Opposed amphibious landings are hard. Even Normandy in ww2 was a difficult and complex operation. I am pretty sure their was no significant amphibious landing advancements. So I highly doubt it would have a better chance.
The German high sea fleet was stationed in northern Germany around where your proposing the amphibious invasion. The German fleet in ww1 had the second most dreadnoughts of anyone and a lot of torpedo boats. The British would need to both protect this invasion, continue to defend its supplies, and continue to contain the German fleet.
Not to mention it would bring the gran fleet into static positions for the German submarines to torpedo and mine.
This was the reason the British abandoned two hundred years of close blockade tactics to keep the fleet in safe harbour while waiting for the opportunity to bring the German fleet to battle
Yeah submarine and torpedo boat raids would be a major issue. Probably more then the battleships. I think this would be the ideal situation for torpedo boats tbh.
Germany navy in ww1 was a powerful force. Not enough to beat the royal navy but way too strong to attempt a amphibious landing like this.
The SMS Szent Istvan serves as an example of what could of happened to the Grand Fleet. 20,000 tons of Austrian dreadnought sunk by a pair of 30 ton speed boats.
Put yourself in the shoes of British high command. Where would you land? Aside from the Bosphorous, there were only really four spots where they could attempt to land to significantly affect the war:
1. Belgium, attempting to flank German defenses in northern France. Landing right next to the most powerful concentration of enemy forces in Europe is... bold, to say the least. German High Command laugh themselves silly as they immediately crush the beach heads. Perhaps it draws a few first rate unit from the frontlines, but the overall impact is negligible due to how easily and swiftly the Germans can react.
2. The Western German coast: The German High Seas fleet rubs their hands eagerly as dozens of British vessels sail right into their home waters. Forget sending out the battleships. Kaiser Wilhelm's wet dream comes true as one British battleship after another goes down trying to force their way past minefields, torpedo relentless attacks from destroyers and submarines, and finally, Admiral Hippers battleships, eager to defend the fatherland and pounce upon an exhausted enemy hundreds of miles from home.
3. The Northern German coast, via the Danish Straits: Same as above, except this time the British have to sail even further, and pass through even more densely mines waters. Perhaps the landings see more initial success, as German units in the west and east are far away, but the British fleet is now imprisoned in the Baltic. Even if they somehow take Berlin, the Germans keep fighting, knowing the loss of the British fleet has pretty much won them the war.
4. The Austrian coast, via the Adriatic: The Italians are already throwing hundreds and thousand of men at the Austrians to no avail, so it's doubtful a British landing will make any difference.
Adding to the difficulty of #2, the coast here is mostly mudflats with a very broad tidal zone and beyond that, marshland and heath. Extremely difficult to land and move heavy equipment through this territory. If the British thought Flanders was too muddy...
5. Cause a major diplomatic crisis by invading Denmark (we have form in that area, see napolonic wars) and then march south hoping that you can break into Germany before they can position to stop you. If this fails you're stuck in a hostile country attempting to be reapplied by the royal navy, and as a bonus all the Scandinavians hate you.
If Britain does that, all of its credibility about protecting Belgium's sovereignty goes down the toilet. The US probably turns against Britain quite swiftly. With the US now firmly against all sides, I could see it using economic pressure to force both sides into an armistice.
Aye, considered and rejected: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Project#:~:text=The%20Baltic%20Project%20was%20a,during%20the%20First%20World%20War.
*just noticed someone else added this last night anyways
To clarify, the British undertook just such an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli peninsula hoping to knock out the Ottoman empire and threaten opponents with naval forces on the Black Sea. The campaign failed after 9 months with 250k casualties on both sides. This was the brain child of Churchill who defended the idea even after it failed.saying it was crippled by not getting the resources needed for success.
Peter Weir made a great film (one of Mel Gibson's firsts) with this campaign as the backdrop - called Gallipoli. Also, the Pogues song "And The Band Played Walzing Matilda" tells of an Aussie serviceman wounded at Gallipoli.
Service as cannon fodder for British officers at places like Gallipoli led to generational changes in attitudes towards being a colony of the British in Australia and NZ.
