ABSTRACT
It is ironic that one of the first combined and joint operations of the twentieth century began life as an operation that was specifically designed to preclude the use of soldiers. Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty on the outbreak of World War I, had been casting about since the beginning of the conflict to find a way to use the navy to influence the war on land. A number of schemes put forward by him all came to grief on two grounds. First, all Churchill’s naval advisors thought the proposals risked ships from the Grand Fleet in mine-and torpedo-infested waters. Second, the War Office and its formidable head, Lord Horatio Kitchener, insisted that there were no troops to land anywhere.1
