The three great attacks by the British Second Army in Flanders—on the Menin Road on 20 September 1917, at Polygon Wood six days later, and at Broodseinde on 4 October—revived the Third Ypres offensive after the Fifth Army’s failures in August. Spearheading each attack, ANZAC divisions gained much of the ridge around the southern half of the Ypres Salient, denying the Germans the views over the Salient they had enjoyed since 1915.

Confounded by the British ‘bite and hold’ tactics, the Germans were desperate. Their ‘elastic defence’, with its lightly held front line and counterattack formations ready to smash the British advance when it lost momentum, hadn’t worked. The British advance stopped before running out of steam. Reverting to a strongly held front line invited destruction from the British artillery. Major-General John Monash, the 3rd Australian Division’s commander, wrote: ‘Great happenings are possible in the very near future as the enemy is terribly disorganised.’

Monash’s optimism notwithstanding, the terrain now favoured the enemy. From Passchendaele, on the end of the ridge, the Bellevue Spur curved round to parallel the ridge on the far side of the Ravebeek valley. As an assault along the ridge towards Passchendaele would be shot up from the spur, both had to be struck simultaneously. Passchendaele was therefore to be captured in two stages, the first, on 9 October, reaching the outskirts, and the second, three days later, taking the village.

Reinforcing the Germans’ terrain advantage, drenching rain, which had fallen throughout August, did so again, returning the battlefield to a quagmire. Confident that the strongest defences had been breached and the Germans were about to fold, the commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, disregarded advice from his senior commanders to end the campaign.

II ANZAC had the main role in the 9 October attack, which its two British divisions, the 49th and the 66th, carried out. Though the advance, about 1.4 kilometres, was about the same as in previous attacks, the conditions were much worse. Yet only four days were allowed for preparation, as against seven for Broodseinde. Consequently, only 25 guns, a fraction of the normal number, could support the attack.

The 49th Division made little headway on the Bellevue Spur and only part of the 66th reached Passchendaele before being driven back. Supposed to secure the right flank, the 5th and 6th Australian Brigades were exhausted from labouring tasks in the dreadful weather. They still reached their objectives, but, with an average battalion strength of 157 men, were too weak to hold them. Only on the left, at Poelcapelle, were some minor gains made by the Fifth Army.

Despite the setback, there was no question of abandoning the 12 October attack. Advancing along the ridge, the 3rd Australian Division would take Passchendaele, while the New Zealand Division struck Bellevue Spur. To give them a chance in the mud, the creeping barrage had to be slower. With only three days for preparation, getting the necessary extra shells forward was impossible. Even had it been otherwise, the bogged guns could only have fired a fraction of them.

The 1.6-kilometre advance was based on reports that the 66th Division had only withdrawn to its first objective, 550 metres past its start line, on 9 October. Next day, it was found to have pulled back all the way to its start line. The 3rd Division would have to attack from there, extending its advance to 2.2 kilometres, easily the longest yet and in the worst weather. ‘Bite and hold’s’ key principle, a small ‘bite’ well within the attacking infantry’s capability, had been dumped. A longer advance also meant a weaker supporting barrage.

A message from Lieutenant-Colonel Leslie Morshead, commander of the Australian 33rd Battalion, summarised the outcome: ‘Things are bloody, very bloody.’ The creeping barrage resembled a few pebbles plopping into mud. On the Bellevue Spur, the New Zealanders were annihilated, enabling the Germans there to flay the 10th Australian Brigade as it struggled through the waist-deep mud of the Ravebeek. About 20 men briefly reached Passchendaele. The 9th Brigade was stopped short of it and withdrew, as did the 12th Brigade protecting its right.

The New Zealanders lost 2,800 men, making 12 October the costliest day in their military history, and the 3rd Australian Division 3,199 men. Overall, the Third Ypres campaign cost the Australians 38,000 men, though this was spread over their eight-week involvement and not just the four big attacks they carried out. All but one of those attacks hit the Germans hard, stretching their morale and resources and gaining valuable ground, at least by Western Front standards. Whether those results justified the cost depends on one’s point of view.

As Haig sought a winter line that was not under German observation from the Passchendaele end of the ridge, the offensive continued even though the Broodseinde success had given the British observation over much of the German line. The Canadian Corps took over the advance. After five ‘bite and hold’ attacks between 26 October and 10 November, it did what II ANZAC had been ordered to do in one attack and finally captured Passchendaele. By then the battle had acquired an infamy that time has not diminished. ‘I died in hell. (They called it Passchendaele)’, wrote Siegfried Sassoon.

In January 1911, the Australian government announced its intention to form a flying corps to support the Army. Over the next few years men were recruited, an airbase established at Point Cook near Melbourne, and canvas hangars and rudimentary training aircraft acquired. On 1 March 1914, Lieutenant Eric Harrison, an Australian pilot who had trained in England, made the first flight of a military aircraft in Australia in a locally-assembled Bristol Boxkite, and the first pilot’s course started in August that year, with four students.