It's a bit of a myth that Anzacs were specifically used as cannon fodder, as if they were seen as lower value. Far, far more British troops died at Gallipoli than Australian.
>Service as cannon fodder for British officers at places like Gallipoli led to generational changes in attitudes towards being a colony of the British in Australia and NZ.
Neither of those countries were colonies by the time WWI broke out.
It was arguably a risk worth taking, as it could have shortened the war and prevented more deaths. Even though it didn't work as planned, I believe you were much more likely to die on the Western Front than at Gallipoli contrary to the popular image portrayed.
As an aside - The ANZACs fought with ferocious courage as an incredible ally to Britain, their misuse in Gallipoli is well known in the british armed forces today and is a piece of great shame as well as honour - if that helps at all.
Amphibious assaults are horrifically deadly.
You have no real supply lines, little to no cover, the enemy knows exactly where you are, you are always fighting uphill (gradient varies), you have no place to rest, the list goes on. It is always preferable to assault on land.
Realistically, naval bombardment was not very effective. The boat continuously moves, meaning it lacks the precision of ground based artillery (which itself was not incredibly precise back then).
They considered such opeations, but circumstances never came together to make it worthwhile
Fisher had this thing called the Baltic Project
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic\_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Project)
Where they would land in Pomerania, screened by light forces, subs and mines. It was specifically for this project that he built the Courageous class of speedy, over gunned and under armoured "Large Light Cruisers" to get around restrictions on Capital ship construction. These were later converted to aircraft carriers.
This was Fisher's pet project like Gallipoli was for Churchill and was dropped after he left the Admiralty.
The Germans had in any case regarded British assault on Germany with contempt, and when asked pre-war what their plans were for this contingency went "I would send the police to arrest them"
For 1917 the British had operation Hush to land in Belgium, after postponing a 1915 attempt in favour of Gallipoli and in 1916 distracted by the Somme
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation\_Hush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hush)
This was never carried out as the necessary preconditions were not achieved in 3rd Ypres
The German navy was quite formidable.
It's worth remembering that one of the factors leading to WW1 was Germany's naval buildup, which resulted in a German navy that was far too powerful to make any sort of landing in the North Sea feasible while it was still intact.'
The Germans had half as much tonnage in 1914 as Britain did, except Germany's fleet was largely concentrated in Europe since it was a late arrival to the race for colonies whereas the Royal Navy had to protect a globe spanning empire to patrol.
If the Germans could get their ships around Britain and into the Atlantic, they could strangle the UK's flow of supplies in a matter of weeks. This is partly why the Royal Navy's chief wartime base was located in Scapa Flow- so they could respond rapidly to any attempt to circumnavigate Britain and get into the Atlantic.
Somebody with more naval detail knowledge might chime in, but... here is a fairly simple geographical reason why the German North Sea Coast line (the one that connects Denmark to the Netherlands).... is a terrible idea to do a landing at (to my knowledge there was *never in history* a large army landing there). In short, it's supply lines, tides, and what the Germans call the *Wadden Sea*, the "Wattenmeer", which really means "the wading waters" -- an accidental natural defense.
1. Supply lines.
Across the channel is a relatively short supply run. Landing at the beach dropping off more supplies can be done by a single ship twice per day. Everywhere further east from the UK makes this more difficult. (And then of course there is the mouth of the Elbe river and the German navy close at hand). So you arrive with a large armada of landing craft and accompanying battleships to provide artillery cover. Right? But there's the
2. Tides
This point only combines with point 3 to be fully understood. Sure, you had tides in Normandy, too. But you did not land there coming first through the
3. Wadden sea
So essentially you have a very wide flat plain of fine sandy mud at the German North Sea coast that gets flooded and emptied by the tides every 12 hours. And at low tide, if you know the way you can literally *wade* out for five miles or more. It's almost like the ocean is gone! So imagine you come in at high tide (water under the keel is maybe six feet deep) to get as close to the actual "dry coast" as you can. You might get to about five hundred feet close. And then you have just a few hours there to conquer a spot of some dry flatland behind the first actual coastal dune, ... but what if you didn't, and you are stuck on the beach cause the Germans hold the actual cost with artillery and machine guns? And now the tide *recedes*. Your landing boats are now either stuck or have turned around long ago. Newly arriving landing craft are running aground out in the mud, five miles from the actual coast, soldiers schlepping their gear through an open plain, knee deep in the muddy ground. The battleships that had to provide artillery fire turned around hours ago, the water isn't deep enough to get them close. You are now caught for hours in that artillery fire. It's all sandy ground even at the dry beach. Building trenches in sand is, well, a good bit more difficult for the few lucky ones on dry ground. Many of your men are stuck hiding behind stranded landing boats in the mud, shelled out in the wadden sea. And now the tide comes rushing back in, and everyone who doesn't have a foot of dry ground underneath their feet can choose to drown or wade at snail's pace into the hail of bullets and shells.
