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Updated: June 24, 2025
No fewer than seven warships were lying off the coast, every one of them smashing their broadsides into the Turkish positions. The noise was incredible, but every sound was dwarfed when the great super-Dreadnought fired her 15-inch guns. The shells, the length of a tall man and weighing very nearly a ton, were charged with shrapnel, carrying no fewer than twenty thousand bullets apiece.
Whereas the Queen Elizabeth carried 15-inch guns, the largest of the Turkish guns measured only 10.2 inches. At 11.30 o'clock in the morning of February 25, 1915, the Agamemnon was hit with a shell which had traveled six miles, but it did not damage her beyond repair. Meanwhile the Queen Elizabeth had silenced Cape Hellas, firing from a distance far beyond the range of the forts' guns.
They said: "'The attack has been ordered for to-morrow. The bombardment will last from dawn to 6 p. m., when the infantry will attack. "The information was exact. A bombardment of incredible violence began. Aeroplanes regulated the fire of a 15-inch naval gun, which sent five projectiles on the town of Asiago. After the bombardment had ceased the first infantry attack came.
The 18 smaller Ericsson vessels, several of which are ready for service, are 18 inches out of water, of light draught, and about 200 by 45 feet. Their side-armor, laminated, is 5 inches thick, upon 3 feet of oak. They have one turret, like those of the Roanoke, and carry one 15-inch gun and one 11-inch smooth-bore, or a 200-pounder rifle.
Before this attack started a huge howitzer was brought up and placed on the west side of Mametz Wood. And during the one and a half hours preceding the attack, it fired sixty 15-inch shells into Le Sars, of which only two failed to burst. On October 5 the 50th Division was relieved, and B.H.Q. moved back to a doctor's house in Albert.
Not only did it appear greatly extended in the Vienna 27-inch, but MM. Perrotin and Thollon saw it with the Nice 15-inch, and M. Kammermann of Geneva, employing special precautions, with a refractor of only ten inches aperture.
The Castle, a very old and ruinous structure, the only strength of which consisted of two masonry towers, had four 11-inch rifled Blakelies. Seven large-bore guns were mounted on the mole, together with two small and very ancient 32-pounders. At the north end of the town itself was Fort Ayacucho, containing one 15-inch Dahlgren and one 11-inch Blakely.
Then came another revolving turret, with two 10-inch Armstrongs; and finally a sand-bag battery, named the Rimac, which mounted four 15-inch Dahlgren muzzle-loaders. It will thus be seen that the Chilian fleet would have all its work cut out if it meant to take the port of Callao, as the first step toward the capture of the capital, Lima.
Suddenly, inland, a large mass of men, perhaps two thousand, were seen doubling down a depression of the ground heading towards the coast. We had two 15-inch guns loaded with 10,000 shrapnel bullets each, but there was an agony as to whether these were our fellows falling back or Turks advancing. The Admiral and Keyes asked me. The Flag Captain was with us.
Against this position General Cadorna concentrated 1,500 guns, some of them 14-and 15-inch howitzers, and naval guns. A tremendous artillery duel, interspersed with infantry attacks, thus set in, and for a long time the fate of Gorizia trembled in the balance.
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