Attack on the Suez Canal

The attack on the Suez Canal was the first Ottoman offensive against Egypt in the First World War. At the turn of January and February 1915 an army commanded by Ahmed Djemal Pasha crossed the Sinai desert and in the night of 2–3 February tried to cross the Suez Canal on pontoons near Ismailia. The crossing collapsed under the fire of Indian troops, Egyptian artillery and British and French warships. After a whole day of fighting the Turks withdrew, and on 4 February the British rounded up several hundred prisoners on the eastern bank. The canal, through which troop transports from India, Australia and New Zealand passed, remained open.

Name and dates

In Polish literature the operation appears as the attack or the first Turkish offensive on the Suez Canal. English-language historiography usually calls it the “Raid on the Suez Canal”, Turkish historiography the “First Canal Operation” (Birinci Kanal Harekâtı).

This page adopts the dates 3–4 February 1915, following the British chronology of the war and most studies. On 3 February the Turks attempted the crossing, and on 4 February the defenders discovered their retreat and destroyed a detachment that had remained by the canal. Broader accounts date the whole operation from 26 January, when the first skirmishes with the approaching army took place at Kantara. 2 February, when the Turkish advance guards clashed with the defenders near Ismailia, can also be regarded as the prelude to the battle. The Polish Wikipedia has no separate article on this battle. It describes it briefly in the entry on the Sinai and Palestine campaign.

Background

Since the declaration of martial law at the beginning of November 1914 the British had expected a Turkish strike at Egypt. The Suez Canal was the Empire’s most important artery: it linked Britain with India and Australia, and in the autumn of 1914 convoys carrying troops to the Western Front sailed through it. Djemal Pasha, Minister of the Navy and one of the three most powerful men in the Ottoman Empire, took command of the Fourth Army in Syria at the end of 1914. The operation was prepared by his German adviser, the Bavarian officer Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, chief of staff of VIII Corps.

The aim was not to conquer Egypt with the expedition’s forces alone. According to the British official history, the Turks wanted to seize a crossing by surprise, hold it for a few days and in that time block the canal permanently. They also hoped that the appearance of the army of the Sultan-Caliph, backed by the call to jihad, would provoke a rising in the country against the British, who had recently proclaimed a protectorate over Egypt.

Forces

Estimates of the Ottoman forces vary widely, most often around 20,000 men, of whom according to British estimates 12,000–15,000 took part in the attack itself. The core was the 25th Division, supported by regiments from other divisions, artillery (including at least one 15 cm howitzer) and units of Arab, Druze and Bedouin volunteers. The army crossed the desert with several dozen sheet-metal pontoons. The main column headed for Ismailia, and smaller detachments for Kantara in the north and Suez in the south.

The canal was defended by about 30,000 troops under Major-General Alexander Wilson, subordinate to General John Maxwell, commander of the British forces in Egypt. The core of the defence was the 10th and 11th Indian Divisions, formed in Egypt from brigades sent from India, reinforced with Egyptian artillery, a detachment of New Zealand infantry and Indian camel units. The defence rested on posts on the eastern bank and trenches on the western bank. Warships lay on the canal and the lakes: the British battleships Swiftsure and Ocean, cruisers and sloops, the armed transport Hardinge, and the French coast defence ship Requin and cruiser D’Entrecasteaux. British and French airmen carried out reconnaissance, but for several days before the attack it was hampered by the khamsin wind and a sandstorm.

Course of the battle

Night of 2–3 February. At about 3.30 a.m. Turkish troops began pushing pontoons and rafts into the water about 2 kilometres south of the Tussum post. Rifle and machine-gun fire from the 62nd Punjabis and the 128th Pioneers, and then shells from the 5th Battery of Egyptian artillery, sank most of the boats. Only three pontoons reached the western bank. Their crews were killed, wounded or captured. According to the British official history, these were the only Turks in the whole war who crossed the canal other than as prisoners.

3 February. In daylight the Turks occupied some of the trenches near Tussum on the eastern bank, but the 92nd Punjabis retook them with counter-attacks by the afternoon. The attack at Serapeum was stopped more than a kilometre short of the British lines. Near Ismailia the enemy dug in a few hundred metres from the bridgehead, and the subsidiary attacks at Kantara and El Kubri were easily repulsed. The Turkish artillery shelled the warships. Two heavy shells hit Hardinge, which had to take refuge in Lake Timsah. Fire from the French Requin silenced the Turkish howitzer. In the evening the Ottoman command ordered a retreat.

4 February. At dawn the defenders discovered that the main Turkish force had gone. Two companies of the 92nd Punjabis, clearing the eastern bank north of Serapeum, came upon a detachment that had not withdrawn with the rest. After a short fight several hundred Turks surrendered with three machine guns. Among the dead was found a German officer who had directed the crossing. The British did not pursue, and over the following days Djemal’s army withdrew across the desert to Beersheba.

Losses

According to British figures the defenders lost 32 killed and 130 wounded, mainly in the Indian units. The British estimated Turkish losses at more than 2,000 men. Other estimates, including those cited from Djemal himself, speak of about 1,400–1,500 killed, wounded and missing. More than 700 Turkish soldiers were taken prisoner in the course of the whole operation.

Significance

The attack ended in a Turkish setback, but not a disaster. The Ottoman army failed to cross the canal or block it, but it escaped destruction and returned to Palestine in good order. Egypt did not rise against the British. The battle was also a test for the Indian troops, who had become the backbone of the defence in Egypt.

The British drew cautious conclusions from it. Throughout 1915 their defence rested on the canal itself, while Kress von Kressenstein, who stayed in Sinai, kept sending small detachments to the canal for months to harass the defenders and shipping. Only in 1916 did the British push their defence far out into the desert, and the second Turkish attempt to strike at the canal, in the summer of that year, collapsed at Romani. Egypt meanwhile became a great base for British and Dominion troops, from which units set out for Gallipoli as early as the spring of 1915.