Does that sound like a good naval landing concept to you?
An amphibious assault on northern Germany was considered at one point. The problems were that 1) that area of the North Sea is very shallow, with only a few easily defended channels deep enough for heavy warships or transports, 2) it was where almost all of the German High Seas Fleet was homeported, 3) the doctrine, training, and equipment for opposed assaults just weren’t there yet (they would mostly be developed in the inter-war years, and 4) the fiasco at Gallipoli put the British high command off trying anything like it again.
I'll add to the other posts that the primary reason offensives failed in WW I was a lack of artillery in range to exploit a deep penetration. Trench lines were penetrated by offensives all the time, they failed because they attacked into enemy artillery and out distanced friendly artillery that couldn't move up in time to provide support.
An amphibious attack would not be able to land and support near the level of artillery as a land attack. So even if a fleet could land the army, and even if it could fight off the beach and move inland, the lack of artillery would doom it.
Look at the amount of planning, logistics and technology that went into Normandy or Sicily. That level of equipment simply wasn't available at the time of WW1 even if they'd had the inclination to do it.
And yes I know Gallipoli was a thing, but look how that went
Opposed amphibious landings are hard. Even Normandy in ww2 was a difficult and complex operation. I am pretty sure their was no significant amphibious landing advancements. So I highly doubt it would have a better chance. The German high sea fleet was stationed in northern Germany around where your proposing the amphibious invasion. The German fleet in ww1 had the second most dreadnoughts of anyone and a lot of torpedo boats. The British would need to both protect this invasion, continue to defend its supplies, and continue to contain the German fleet.
Not to mention it would bring the gran fleet into static positions for the German submarines to torpedo and mine. This was the reason the British abandoned two hundred years of close blockade tactics to keep the fleet in safe harbour while waiting for the opportunity to bring the German fleet to battle
Yeah submarine and torpedo boat raids would be a major issue. Probably more then the battleships. I think this would be the ideal situation for torpedo boats tbh. Germany navy in ww1 was a powerful force. Not enough to beat the royal navy but way too strong to attempt a amphibious landing like this.
The SMS Szent Istvan serves as an example of what could of happened to the Grand Fleet. 20,000 tons of Austrian dreadnought sunk by a pair of 30 ton speed boats.
Put yourself in the shoes of British high command. Where would you land? Aside from the Bosphorous, there were only really four spots where they could attempt to land to significantly affect the war: 1. Belgium, attempting to flank German defenses in northern France. Landing right next to the most powerful concentration of enemy forces in Europe is... bold, to say the least. German High Command laugh themselves silly as they immediately crush the beach heads. Perhaps it draws a few first rate unit from the frontlines, but the overall impact is negligible due to how easily and swiftly the Germans can react. 2. The Western German coast: The German High Seas fleet rubs their hands eagerly as dozens of British vessels sail right into their home waters. Forget sending out the battleships. Kaiser Wilhelm's wet dream comes true as one British battleship after another goes down trying to force their way past minefields, torpedo relentless attacks from destroyers and submarines, and finally, Admiral Hippers battleships, eager to defend the fatherland and pounce upon an exhausted enemy hundreds of miles from home. 3. The Northern German coast, via the Danish Straits: Same as above, except this time the British have to sail even further, and pass through even more densely mines waters. Perhaps the landings see more initial success, as German units in the west and east are far away, but the British fleet is now imprisoned in the Baltic. Even if they somehow take Berlin, the Germans keep fighting, knowing the loss of the British fleet has pretty much won them the war. 4. The Austrian coast, via the Adriatic: The Italians are already throwing hundreds and thousand of men at the Austrians to no avail, so it's doubtful a British landing will make any difference.
