Landing

In 1914–1918 landings were highly hazardous: troops went ashore from boats under machine-gun and artillery fire, without purpose-built landing craft and with poor communications. The first took place in the colonies, for example at Tanga in East Africa and at Fao on the Persian Gulf in 1914.

On 25 April 1915 British, French, Australian and New Zealand troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula, followed in August by a landing at Suvla Bay. Despite heavy losses they never broke out of their narrow beachheads and were evacuated at the turn of 1915 and 1916. The Russians made landings on the Anatolian coast, and in October 1917 the Germans seized the islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Riga from the sea (Operation Albion). In 1918 the Allies landed in northern Russia and at Vladivostok.