Early in 1915, less than a year since it became marginally functional, the Australian Flying Corps went to war, tasked with supporting operations against the Turks in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), where vital oil supplies were being threatened. The magnitude of this achievement needs to be understood. In 1911, Australia possessed no military aviation expertise whatsoever. There were no leaders, pilots, mechanics, aircraft or infrastructure; and there was no precedent to guide or doctrine to inform. Just four years later, the AFC was being sent to the other side of the world to fight an entirely new form of warfare in an alien and most hostile environment.

Led by former English solicitor, now AFC pilot, Captain Henry Petre, the AFC ‘Half Flight’—there weren’t enough men and machines to support a full flight—was thrown into action, only weeks after the Anzac’s epic landing at Gallipoli. Such was the Corp’s inexperience that two of Petre’s four pilots were recent graduates, and only 18 of his 41 airmen were qualified air mechanics, the others being motor mechanics, carpenters and joiners.

As with the Anzac campaign, the Half Flight’s war was to be heroic, bloody, and ultimately tragic. Initially based at Basra, the Australians were absorbed into the (British) Royal Flying Corps and allocated three second-hand Morris Farman aircraft. The unreliability of these fragile machines added greatly to the dangers of wartime operations. The Half Flight’s primary role was reconnaissance, which the pilots carried out in extremes of desert heat, dust and wind. Near-constant turbulence made the narrow margin between the aircraft’s cruise and stall speeds a constant worry. In winds that often exceeded 80 kph, the Farmans were unable to make headway, instead drifting backwards over the ground.

Reconnaissance and sabotage missions were flown deep into enemy territory. In addition to unreliable engines and flimsy airframes, maps were inadequate and landing fields hazardous. Forced landings, which were common because of engine failure, were likely to end in imprisonment at best, and at worst savage death at the hands of tribesman.

After three months the Half Flight was reinforced, re-equipped with better aircraft, and renamed No. 30 Squadron, RFC. By November 1915, only Petre remained of the original pilots, the others having been killed or imprisoned; and most of the mechanics who hadn’t suffered the same fate had been dispersed among RFC units. Overshadowed by the Australian public’s interest in the contemporary events at Gallipoli, the Half Flight’s heroic and pioneering achievements went largely unrecognised.

At the same time the Half Flight was fighting in Mesopotamia,  the AFC was expanding  back in Australia. As more pilots, observers, and mechanics were trained, the government was able to increase the AFC’s contribution to the war. No. 1 Squadron was formed at Point Cook in January 1916 and deployed to Egypt in March. Later that year, Nos. 2, 3, and 4 Squadrons sailed for England for more training before a planned deployment to the Western Front in France.

Among No. 1 Squadron’s pilots in the Middle East was Captain Richard Williams, later to become the greatest figure in Australian military aviation. Williams was unimpressed by the squadron’s two-seat, general purpose BE2c aircraft, which were ‘disturbingly inferior’ to the enemy’s single-seat Fokkers. He noted that that AFC crews had ‘very little chance’ in air combat and ‘depended mainly on luck’ when dropping bombs. The reference to air-to-air combat and bombing indicates just how rapidly the war in the air had progressed. Reconnaissance and army liaison remained No. 1 Squadron’s primary tasks, but the implications of the other roles—which had scarcely been envisaged in 1915—were profound.

No. 1 Squadron’s pilots were at the forefront of technological and tactical innovation. The mercurial Lieutenant L.J. Wackett (another towering figure in the history of Australian aviation), for example, designed a machine gun mount for the top centre-section of the BE2c, considerably enhancing the aircraft’s dogfighting capability. And the squadron was prominent in the revolution that air bombardment brought to warfare.

On 11 November 1916, only seven months after arriving in-theatre, the Australian airmen staged what was at the time the Middle East’s largest air raid. A force of ten aircraft was launched to strike against an enemy stronghold at Beersheba. Weaving through a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, the crews successfully bombed Beersheba’s aerodrome, tents, railway line and station. They then demonstrated their versatility by coolly photographing the damage.

The AFC had made remarkable progress since the outbreak of war. Sophisticated tactics had evolved, technology had advanced dramatically, training systems had been established, and outstanding leaders had emerged. By the end of 1916, Australia’s first airmen were poised to make a significant contribution to the allies’ broader campaign in the Great War.

‘Tell the colonel the damn fools have landed us a mile too far north,’ yelled Royal Navy commander, Charles Dix, at dawn on 25 April 1915, as the first Australian troops jumped ashore at Anzac Cove.

A lot of things went wrong early that morning. And one hundred years later historians still debate how the original Anzacs found themselves scrambling up the tangled, scrubby slopes of Sari Bair rather than the intended landing place, Brighton Beach—more open country two kilometres south of Anzac Cove

Robin Prior, one of Australia’s finest military historians, argues that it’s a ‘myth’ that the initial landing was in the wrong place. He contends that there were no precise instructions given to Australian commanders as to where the initial 1500-strong covering force were to step ashore.