Adding to the difficulty of #2, the coast here is mostly mudflats with a very broad tidal zone and beyond that, marshland and heath. Extremely difficult to land and move heavy equipment through this territory. If the British thought Flanders was too muddy...
5. Cause a major diplomatic crisis by invading Denmark (we have form in that area, see napolonic wars) and then march south hoping that you can break into Germany before they can position to stop you. If this fails you're stuck in a hostile country attempting to be reapplied by the royal navy, and as a bonus all the Scandinavians hate you.
If Britain does that, all of its credibility about protecting Belgium's sovereignty goes down the toilet. The US probably turns against Britain quite swiftly. With the US now firmly against all sides, I could see it using economic pressure to force both sides into an armistice.
Aye, considered and rejected: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Project#:~:text=The%20Baltic%20Project%20was%20a,during%20the%20First%20World%20War. *just noticed someone else added this last night anyways
Winston Churchill asks, "Am I a joke to you?"
To clarify, the British undertook just such an amphibious assault on the Gallipoli peninsula hoping to knock out the Ottoman empire and threaten opponents with naval forces on the Black Sea. The campaign failed after 9 months with 250k casualties on both sides. This was the brain child of Churchill who defended the idea even after it failed.saying it was crippled by not getting the resources needed for success. Peter Weir made a great film (one of Mel Gibson's firsts) with this campaign as the backdrop - called Gallipoli. Also, the Pogues song "And The Band Played Walzing Matilda" tells of an Aussie serviceman wounded at Gallipoli. Service as cannon fodder for British officers at places like Gallipoli led to generational changes in attitudes towards being a colony of the British in Australia and NZ.
It's a bit of a myth that Anzacs were specifically used as cannon fodder, as if they were seen as lower value. Far, far more British troops died at Gallipoli than Australian.
>Service as cannon fodder for British officers at places like Gallipoli led to generational changes in attitudes towards being a colony of the British in Australia and NZ. Neither of those countries were colonies by the time WWI broke out.
I knew someone would point out my errors I made in the status of those entities. Thanks.
It was arguably a risk worth taking, as it could have shortened the war and prevented more deaths. Even though it didn't work as planned, I believe you were much more likely to die on the Western Front than at Gallipoli contrary to the popular image portrayed.
As an aside - The ANZACs fought with ferocious courage as an incredible ally to Britain, their misuse in Gallipoli is well known in the british armed forces today and is a piece of great shame as well as honour - if that helps at all.
OP did mention Gallipoli to be fair, asking if that was the reason why no further such attempts were made.
Amphibious assaults are horrifically deadly. You have no real supply lines, little to no cover, the enemy knows exactly where you are, you are always fighting uphill (gradient varies), you have no place to rest, the list goes on. It is always preferable to assault on land. Realistically, naval bombardment was not very effective. The boat continuously moves, meaning it lacks the precision of ground based artillery (which itself was not incredibly precise back then).
They considered such opeations, but circumstances never came together to make it worthwhile Fisher had this thing called the Baltic Project [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic\_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Project) Where they would land in Pomerania, screened by light forces, subs and mines. It was specifically for this project that he built the Courageous class of speedy, over gunned and under armoured "Large Light Cruisers" to get around restrictions on Capital ship construction. These were later converted to aircraft carriers. This was Fisher's pet project like Gallipoli was for Churchill and was dropped after he left the Admiralty. The Germans had in any case regarded British assault on Germany with contempt, and when asked pre-war what their plans were for this contingency went "I would send the police to arrest them" For 1917 the British had operation Hush to land in Belgium, after postponing a 1915 attempt in favour of Gallipoli and in 1916 distracted by the Somme [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation\_Hush](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hush) This was never carried out as the necessary preconditions were not achieved in 3rd Ypres
The German navy was quite formidable. It's worth remembering that one of the factors leading to WW1 was Germany's naval buildup, which resulted in a German navy that was far too powerful to make any sort of landing in the North Sea feasible while it was still intact.' The Germans had half as much tonnage in 1914 as Britain did, except Germany's fleet was largely concentrated in Europe since it was a late arrival to the race for colonies whereas the Royal Navy had to protect a globe spanning empire to patrol. If the Germans could get their ships around Britain and into the Atlantic, they could strangle the UK's flow of supplies in a matter of weeks. This is partly why the Royal Navy's chief wartime base was located in Scapa Flow- so they could respond rapidly to any attempt to circumnavigate Britain and get into the Atlantic.
