The worst battle in history to be in as a soldier?

[Patrick Degan]

That's utterly insane, the approaches to Istanbul from the Black Sea were the most easily and heavily defended stretches of water in the world.
Throwing the Black Sea fleet on Turkish mines would achieve nothing but total, total disaster.

I was thinking more of having the Black sea fleet cruising offshore in order to divert some of von Sanders's troops and ammunition. Remember the Turks must not only defend the straights, but protect communications with the Armenian front as well.

Essentially the allies put togethor a small force, refused to push onward when they had initiative, and then fed their men in peicemeal to be ground up. Far better would have been an initial hammer blow, particularly if the Russians presented a second threat at the other end.

Let's see... the defenders have both the advantage of the high ground from two directions and a narrow channel which can be easily mined and in which an attacker can be bottled-up. Pity the aircraft carrier doesn't exist in 1916, otherwise the Allies would stand a chance.

[thejester]

TJ: You misattributed a quote to me, you were quoting the Cmdr.

Yeah, sorry about that.

[The Dark]

Twenty pound rifles? Which one? The Whitworth was 7.5 pounds, the Brunswick was 9.1 pounds, the "short" Enfield 8.7, the Spencer 9, Springfield Model 1866 (modified Civil War Springfield) only 8.3 pounds....not one of them breaks into double digit weights, let alone reaching twenty pounds.

Combination brain fart and typo. Meant to say 10 pounds.

OK, was confused for a moment there, since you do have a lot more experience with the rifles than I do . I did finally run across a 10 pounder in the Shooter's Bible. IIRC, it was a replica 1861 Springfield.

It's just after marching for a while having to carry that fucker with one arm...

I understand completely. I had trouble levelling one when a historian brought it in to my American Military History course, although I absolutely loved the Colt Navy revolvers. They balanced nicely in my hands.

[Stuart Mackey]

Actually one would just need to find a way to get Kitchener and Carden to listen better to Churchill and Keyes. The point is the means did exist, one which could have been carried had the troops been front loaded and the campaign conducted with a heavy initial blow rather than ponerously slow reinforcement.

And if your aunt had a dick she would be your uncle. I mean honestly, this hypothetical BS is just that, BS. Pontificating on how we would have done it given what we know in the 21st century with the benifit of hindsight and without the hassles of politics, personal rivarlries and imperfect information, or no information at all, is waste of time. Moreover it does not add to the OP.

[CmdrWilkens]

Here's the problem...what if you don't win? Hell even if you win then you will have to divert the percentage of the British Fleet neccessarry to succesfully pass the Darnadelles and guess what happens then? That's right you lose the rest of the Grand Fleet to the German High Seas Fleet. Then England is cut off from France and gets starved to dath because you whittled away an enourmous amount of ships trying to penetrate the vitrually impenetrable passage. Wihtout a successful shore invasion to eliminate batteries from either side any fleet sailing through would be cut to pieces by the Turks. You simply cannot divert enough resources there in terms of either ships or manpower to effect any victory without endangering the positions on the mainland.

Jackie Fisher assembeled an armada of no less than eighteen capital ships (largely pre-dreadnoughts) that did not seriously take away from Grand Fleet and which would have forced the Dardenelles had it not been for the cowardice of civilian minesweepers. By the end of the 18th of March the Allied force was in the Narrows and the Turkish guns were almost out of ammunition. It was only the mines - and the refusal of civilian minesweepers to work under fire - that defeated the expedition. Any serious land expedition was almost certainly doomed by the terrain alone.

Cowardice of the civilian minesweepers? They had reason to fall back since the Bouvet was already sinking and the mobile batteries were untouched. The turkish stationary positions might have been out of heavy shells but they retained their lighter ammo loadouts and the mobile guns were essentially untouched. The fact that AFTER the civilians retreated the Suffren was damaged by shell fire is proof enough that the shore batteries were still incredibly dangerous. All told the civlians would have been cut to pieces further up the narrows and de Roebeck agrees with me (or rather he did on the 22nd).

Forcing the narrows, thus, would have required more ships and greater effort none of which are possible without diverting resources from elsewhere to little avail if anything goes wrong (such as missing a row of undetected mines and having some battleships stumble upon it as with Bouvet, Ocean, and Irresistible. Military operations have to be built with excess of force so as to overcome the natural actions of the enemy to diminish that force and the 16 ships ( it was 12 British and 4 French battlehips) Jackie assembled simply weren't enough.

Basically my whole point is that the concept of trench warfare as we think of it now had no real opportunity to sink into anyone's mind until at least 1916 and the Germans certainly by late 1917 and early 1918 would learn how to attack and storm fortifications with success despite the above limitations while still relying on Infantry and Artillery. While the casualties were horrendous and many lives were thrown away almost callously neither side was willing to simply give ground and the war became a war of attrition almost from its inception and thus it was a war in which you ahd to grind at the enemy until he was exhausted the technology did not yet exist for true manuever warfare yet the firepower for its devestation did and no amount of generals who understand this coming to post in this era will change the slaughter.

That's simply not true. Only two generals, Haig and Falkenhayn, can really be seen to have simply believed in attrition as a method winning - and their methods backfired badly. The death of manuevre does not make slaughters like the Somme and Passchendale acceptable. British failures on the first day of the Somme weren't the result of trench warfare full stop, but of numerous tactical failures - a late start time, excessive loads, and a highly ineffective artillery bombardment. When the BEF innovated - as in the night attack on the 15th - they were able to beat the German defences, but the absolute reason for an improvement in casualties was the improving of artillery. Units learned how to use the creeping barrage and benefited immensely. Haig et al simply cannot escape responsibly for the failure of so many offensives when the tactical solutions lay at their feet.

Very minor note here I said that one should excuse the events up to 1916 as a believable lack of understanding the nature of trench warfare and the desire for open manuevering beyond. The Somme and Paschandale are in mid 1916 and 1917 so I don't excuse them on the grounds I defended before.