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The Dodecanese campaign was a tragedy for all concerned. It was a tragedy for us who fought there; it was a tragedy for those who died there; it was a tragedy for those who were taken prisoner there; it was a tragedy for those who escaped from there; it was a tragedy for those who had to leave their homes there; it was a tragedy for those who had to live under German occupation there. It was a tragedy that might have been avoided.
----George Jellicoe, 1945764Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTQmjCn1JSo
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The events of the last week before the Turkish invasion of the Dodecanese seem with hindsight to have possessed an awful inevitability. In Turkey, the invasion machine was now in forward gear. However, it is still maintained in some quarters (including American intelligence) that the final decision to go on April 2 was not made until March 31 (the Wednesday). In Athens, politicians and officials appear to have been bemused and hesitant as crisis swirled towards them. Only one institution seems to have responded to the assessments of March 28 with total single-mindedness: the Hellenic Navy. In its case, there were ulterior motives.
When the order to dispatch three submarines reached the Ministry of Defense on Monday, the 29th, the navy had only one that could be sent immediately. She was HNS Poseidon, then taking part in Exercise Spring Train with the First Flotilla off Crete. Submarines, in the words of one official, "do not appear out of thin air," and the first reaction of the submarine staff at Fleet HQ at Knossos was one of surprise: "We've got better things to do with our submarines than mess around in the Eastern Mediterranean." Nonetheless, Poseidon was recalled immediately to Crete dockyard, where her practice torpedoes were exchanged for live ones from the submarine Euryale. She sailed within 48 hours. Galatea followed on April 1, the day before the Turkish invasion, and Themis three days later, both from Corfu on the Ionian coast. All maintained a remarkable average speed of 23 knots on the passage east. But even so, Poseidon did not take up station off Rhodes until April 12. The Hellenic Navy Auxiliary Mount Olympus sailed from Iraklio on the northern coast of Crete on the 29th to provide support for them and the Aegean Guardian.
Whatever the initial surprise of some junior officers, others in the Hellenic Navy were blessed with a broader vision. A meeting of the Chief of the Navy, Fotis Andreadis, and his senior operations staff took place on a Monday afternoon at the Ministry of Defense in Amalias Avenue. They reviewed the operations presented in Demas's paper of the previous week in light of the new intelligence and the decision to send submarines. What if a "bigger task force" should be needed, one "capable of taking effective action against the Turkish navy"? Turkey possessed a substantial navy, with surface, undersea, and air capability. She had at least six ships filled with Exocet sea-skimming missiles, also the principal surface weapon of the Hellenic Navy. She had four submarines, two of them formidably difficult to detect with sonar, and an air force with more than two hundred planes capable of striking at a Greek land or sea force. The logistic and strategic difficulties of conducting operations against such a force 8,000 miles distant would be immense. Conventional wisdom decreed that, with the ships available to the Hellenic Navy in 1982, it would be most dangerous to take to sea against a force of this strength. The meeting therefore decided immediately to reject any task force contingency that did not embrace all the resources available, including carriers, submarines, and an amphibious assault element.
There now grew in the minds of Andreadis and his staff a most remarkable prospect, that of a full Greek battle fleet putting to sea in earnest against a not inconsiderable foe. To most senior officers, such a concept was not merely fantastic in the context of the 1980s. It would also become entirely impossible within a few years when the carrier and amphibious assault groups had been phased out. This was exactly the unforeseen contingency Andreadis had always argued that the navy had to be equipped to meet, and the one which the policies of successive defense ministers had so nearly rendered impracticable. There were certainly overwhelming strategic arguments for sending a big task force, which Andreadis began to assemble that very day. He'd be the first one to admit that there were overwhelming political ones as well.
The core of such a force would have to be made up of the First Flotilla, some twenty ships then conveniently placed in the mid-Mediterranean on Excercise Spring Train under their flag officer, Rear Admiral Emilios Siskeas. His superior (and Andreadis's immediate subordinate), the Commander in Chief Fleet, Markos Teresides, was observing the exercise aboard the Knox class destroyer Mayadina. Late on that same Monday night, Siskeas received a message from Flotilla Headquarters in the northwest Athens suburb of Cythiri that the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean was worsening and that the MoD was considering a larger "balanced" task force than the submarines already ordered.
At 53, Teresides had already achieved the pinnacle of naval command and was destined, like Andreadis before him, for promotion from Fleet Headquarters to Amilias Avenue. A man who radiated imperturbable urbanity, in voice, manner, and even appearance, he had something about him of the actor Telly Savalas. Shrewd and able, he was greatly respected both by the Americans and his NATO counterparts. Like many naval officers that week, he must've sensed that a crucial moment in naval history could be at hand. On receipt of the signal from Athens, he promptly summoned Admiral Siskeas to join him "with all dispatch" from his flagship, Myndossos, then some 250 miles away. The two men met for 1 hour at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday in the admiral's big day cabin on Mayadina. They discussed the role of the First Flotilla in any bigger task force and the wider implications of naval operations in the Eastern Mediterranean. Before dawn, Teresides was helicoptered to Chios and flown directly to Athens. From then on, contingency planning was in progress for the sending of the largest naval fleet Greece had seen since the Peloponnesian War. Andreadis's opposite number, Admiral Cihan Erdogan, had yet to take the action that would precipitate its sailing. Were he to decide on an invasion, he knew and Athens knew that all the Greek ships in the world couldn't stop him.764Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTORhR7ZXHi
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Thanasis Karas appeared at a Foreign Ministry reception on Monday night leaning exaggeratedly on a cane and declaring, "This week, I'm going to need it." The next morning he had to wrestle with the swift evolution of the policy of understated response. He had been told that Poseidon's sailing time to the Dodecanese was five days. All endeavors now had to be directed towards lowering the temperature with Ankara in the meantime. That Tuesday morning, Charalambos decided to break into his planned trip from Brussels to Israel to make a joint statement with Karas to the HP. They had been authorized by the MoD on March 24 to announce that the Aegean Guardian would remain "on duty for as long as it is needed." Karas added that "further escalation of the dispute is in nobody's interest.....It's right to pursue a diplomatic solution." He then produced a crucial sentence intended to satisfy MPs without alerting the Turks to the sending of submarines: "The question of security in the Dodecanese area is being reviewed, although (you) will understand that I prefer to say nothing in public about our precautionary measures." It was a pious hope.
