Russians bombard the Bosporus forts

On 27 March 1915 the Russian Black Sea Fleet left Sevastopol and headed for the Bosporus. The following morning two of its battleships bombarded the Turkish fortifications at the entrance to the strait. It was the first bombardment of the Bosporus forts in this war. The British chronology of the war places it under 27 March, but according to the Russian account by Nikolai Novikov the fleet sailed that day and the bombardment took place on 28 March (15 March by the Julian calendar then in use in Russia). Some English-language accounts give the date as 18 March, but Russian sources do not confirm it.

A demonstration for the Allies

The bombardment was meant to support the Allies fighting in the Dardanelles. In March the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had asked the Russians to begin a systematic bombardment of the outer forts of the Bosporus at the moment when the British fleet was breaking through into the Sea of Marmara. The Russian headquarters instructed the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Andrei Eberhardt, to keep in touch with the Allied fleet command and to take its wishes into account. It was agreed that the Allies would warn the Russians four days before forcing the Dardanelles. The Russians announced that once the Allied ships stood off Constantinople, they would attack the Bosporus forts in earnest and later land troops there.

Eberhardt was sceptical of these plans. His old battleships would be operating off the Bosporus far from their own base, while the enemy would be fighting at home. The bombardment was therefore to be above all a demonstration that would hold Turkish troops near Constantinople and prevent them from being moved to the Dardanelles. The Russians were encouraged by the fact that the enemy’s strongest ship, the battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim, formerly the Goeben, was not fully serviceable. On 26 December 1914 she had struck two mines near the Bosporus from a barrage laid a few days earlier by Russian minelayers, and her repairs were not yet complete.

The first bombardment

Five battleships left Sevastopol: the flagship Evstafi, Ioann Zlatoust, Panteleimon, Tri Sviatitelia and Rostislav, together with three cruisers, the seaplane carrier Imperator Nikolai I, nine destroyers and six minesweepers. At 6 a.m. on 28 March, when the Turkish coast came into view, Tri Sviatitelia and Rostislav, with the cruiser Almaz and Nikolai I, detached from the fleet and made for the strait behind the minesweepers. The rest of the ships waited a dozen or so miles off, ready to fight if the Goeben came out of the Bosporus.

The weather was good and the sea calm, though a light haze hung over the coast. Almaz and Nikolai I lowered seaplanes onto the water to reconnoitre the strait and spot the fall of shot. The Turkish batteries opened fire, but their shells fell short of the ships. Before the battleships took up their positions, Tri Sviatitelia fired on a large steamer that was trying to enter the Bosporus. The ship caught fire, ran aground and blew up after about an hour and a half.

Then the two battleships, steaming slowly behind the minesweepers, bombarded from 11–12 kilometres the batteries on the Asian shore, around Cape Elmas and the Anadolu Feneri lighthouse, and then on the European shore. According to Novikov’s figures they fired about a hundred shells of various calibres in all, according to Turkish figures almost 150. The airmen reported several hits on the batteries and, in one place, an explosion after which a column of smoke rose over the position. Because of the haze, however, the fire was directed at an area rather than at particular guns, and its effects could not be assessed. According to Turkish sources the bombardment lasted about 50 minutes, the damage was slight and one man was wounded.

The following days

When the battleships rejoined the fleet, Eberhardt congratulated the crews on “the historic day of the first bombardment of the Bosporus fortifications”. The fleet spent the night at sea and on the morning of 29 March returned to repeat the bombardment, but thick fog made firing impossible. A seaplane reported that the Goeben was coming out of the strait with the whole Turkish fleet. The Russians formed line of battle and waited until evening, but the report proved false. The fleet sailed off along the coast of Anatolia, where the cruisers looked for shipping off Zonguldak, from which coal was shipped to Constantinople.

The bombardment had no effect on the fighting in the Dardanelles, where the Allied fleet’s attack had been repulsed ten days earlier. The Russians nevertheless returned to the Bosporus several more times, among others on 25 April, the day of the Allied landing at Gallipoli, and at the beginning of May. During one of these sorties, on 10 May 1915, the Battle of the Bosporus took place, the Goeben’s second encounter with Russian battleships after the action off Cape Sarych.