Attack Sparked Optimism, Became Disaster

Reported in Scientific American, This Week in World War I: March 20, 1915

The report published in this issue from a century ago delivers a robustly optimistic outlook on the Allied attack on Turkish territory at the entrance to the waterway between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean:

“If the great Mahan were living to-day [Alfred Thayer Mahan, naval strategist, died December 1, 1914] he would witness, in the so far successful forcing of the Dardanelles by the allied fleet, one more of those striking evidences of the decisive value of the command of the sea, of which the present war has afforded so many.”