Allied Naval Attack on Dardanelles Begins

Allied warships began bombarding Ottoman forts guarding the Dardanelles Strait, the first step in Winston Churchill's strategy to force the strait, capture Constantinople, and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. The naval campaign culminated in a disastrous March 18 attempt by a combined British-French fleet to force the straits, in which three battleships were sunk and three more damaged by mines. The naval failure led to the Gallipoli land campaign.