Memories of Air War in Gallipoli

"Anzac, the Landing 1915" and "Anzac Cove 1915" by George W. Lambert[1]

Mavi Boncuk |

"One German aircraft launched an attack on a British aircraft that had been forced to land on the emergency landing ground that 3 Squadron, RNAS had constructed behind W Beach.

I was checking the valves of one of the BE2Cs that had landed. A Turkish plane came up over the peak of the peninsula and dropped a bomb. He dropped a second one and it was half way between that one and me. I thought well if he's got a third he's here! So I ran like hell of the dugouts. I couldn't get there and I heard this dammed thing coming so I dived into this hole in the ground. Someone collapsed on top of me with maps and that - it was a brigadier. He said, 'I had that hole dug for me', I said, 'Sorry Sir' "
Leading Aircraftman Arthur Beeton, 3 Sqdn RNAS

Ironically the Turkish aircraft also used one of the oldest weapons of war.

"There was an aircraft came over and dropped two boxes of aerial darts rather like cross bow arrows, steel, about a foot long. It pinned through men on the floor, pinned through horses, screams of agony, some were killed some weren't."
Private Edward Robinson

These flechettes were also used to strike at General Sir Ian Hamilton's headquarters at Imbros.

One morning at shaving time a Boche aeroplane came over and we didn't take all that much notice of him. Suddenly our sergeant major ran out of his tent shouting, "Bombs, spears, darts, arrows". True enough this chap had thrown over steel arrows that were falling all over the place and also a bomb. Nowadays it would be laughed at but in those days appeared to be and enormous bomb and it had landed reasonably close to Sir Ian Hamilton's tent.
Corporal Richard Cook, Surrey Yeomanry

However the Turks could show a sporting side to their natures as was demonstrated when an aircraft appeared above the RNAS headquarters at Tenedos.

In the afternoon we had a football match officers versus men. The next day you could see all the officers limping. A Turk plane came over in the middle of the match. I was in goal and I was watching this damn Turk going round and round over the pitch. I thought is he going to drop his bombs or what. No! He went across to the sand dunes and dropped them out of the way. A proper gentleman he was.
Leading Aircraftman Arthur Beeton, 3 Sqdn RNAS

Source: The Joint Imperial War Museum / Australian War Memorial Battlefield Study Tour to Gallipoli, September 2000

[1] George Washington Lambert (1873-1930) Lambert was born in St Petersburg, Russia, the posthumous son of George Washington Lambert (1833 - 25 July 1873, in London) of Baltimore, Maryland. The younger Lambert's mother was Annie Matilda, née Firth, an Englishwoman. Mother and son soon moved to Württemberg, Germany, to be with Lambert's maternal grandfather. Lambert was educated at Kingston College, Yeovil, Somerset. The family, consisting of Lambert, his mother and three sisters, decided to emigrate to in Australia. They arrived in Sydney aboard the Bengal on 20 January 1887. Lambert became an official Australian war artist in 1917 during the First World War. His painting Anzac, the landing 1915 of the landings on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, is the largest painting at the Australian War Memorial collection. Lambert, as an honorary captain, travelled to Gallipoli in 1919 to make sketches for the painting. He moved to Paris to study art, spent much of his career in London and didn’t return permanently to Australia until 1921. Lambert was well known and well respected for very fine society portraits and allegorical scenes that we have come to expect of the late Victorian-Edwardian era-WW1 era.