Battle of Imbros

By January 1918, the situation for the Ottoman Army in Palestine had begun to worsen. The new German commander of the Ottoman Black Sea fleet, Rebeur Paschwitz, decided to try to relieve Allied naval pressure on Palestine by making a sortie out of the Dardanelles. Several British naval elements of the Aegean Squadron had been taking refuge in Kusu Bay off the islands of Imbros, and they were a prime target for an Ottoman raid. After raiding what shipping could be found at Imbros, Rebeur-Paschwitz planned to proceed to Mudros and attack the British naval base there. The Allied force guarding the Dardanelles consisted of a few heavy British and French units as well as several monitors tasked with coastal bombardment. Escorting the monitors were several British destroyers. The pre-dreadnought battleships and were also tasked with guarding the area, but the Lord Nelson had been tasked with ferrying the squadron's admiral to a conference at Salonika. Taking advantage of the absence of the British battleship, the Germans and Ottomans decided to dispatch the battlecruiser Yavûz Sultân Selîm (ex-) and the light cruiser Midilli (ex-) to attack the area. Agamemnon was nearby at Mudros, but she was much too slow to chase down the Ottoman ships if they wanted to avoid engaging her. M28 was a smaller vessel than Raglan and carried a lighter armament: a single 9.2-inch gun, one 12-pounder, and a six-pounder anti-aircraft gun. The weak point of both Raglan and M28 were their low top speeds of respectively, giving them little capability of escaping an Ottoman raid. In contrast to the British force, the Ottoman vessels were both fast and heavily armed. Midilli carried eight 150 mm guns, 120 mines, two torpedo tubes, and a top speed of . Yavûz Sultân Selîm was the most powerful ship in the Ottoman fleet with a top speed of 25.5 knots, ten 283 mm guns, twelve 150 mm guns, a dozen 88 mm guns, and four torpedo tubes. With no heavy units available to repel them, there was little in the means of effective Allied opposition when the Ottomans set out on their mission. ==Battle==

Setting out towards Imbros, Yavuz Sultan Selim struck a mine on transit to the island, but the damage was insignificant and the two Ottoman vessels were able to continue their mission. Yavuz Sultan Selim then proceeded to bombard the British signal station at Kephalo Point while Midilli was sent ahead to guard the entrance of Kusu Bay. As Yavûz Sultân Selîm and Midilli approached Kusu Bay, they were sighted by the destroyer HMS Lizard at 5:30 am. Lizard attempted to engage the Ottoman ships, but could not close to torpedo range due to heavy fire from her opponents. Yavuz Sultan Selim soon sighted the two British monitors taking refuge in the bay, and broke off from Lizard to engage them. As Yavuz Sultan Selim attacked the monitors, Midilli continued to duel with Lizard, which was then joined by the destroyer HMS Tigress. Severely damaged, the Ottoman battlecruiser ran aground on a sandbar off Nagara Point and became stranded. For the next six days Allied seaplanes further attacked the Ottoman battlecruiser, scoring six hits. Ottoman seaplanes and heavy shore batteries responded to the raids and were able to guard Yavuz Sultan Selim and beat back the air attacks. Despite the air raids, Yavûz Sultân Selîm suffered only superficial damage from them as the bombs used by the British were too small to be effective. Allied commanders proposed plans for a submarine raid against the battlecruiser, but the only submarine attached to the Aegean squadron, , was inoperative due to mechanical problems. A raid into the Dardanelles was therefore postponed until a working submarine could be dispatched to the area. ==Aftermath==

With no way to free herself, Yavuz Sultan Selim remained stranded on the sandbar until 26 January when the finally arrived and towed her back into the Black Sea. In one last effort to destroy the battlecruiser, the British sent the submarine into the Dardanelles on 27 January. Yavûz Sultân Selîm had already left the area, and so E14 began sailing back to Allied waters after discovering the battlecruiser's absence. Sighting an Ottoman freighter, the British submarine attempted to torpedo her. The second torpedo fired exploded prematurely, damaging the submarine and forcing her to try to flee the straits. She came under heavy fire from nearby Ottoman shore batteries and was eventually beached with her commander, Geoffrey Saxton White, and another sailor killed and seven captured. Although the Ottoman force destroyed the two monitors as planned, with Midilli sunk and Yavuz Sultan Selim severely damaged the threat of the Ottoman Navy to the Allies was greatly reduced for the remainder of the war. The commanders of the British Aegean Squadron were criticized for sending their battleships so far from the Dardanelles; had either Agamemnon or Lord Nelson been nearby during the Ottoman raid, Yavuz Sultan Selim might have been destroyed. ==Notes==