Australians land at Gallipoli, and the Anzac legend is born, 1915
16,000 troops ashore in a day, and more than 2,000 casualties by the next morning
Quick facts
- Landing date
- 25 April 1915
- Troops landed (day one)
- approximately 16,000 Australians and New Zealanders
- Casualties by next morning
- more than 2,000
- Total Australian campaign casualties
- 26,111, including 8,141 deaths
What happened
On 25 April 1915, around 16,000 Australian and New Zealand troops, alongside British, French, and Indian forces, landed on the Gallipoli peninsula as part of a campaign to force the Dardanelles Strait and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. The Australians came ashore at what became known as Anzac Cove; the landing boats bunched and touched down about a mile north of the intended beach, and troops became intermixed while trying to advance against Turkish defenders on steep, scrub-covered terrain. By the next morning, more than 2,000 of the 16,000 men who had landed were dead or wounded. The campaign dragged on for eight months before Allied forces evacuated in December 1915; across the whole operation, Australia suffered 26,111 casualties, including 8,141 deaths.
Why it matters
Gallipoli was a military failure, but the landing became the founding story of the Anzac legend, commemorated as Anzac Day every 25 April since 1916 and treated in Australian public memory as a defining moment of national identity, even though the campaign itself achieved none of its strategic objectives.
How we know
The Australian War Memorial's official campaign history and encyclopedia entries, compiled from unit war diaries, casualty records, and official despatches, document the landing's timeline, numbers landed, and casualties.
Sources
- Australian War Memorial. Understanding Gallipoli: The landing · Primary source (author-declared)awm.gov.au · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Australian War Memorial, Encyclopedia. Gallipoli · Primary source (author-declared)awm.gov.au · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- World War I → · Gallipoli was one theatre in the wider First World War; the full war's causes, other fronts, and end are covered on that timeline.