The Dardanelles campaign fell together at extremely short notice, and it is notable as an example of a campaign that starts rolling, then builds up momentum so at no point does anyone make an effort to stop and ask whether it should be stopped.

The campaign has to be seen in its political context, by which I mean the politics of the British Army in early 1915.

That army, tiny in 1914, had moved to France with virtually its entire leadership. The war was going to be over by Christmas and nobody wanted to miss out. This left a void of credible, structured direction of military affairs between the acknowledged best brains of the army in France, and the politicians who tended to be thoroughly ignorant of military matters. They thus tended to fall in in the face of the 'expertise' of John French and his staff.

However, Britain had a long history of avoiding getting 'bogged down' on the Continent, and many in high places were keen to use command of the sea and global mobility as an alternative to slaughter on the Western Front as the junior partner of the French.

What this meant was that Britain's overall military strategy was in the hands of either a military leadership determined to have all resources directed to its own interest, with other parties progressing other schemes outside this structure.

Thus in early 1915 the Western Front had settled into a siege, which most in the army sought to defeat with more men, while others such as Churchill already sought alternative theatres of war as a means to hurt Germany.

The case for a campaign in Turkey was compelling: reinforce the Russian Army with resources through the Black Sea, thus marrying Russian manpower to British industrial output, and wear down Germany until something could be achieved in France.

Churchill's proposal, what we'd today call a 'thought bubble', sat for a few weeks. With army resources being poured into France and killed just as fast (the First Battle of Ypres occurred around this time), the Navy was asked to flesh out an operational plan, and it was thought ships alone could force the straits. With little Army support, this looked like a good option and a good use of old ships that otherwise were not doing much. In March the operation was attempted. Planning was minimal and the whole operation had swung into action very quickly.

Unfortunately, the Turks mined the straits, mine clearing technology was limited, battleships were sunk, and, as so often happens in war, what was to be a simple and cheap operation started to draw in other forces.

By in late March the theatre commander, an able British general named Hamilton, wrote to Kitchener, an old soldier and hero who was filling that Army leadership void in London, to suggest a landing was needed as the ships could not force the straits alone.

This is the real genesis of the disaster. An opposed landing on an enemy shore is a very difficult operation, one for which there was no modern precedent, and clearly in 1915 war was proving to be unlike anything expected.

On March 22 the Navy gave up and the land campaign planning began. It can be seen how ludicrous the timetable is (the landings were on April 25), and Hamilton was without a plan, maps, nor soldiers. All had to be found, organised, supplied and so on. Remember, the British Army was so small in August 1914 that few men had any experience of large scale operations of any kind.

Despite this unpromising situation, there were times in the campaign when success beckoned, but inexperience and a lack of decent command always conspired to thwart the British and their allies.