In his 2009 book, Gallipoli: The End of the Myth, Prior writes that an exact landing point for the Anzacs wasn’t seen as a high priority by those who planned the amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula. ‘Certainly they did not want to land too close to Gaba Tepe with its artillery and machine guns. Nor did they want to land to the north of Fisherman’s Hut because that was too far from the main ridge and distant from the desired line of advance across the peninsula.’

More recently the Australian War Memorial’s principal historian, Ashley Ekins, has argued a similar case. Had the Anzacs been landed on Brighton Beach, Ekins says, things would have been much worse. The more heavily fortified coast closer to Gaba Tepe ‘would have been like Omaha Beach in the Normandy landings.’

Denis Winter, a military historian, concluded in 1994 that the first wave of Australians came ashore exactly where the Anzac corps commander, Lieutenant General William Birdwood, intended them to land. Anzac Cove offered protection from Turkish artillery located on Gaba Tepe further south; according to Winter, Birdwood had made a secret last-minute change to the plan.

The original Anzacs were convinced they’d landed in the wrong place. The operational orders for the Australian and New Zealanders, drawn up in early April 1915 after extensive reconnaissance, clearly marked the intended landing place—‘Z beach’—as the northern section of Brighton Beach. The saving grace was that they encountered little resistance from Turkish forces whereas further south it may have been a different story. A young Australian army lieutenant named Richard Casey (who would later become Australia’s Governor-General) thought it providential that the Royal Navy had made a navigational error after examining Turkish barbed wire and trenches closer to Gaba Tepe soon after the actual landing.

Most historians of the Gallipoli campaign have agreed the landing at Anzac was in the wrong place and should have happened a mile further south. In a 1934 revised edition of his official history, The Story of Anzac, Charles Bean wrote that the diversion of the tows carrying the Anzacs to shore was due to a strong current flowing in a northerly direction:

‘When Ari Burnu appeared ahead of the boats, the naval officer in the southernmost tow, who was directing the course, mistook the headland for Gaba Tepe and swung the tows still farther north. At the last moment Commander Dix in the northern tow endeavoured to modify this mistake by swing his tow to the south, past the sterns of the others.’

British historian, Basil Liddell Hart, also writing in 1934, concluded: ‘darkness and the strong current caused the tows to arrive off the beach a mile north of the intended point.’ Thirty years later Robert Rhodes James concluded that it wasn’t possible to say whether the Anzacs were propelled by the ‘mysterious northerly current or as a result of inaccurate navigation….’ The real answer, according to Rhodes James, ‘lay in the general confusion and imprecision which bedevilled all known orders about the landing of the covering force.’

Fifty years later we know a good deal more about the waters off Anzac Cove thanks to detailed survey work, more accurate nautical charts, and GPS navigation. In a paper delivered at the AWM’s Gallipoli 1915 conference last month, naval historian Tom Frame dispelled one of the accepted myths of the Landing: the long-held view that a current had taken the Australians too far north.

Frame, who spent many hours in small boats off Anzac Cove and Gaba Tepe, says the prevailing current, if it existed on 25 April 1915, was likely to have been to the north-east at 0.25 knots. ‘It was certainly not of sufficient strength to have resulted in the Anzacs being landed one mile or more to the north of their intended location.’ He adds that none of the naval orders issued just before the landing make any mention of a northerly current in the intended landing place.

A significant problem lay with the navigational charts used by the campaign planners in 1915. In the late 1990s, the most recent Admiralty chart of the approaches to the Dardanelles was compared with 1915 charts. The 1915 chart showed an error of some 460 yards in the location of Gaba Tepe. In 1915 Gaba Tepe was designated as the key navigational point for the Anzac landings with the British warship, HMS Triumph, standing five miles offshore, used as the marker ship. Frame recognises that, ‘while the inaccuracies in the charts used by the Royal Navy do not fully account for the Anzacs being landed well to the north of the intended destination, it is clear that all of the possible navigational errors compound to the north.’ He adds that in overlaying naval charts with military maps of the peninsula it becomes clear they weren’t based on the same underlying survey data. The distance between Gaba Tepe and Anzac Cove varied between the naval charts and the military maps. The army wanted a level of precision in the landing of troops in pre-dawn darkness that the Navy was simply unable to guarantee.

One hundred years on Gallipoli continues to exert a strange fascination for military historians. Perhaps we should leave the last word to Alan Moorehead, one of Australia’s finest war correspondents, and author of the magisterial, Gallipoli, published in 1956:

‘A strange light plays over the Gallipoli landing on April 25, and no matter how often the story is retold there is still an actuality about it, a feeling of suspense and incompleteness. Although nearly half a century has gone by, nothing yet seems fated about the day’s events, a hundred questions remain unanswered, and in a curious way one feels that the battle might still lie before us in the future; that there is still time to make other plans and bring it to a different ending.’