Great War Spearhead II - Gallipoli 1915 in heerr... 1/1 scale (part 4): A trip to the Naval events from January to March 1915

 

In the last summer vacations I visited Gallipoli.  On the first day I started with the coastal forts along the eastern part of the Gelibolu peninsula. In fact this is almost mandatory as the boat leads you to Kilitbahir, from where everything starts. I took plenty pictures of many forts, and guns but I will keep them for me as there are much better pictures of them in the Web free to see.

Like that I will concentrate this post on rare period photos the guns and emplacements from a small museum (may be temporary exhibition?) close to Kilitbahir coastal forts. These pictures shows some of the Turkish heavy coastal guns that created havoc on the British/French fleet. There was a total of 20 of these big guns of German origin mostly, some were British, in a grand total of 80 guns if counting the smaller calibers. This number was clearly insufficient and the guns were in open emplacements, but even so, due the the Turkish tenacity, the Anglo-French arrogance and some brilliant feats of arms like the one from the Nusrat minelayer, the Allies were forced to go for landing operations on the south and western parts of the Gallipoli peninsula in order to silence the guns and then reach Constantinople. 

 A 355mm L/35 Krupp gun. These big ones were used at forts 16, 19 and 20. 

On the visit to the Military Museum at Istambul I took the picture of a 355mm L/35 were we can see the famous future of corporal Seyit carrying on its back a huge shell ( which helped to sink HMS Ocean). The matching of Sayit with this gun is in fact wrong as Seyit and its crew were manning a 240mm L/35 Krupp gun. Sayit, a very powerful man for sure, would have an impossible task when placing the huge 355mm shell into the breech. Eventually, after the battle Sayit was even asked to repeat the feat and place a 240mm shell in the breech by the force of arms and he simply couldn't. Apparently he wasn't lying as the fact had many witnesses and the story proves that soldiers can do incredible things under the stress of battle. 

The left side of the 355mm gun. Not an easy thing to scratch build :)

The 150mm  L/26 Krupp guns ( don´t take them for the 150mm Vickers model) of forts 6 and 9. 

Another view of the same guns. 

The 150mm L/26 in detail. The equipments and uniforms of the personnel involved in these period pictures also shows the variety and also the differences between ordinary artillerymen and officers. 

Remains of Turkish Trenches facing the Dardanelles close to Çimenlik castle. 

Just for the sake of curiosity, and to see the power of the naval allied fleet,  you can see in an inner wall of Çimenlik castle and unexploded shell (yellow light) that bounced inside the castle and left a path of destruction. 

Next: part 2 for the British beaches or a quick re-entering at WW2 North Africa. 

Great War Spearhead II - Gallipoli 1915 in 20mm (part 3): The British with Kitchener´s helmet and KD uniform

 

I made these British for Gallipoli years ago and now it was time for some GWSH II rebasing. The figures are conversions using Esci parts, WW2 desert British bodies with Esci Colonial heads. 

The result is not the best as the Wolseley´s helmet was larger than the late XIX century one from Esci. Even so they gave me some work and, just because of that, they entered the shelves. There are two different command stands as the one with the piper can go to any of the brigades of the 52nd division. The machine gunners are Esci WW2 British with half of the ammunition pouches cut out. The same happened to all figures. 

The newer Hat industries WW1 British tropical infantry box depicts very well the Gallipoli units equipped with the KD uniform. Mine are just in shirt order but in the future, while expanding the army, I´ll try to get some of the Hat tropical infantry. 

Even if the British were much more careful with the uniform than say the Anzacs, after some time in the Gallipoli trenches their look was not the same upon the arrival. 

Another possibility is to use the figures as Anzacs (see the left figure). Obviously the piper is out. 

Left: a small break in the Gallipoli series with some more WW2 British for the Western Desert. 

Great War Spearhead II - Gallipoli 1915 in 20mm (part 2): The French 175e RI

 

Not only Anzacs and British troops were at Gallipoli fighting the Turkish army. There was also a divisional size ( two, in august) from day one (25th of april, 1915), first at the Asian side at Kum Kale (the Sand Castle) and transferred a few days later a bit to the north of Sedd-Ul-Bahr of the SS River Clyde collier fame. The 175e RI was one of the four regiments of the 1st Division of the Corps Expeditionnaire d'Orient among other colorful units like Zouaves, Foreign Legion and Senegalese soldiers. 

The 175e RI was one of the four regiments of the 1st Division of the Corps Expeditionnaire d'Orient. The Adrian Helmet is still a few months away but the horizon blue capote is already distributed even if in a lighter tone than in the future. 

The figures are all HAT WW1 Early French Infantry with the exception of a few officers taken from the Esci box of the Foreign legion (right figure in the command stand, with bent arm). 

This picture came from Militaria magazine No 21 (1987, my goodness) and they are from an article about the 1915 Poilu. The text and photos mentions brown trousers and I went for it in this group. 

I also got some inspiration from this picture taken in Egypt in which the trousers look to have a different tone than horizon blue. Which in fact may only be the shadow. Well, this is one of the beauties of our hobby, sometimes you will never know.

My late father built, among thousands of 1/43 cars, slot cars, HO trains, some 50 TAP (Transportadora Aérea Portuguesa) and FAP (Força Aérea Portuguesa). Most of them were kits and were given to friends after my father's passing but I kept all the scratch-built ones as they are true works of art. Luckily, there was also this 1/72 scale Farman MF 11 Shorthorn in the survivors, also completely scratch-built, that somewhat resembles the Farman F40 used by the MF98T squadron of the Corps Expeditionnaire d'Orient. 

I only added an MG and the crew made out of old Airfix figures. The wings are made of wood and covered in tissue, like the real thing.

Also some french colors were painted on top of the portuguese ones. 

My father only had this two pictures of the farman MF11 taken from the book Aviões da Cruz de Cristo. 

The Farman MF11 is the one on top while the smaller Farman F40, used at Gallipoli, is at the bottom. They look similar but in fact the F40 only has one rudder which makes the two machines very different. 

My dear father. Love you every day, miss you every day.