The Year of Aggression
Part 10: Operation Ariarathes I, September 20 – October 21, 1939
While the period denoted is a wide one, a full month, real combat operations only actually began in the last week of this period. Prior to the operations, Pintor’s 7a Armata had to collect itself and head to the nearest port in Illyria to prepare for landings. During this downtime, Campioni made himself and his carriers useful in preparation for the real campaign.
Operation Ariarathes began with preliminary naval action. As early as the 20th of September, Campioni had positioned his carriers off the Dodecanese Islands and was pummeling the Turkish units with his carrier aircraft. In particular, he was striking at the major naval base, which fell into Turkish hands, and the submarine flotilla within it. Having dealt with this minor task, he moved into the Black Sea and attacked Turkish infrastructure near Istanbul and interdicted the Turkish division garrisoning that city. The first real blows of Ariarathes, however, fell only on the 13th as Ghé’s fleet intercepted the small Turkish fleet in the Sea of Marmara. In the storm of fire that ensued, the Turks lost their heavy cruiser TDT Yavuz and their light cruiser TDT Medjidah. Only their destroyers escaped destruction. The sea was clear for Italian landings.
The battle of the Sea of Marmara, an overwhelmingly unequal contest.
On the next day, the 14th, the first landings began. The entirety of Gambara’s corps was put down by Italian transport and assault ships at Corlu, just outside Istanbul on the European side. The plan, hurriedly conceived, was to take Istanbul and utilize it as the 7a Armata’s main logistics base in Turkey. Given the importance of Istanbul, Gambara’s entire corps was dedicated to the task. Only after Istanbul’s fall would it begin dispersing to create a larger front and take territory. In the event, eight Italian brigades fell upon three defending Turkish brigades, supported by carrier air groups and naval bombardment, and routed the Turks in three days with just over two hundred casualties. The Turks lost nearly a full thousand. Gambara’s corps began driving into the city and laying plans for exploitation over the Bosporus.
Gambara’s landing outside Istanbul.
With Istanbul on the verge of being secured, the second stage of landings began. Roatta landed with half of his corps on the southern coast of the Sea of Marmara. Roatta’s own headquarters landed at Biga, Mancinelli went ashore at Bandirma and Scattini landed at Karacabey. The coast was completely undefended; it seemed that most of the Turkish army was away, likely on the Soviet border. The general operational plan was to keep the Turks off balance and dispersed on several small fronts or one large front, an effect amplified by the lack of Turkish forces nearby. In Yugoslavia, the Italians found it difficult to keep the Yugoslav defenders off balance, due in part to the fact that the Italians were attacking from only one direction. This mistake was not to be repeated in Turkey.
Roatta’s own landings on the southern coast of the Sea of Marmara.
By the 20th of October, Gambara’s corps had brushed aside what little resistance there was on the other side of the Bosporus and was advancing into a vacuum, though the first Turkish reinforcements were rushing to fill the gaps however they might. Roatta’s bridgehead was beginning its rapid expansion, undisturbed by any Turkish action. It was at this moment that the final stage of the landings commenced. Pintor’s army headquarters, together with the two remaining divisions of Roatta’s corps, landed on the western coast of Turkey. It was another three-region spread of landings, meant to throw the Turks into further chaos. Pintor’s headquarters landed in the middle, flanked to the north by Bitossi’s division and to the south by Giorgis’. With the completion of these landings, the first phase of Operation Ariarathes was finished; Pintor’s 7a Armata was firmly ashore in Turkey, an achievement made easier by the dearth of Turkish resistance.
Operations by the 20th of October.
By midday on the 21st, the landings were done. Gambara’s bridgehead was still the smallest, albeit the most important. Half of the corps found itself swinging southward to link up with Roatta’s bridgehead and guarantee it access to supply. Messe’s and Frattini’s divisions, however, were ordered to march along the northern Turkish coast and, ultimately, secure a second port, the only other Turkish port, at Eregli. The divisions from Roatta’s bridgehead found themselves moving broadly eastward. Pintor’s bridgehead was also pushing eastward. It was anticipated that within a week, all three bridgeheads would be combined together into one and providing a broad front the Turks would not be able to cope with.
The progress and plan of operations by midday on the 21st of October.
Unlike the Yugoslav operation, which quickly degenerated into a series of bloody battles with only a few notable successes leading to breakthroughs and relatively easy victory, Operation Ariarathes seemed from the beginning to go immensely well. Yugoslavia began with confidence and ended with the general staff somewhat humbled, from their initial position of heroic ambition. The plan this time was to make sure that didn’t happen. The Regio Esercito was well on its way to making sure that it ended this war with honor born of virtuosity.
