Ottoman Gallipoli Maps

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After looking some discussions, I guess there is need for a new topic about the Ottoman Gallipoli maps.

I have a good collection of Ottoman maps and I spent quite a long time to verify how good they are. Here are my ideas.

The first modern maps of the peninsula were drawn during the Crimean War by British and French. Some of these are surprisingly good.

 

 

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Starting from 1850s the Austrians prepared commercial maps of the Ottoman Empire and they continued to print updated version. As you may know the most famous ones were prepared and printed by Kippert. They were better than most so the Ottoman military and other armies used them.

Just before the Balkan Wars the Ottoman General Staff published famous 1/200.000 scale military maps of the Balkans and western Anatolia by taking Kippert commercial maps as a base and updated them. See below the Gallipoli and neighboring provinces

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Of course 1/200.000 scale maps were not very useful even for divisions forget about the regiments and below. So shortly after the Balkan Wars the Ottoman cartographers prepared and published 1/100.000 scale military map of the peninsula. They used this map as a base to prepare 1/25.000 scale maps.

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They were late. The British-French armada appeared in front of the Dardanelles. They hurriedly started land surveying but unable to finish them on time. So, the General Staff decided to send single coloured (brown) draft 1/25000 scale maps to the units in March 1915. Shortly after the 25 April landings the final versions of the 1/25.000 scale maps reached the units. During the Ottoman May offensive, the British captured several sets of them and printed their own re-scaled 1/20.000 basing on them.

How good the Ottoman 1/25,000 military maps? Well, the easy answer is it depends. The ones drawn based upon land surveys are good others not so. For example why the New Zealanders ended in front of cliffs during the August Offensive? Part of the answer lies with the mistakes done by the Ottoman cartographers.

See two pieces of the Ottoman 1/25,000 scale military maps below.

 

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During the Gallipoli campaign the Ottomans used 1/25,000 scale maps. 1/5,000 scale Şevki Pasha maps were produced after the end of the campaign. The real aim was to record the battlefield. They were not problem free but much better since they did survey the peninsula.

[stevenbecker]

Infantry,

Mate yes that's what I tried to say in my poor fashion in the last question

Ottoman/German sources all say the maps did not give the details they needed 

Your mention of good for Armies and Divisons, but not any lower units is the best I've seen

That's why the good maps of the Dardenelles, was due to Sevki going over all the old maps after the fighting and updating them.

Or that's was my understanding.

Shkran

S.B

[tankengine888]

Brilliant maps! I'm finding them very interesting.

I do recall hearing something [which I'm not so sure if true] that the maps used by the British in the Gallipoli Campaign were infact from the Crimean War.. Though I think that is untrue.

Zidane.

[Howard]

All but one of those is georeferenced on TrenchMapper. The last one looks like the index map for the Şevki Paşa 1:5,000 post evacuation maps, they are also all on there.

Howard

[peter blackwell]

On 05/04/2023 at 20:13, infantry said:

During the Gallipoli campaign the Ottomans used 1/25,000 scale maps. 1/5,000 scale Şevki Pasha maps were produced after the end of the campaign. The real aim was to record the battlefield. They were not problem free but much better since they did survey the peninsula.

These maps are so much better than the one's i have where can i find them please

[Howard]

On TrenchMapper.

Howard

[peter blackwell]

Thank you very much Pete