their forces out of Kumkale after the landing!!?

regards

william

William,
I recently bought a copy of a map of the Dardenelles campaign from a forum member.Its an original map from 1915 and on it,it says for Kumkale;

'Where the French troops first landed on April 25th,capturing 500 prisoners,after causing a diversion of the Turkish guns from shelling the European shore.On the 26th they re-embarked and landed to the right of 'V' beach where they joined in the general advance'

Hope this helps,

Anthony.

It was very important the Ottomans did not know, for the first 48 hours, which was the main landing-Anzac Cove, Cape Helles or Kum Kale. The Ottomans had two divisions sitting in Istanbul ready to react so the Kum Kale landing served to make it even more unclear to them where these two divs should be committed- should they be sent east or west of the Dandanelles? It was a part of Hamilton's plan that after a couple of days the diversionary aspect of the French landing would have become apparent to the Ottomans, then the French troops would be pulled out and committed to the peninisula. There was never any intention to continue with the French landing however successful it might have appeared at the start.

Peter

In hindsght these feints seem a waste of manpower and resources.

Wouldn't it have ben better to use the two French divisions and the RND in a direct landing role on the 25th April?

PeterH

Two things, first of all there were not enough boats to get everything ashore in one day so the RND- the least trained force- was selected to feint a landing way up north at Bulair on 25 April. There the ships came in towards the shore and stuffed around as if they were going to launch boats.

Secondly I think diversionary landing are generally a good idea. In this case is was about 48 hours before the commander of 5th Ottoman army knew which was the main landing.

Hi William,

I don't know the real reasons behind the Kumklae landings and if this was really just a feint or could have been also a real attack. Just some thoughts about this:

The decision to engage landing forces in Gallipoli was just to silence the guns along the coast line in order to allow the fleet to steam towards Istanbul. If you want to do so the Allied Joint Command must have taken both sides of the Dardanelles shores. With just the European side still the Asien batteries could have been a real threat for the fleet.
If the landings there were just a faint why they landed there and suffered quite considerable losses? The faint landing at Bulair, which caused a significant delay of the 5th and 7th Division there was almost more successful without embarking just one soldier.

The commander on the Turkish side - Marshall Liman von Sanders - imagined four major landing sites:
Kumkale, Sedullbahr, Kabatepe and Bulair. He expected the point of main effort in Bulair and for that reason he was very much foccussed on this terrain feature. he waited 36 hours until he released the first forces from there. (by the way - there were much more forces around Istanbul then 2 divisions but they were not designated as reseres for Gallipoli. If so they were useless for the initial defence because they would have needed a week to arrive on the battlefield. The reserve were the two divisions in Bulair) For that reason the faint there was successful but this success was never capitalized on the Allied side. The landings in Kumkale were covered by the defenders and I don't think, that with those limited forces the French Expeditionary corps could have made a successful attack further to the east.

Best regards
Klaus

"why they landed there and suffered quite considerable losses? "

one of the questions to which i couldnt find an answer, may i add a few more questions to this thread?,by whom had the kumkale landing been planned?

and could any of you give me information on the french loses?

william