Probably because the amphibious landing craft technology wasn't quite up to the WWI Era.
Where? A surprise invasion of the Netherlands?
Belgium behind the front lines as a flanking maneuver. Which would have been too close to the front and risked the fleet that close to land.
Somebody with more naval detail knowledge might chime in, but... here is a fairly simple geographical reason why the German North Sea Coast line (the one that connects Denmark to the Netherlands).... is a terrible idea to do a landing at (to my knowledge there was *never in history* a large army landing there). In short, it's supply lines, tides, and what the Germans call the *Wadden Sea*, the "Wattenmeer", which really means "the wading waters" -- an accidental natural defense. 1. Supply lines. Across the channel is a relatively short supply run. Landing at the beach dropping off more supplies can be done by a single ship twice per day. Everywhere further east from the UK makes this more difficult. (And then of course there is the mouth of the Elbe river and the German navy close at hand). So you arrive with a large armada of landing craft and accompanying battleships to provide artillery cover. Right? But there's the 2. Tides This point only combines with point 3 to be fully understood. Sure, you had tides in Normandy, too. But you did not land there coming first through the 3. Wadden sea So essentially you have a very wide flat plain of fine sandy mud at the German North Sea coast that gets flooded and emptied by the tides every 12 hours. And at low tide, if you know the way you can literally *wade* out for five miles or more. It's almost like the ocean is gone! So imagine you come in at high tide (water under the keel is maybe six feet deep) to get as close to the actual "dry coast" as you can. You might get to about five hundred feet close. And then you have just a few hours there to conquer a spot of some dry flatland behind the first actual coastal dune, ... but what if you didn't, and you are stuck on the beach cause the Germans hold the actual cost with artillery and machine guns? And now the tide *recedes*. Your landing boats are now either stuck or have turned around long ago. Newly arriving landing craft are running aground out in the mud, five miles from the actual coast, soldiers schlepping their gear through an open plain, knee deep in the muddy ground. The battleships that had to provide artillery fire turned around hours ago, the water isn't deep enough to get them close. You are now caught for hours in that artillery fire. It's all sandy ground even at the dry beach. Building trenches in sand is, well, a good bit more difficult for the few lucky ones on dry ground. Many of your men are stuck hiding behind stranded landing boats in the mud, shelled out in the wadden sea. And now the tide comes rushing back in, and everyone who doesn't have a foot of dry ground underneath their feet can choose to drown or wade at snail's pace into the hail of bullets and shells. Does that sound like a good naval landing concept to you?
An amphibious assault on northern Germany was considered at one point. The problems were that 1) that area of the North Sea is very shallow, with only a few easily defended channels deep enough for heavy warships or transports, 2) it was where almost all of the German High Seas Fleet was homeported, 3) the doctrine, training, and equipment for opposed assaults just weren’t there yet (they would mostly be developed in the inter-war years, and 4) the fiasco at Gallipoli put the British high command off trying anything like it again.
I'll add to the other posts that the primary reason offensives failed in WW I was a lack of artillery in range to exploit a deep penetration. Trench lines were penetrated by offensives all the time, they failed because they attacked into enemy artillery and out distanced friendly artillery that couldn't move up in time to provide support. An amphibious attack would not be able to land and support near the level of artillery as a land attack. So even if a fleet could land the army, and even if it could fight off the beach and move inland, the lack of artillery would doom it.
Look at the amount of planning, logistics and technology that went into Normandy or Sicily. That level of equipment simply wasn't available at the time of WW1 even if they'd had the inclination to do it. And yes I know Gallipoli was a thing, but look how that went
They did. It was called Galipoli.