Amphibious assault by the Ottoman Army during the First Balkan War.

Saturday 31 May 2014

One interesting operation was an audacious amphibious assault conceived by Enver Pasha and undertaken by the Ottoman Army during the First Balkan War. It was designed to take advantage of Turkish naval control of the Sea of Marmara, to afford flexibility to the Turkish armies in their contest with Bulgaria.

This was an exciting operation conceived by the Turkish General Staff designed to regain the strategic initiative in Thrace from the Bulgarians.

The armistice of December 1912-January 1913 broke upon the issue of Adrianople, the Aegean Islands, and the Rodosto-Midia Line. The Bulgarians insisted on obtaining both the Gallipoli Peninsula and Adrianople, with the Greeks insisting on gaining Lemnos, Tenedos, Imbros, and Samothrace.

The Turks were unwilling to concede all of this, and so sought to rescue such as they could by relieving Adrianople and throwing the Bulgarians out of Thrace.

The Greeks were unable to enter the Propontis because the Turkish guns on the Gallipoli Peninsula made that impossible. Thus the Turks were left with naval supremacy in the Sea of Marmara.

Enver Pasha intended to use this supremacy to good effect. The Bulgarians were deployed in four widely separated armies. The Bulgarian Second Army was surrounding and besieging the fortress of Adrianople to the northwest. The Bulgarian Fourth Army was holding positions on the northern neck of the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Bulgarian Third and First Armies were pinning the Turks behind the lines of Chataldzha just west of Constantinople, all visible on the map.

There were thus several miles between the Fourth, the Second, and the combined Third and First Armies.

Enver's plan was to reinforce the Turkish forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula and then use them to pin the Bulgarian Fourth Army while the Turkish Tenth Corps landed at Peristasis behind the Bulgarians. They would then sweep around the Bulgarian rear, sever them from the other Bulgarian Armies, and crush them between themselves and the Turkish forces in Gallipoli.

Meanwhile, the Turkish forces manning the lines of Chataldzha would attack the Bulgarian Third and First Armies to pin them in place. Once the Bulgarian Fourth Army was destroyed the Turks could move on to the Second Army, raise the siege of Adrianople, and force the Bulgarians to retreat from Thrace or else be destroyed.

Such was the plan. It was both daring and risky. It might have even worked, had not weather delayed the sailing of the flotilla.

This caused the Turks to attack from Gallipoli too early. The Turks underestimated the Bulgarian artillery strength as Bulgaria was intending to launch an offensive to sweep the peninsula of its defenders. The Turkish intelligence reported twenty-eight guns. But the Bulgarians had since that report reinforced their Fourth Army to possess over seventy pieces of artillery.

Consequently, the Turkish forces were mercilessly pounded with heavy artillery and their attack collapsed before the lead elements of the Tenth Corps had landed.

By that time the Bulgarians had discovered what the Turks were up to and shifted their forces northeast. The Turks successfully landed and secured a beachhead. They were unable to take the port of Peristasis itself, but under Enver Pasha's energetic leadership were able to create artificial piers to supply their army.

Enver had established a perimeter when he received word that the attacks from Gallipoli and from Chataldzha had completely failed. The Bulgarians used their high ground and their artillery to good advantage, and blasted the attacking Turkish infantry to pieces.

Even before these offensives had failed the Bulgarians had already been stripping units to form a response to the Turkish landing and it was increasingly clear to General Ahmet Izzet Pasha and the Turkish General Staff that the Tenth Corps was going to be annihilated if it did not evacuate.

Enver, disappointed as he must have been, nonetheless complied with this appraisal and ordered the evacuation. He formed a highly defensible collapsible perimeter and cleverly used the guns of the Turkish fleet to cover his retreat. Within a few days the Turks had abandoned their beachhead.

Given that the Turks had never before undertook such an operation and that they had hardly used their navy at all since the eighteenth century, it was remarkably successful. They landed and established a beachhead. They even built an artificial harbour.

So while it could be considered an impressive achievement in tactics and engineering, it was nonetheless an abysmal failure strategically. The Turks failed to regain the initative and exposed their armies to severe losses at Bulgarian hands. Adrianople was not saved. Though arguably it saved Gallipoli.

The Bulgarian response was swift and brutally effective. The Bulgarians withdrew to prepared defensive positions which they apparently had developed for just such a contingency, a solid example of clever foresight. Once secured behind these they could dispatch forces while still being confident of repulsing the Turkish offensives in the north and south, which doomed the Tenth Corps.

The rapidity of the Bulgarian reaction is indeed astonishing and impressive. On the night of 10 February the Turkish General Staff enquired of Enver what his strength was. He replied that he had perhaps 17,000 effectives, and no artillery, relying on the naval guns of the Turkish battleships.

This caused great consternation as the General Staff was aware that the Bulgarians had collected three complete divisions into a temporary provisional corps consisting of 50,000 men and 200 cannons.

Or in other words, very quickly the Bulgarians would be able to eradicate the Tenth Corps and perhaps sink the Turkish battleships with their artillery, which convinced Ahmet Izzet Pasha to order an immediate evacuation.

Enver Pasha's daring plan is a tantalising what-if in history. One can only imagine what the effect would have been on the war had the Bulgarian Fourth Army been destroyed between two fires, and the Turks allowed to threaten the rear of the others. Total retreat from Thrace was certainly a possibility. Perhaps the removal of Bulgaria from the war altogether.

Then things would not look pretty for the Greeks or Serbians, who would face the full brunt of the Turkish armies themselves, without their protective Bulgarian shield.

Fortunately for them, however, the Bulgarians were up to the task and very nearly came to eliminate 17,000 Turkish regulars from the war at a single stroke. The hunter turned hunted.

- Kaiser