The HP once again demonstrated its unsuitability as a forum for discussing the conduct of a crisis. Few appeared aware of Karas's dilemma, except insofar as they could make party capital out of it. The opposition foreign affairs spokesman, Theo Diosias, remarked that ministers had shown a "grave dereliction of duty in putting themselves in a position where they're unable to make any response to the threat that has been mounted for the past three weeks." This was true, but the time was long past for pointing it out. Next, Giorgos Fotopoulos rose to reveal to the HP the details of his 1977 task force, supposedly a state secret. "While I do not press the minister on what is happening today," he said, "I trust that it is the same kind of action." Karas was now in a hopeless predicament. It was becoming politically impossible to deny the submarine force, but it was military folly to confirm it. MPs might as well publicly challenge the junta to get to Rhodes first. Ministers have since then argued that, from the time of the Cyclades, the climate in the HP ruled out strict "non-provocation" such as not moving Aegean Guardian from Rhodes. In this case, the HP bears partial responsibility for precipitating the early Turkish invasion.
The game of cat and mouse with Karas continued upstairs, at a meeting of the New Democrat backbench committee. Karas emphasized that he could add nothing to his HP statement. This proved no deterrent to right-wing MPs yearning for news of the Hellenic navy gloriously at sea. After the meeting, some of those present felt sufficiently reassured to nod the wink to certain lobby correspondents that indeed submarines appeared to have been sent. The fatal word appeared on the television news that night. It was reported as fact in the early editions of the morning newspapers. The information was flashed to Ankara where it confirmed rumors already current in top military circles. When a junior defense minister, Yannis Vallatos, called Karas's office to tell him of the leak, a member of Karas's staff felt physically sick at the news. The Hellenic Parliament, a citadel of secrecy when openness is needed and of partisan garrulity when discretion should be all, had turned a covert deterrent to invasion into a public invitation to one!
Before Charalambos departed for Israel, he had one matter to resolve with the Americans. On March 28, he sent a formal message to the Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, informing him of the danger of warships becoming involved in the Cyclades region and requesting his intercession with the junta. To his astonishment, he received a message from Haig's deputy, Walter Stoessel, pointing out that both Greece and Turkey were "good friends" of the USA and counseling caution. America's ambassador in Ankara, George Seignious, would nevertheless see what he could do. (Indeed, Seignious approached Duman that same Tuesday and was rebuffed.) By all accounts, Charalambos hit the roof. He summoned the US ambassador, Robert Strauss, and finding him absent delivered the rough edge of his tongue to his long-suffering number two Ed Streator. Charalambos told Streator to inform Haig that aggression had been perpetuated in the Eastern Mediterranean and the United States had better decide fast which side she was on. The skeleton of US perfidy over the actions of the Colonels was already rattling in the Foreign Ministry cupboard.
The tempo of the crisis now quickened. The news of the dispatch of submarines finally tightened the junta's finger on the invasion trigger. Erdogan's pride and joy, the carrier 29 Ekim, had already put to sea from Atatürk Limanı. On Tuesday a statement from the naval high command said the service was "in a high state of readiness," though for what wasn't mentioned. That night, the streets of Ankara erupted not to the exultant cries of war fever but to anti-government demonstrations and mob violence not seen in Turkey since before the military coup of 1976. It made the junta's decision final. As Yeni Akit had phonetically remarked 1 month earlier, "The only thing that can save this government is a war."764Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5RbvBwSw7Q
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Wednesday dawned with Greek intelligence poring over SIGINT from the Eastern Mediterranean. It indicated that the Turkish fleet was now at sea and moving into a position from which an assault on the Dodecanese was possible within 48 hours. A full assessment landed on Thanasis Karas's desk that afternoon. Charalambos went at once to Antonis Rizos at the Middle East desk. Neither needed any prompting to scrutinize it. Demas, who was at the HP, hurried along with the briefing papers to see the Prime Minister, who was also in her HP room. It was already early evening. Karas took identical action. He summoned Rizos and Koutsoumpas for their advice, then told Miron Lambrides---acting Foreign Minister in Charalambos's absence in Isreal---that he was going to see the Prime Minister immediately. Accompanied by Koutsoumpas, he walked over to the Maximos Mansion, only to find that Mrs. Karamanlis was at the HP, already closeted with Demas. They pursued her there.
From all over the HP that evening, the bees began to buzz around the hive of impending disaster. By 7:00, Mrs. Karamanlis's HP office contained Lillatos Demos and Daskalakis as well as Miron Lambrides. The prospective Foreign Office permanent secretary, Mr. Pavlos Spireas, attended as head of the MIA (in the process of handing over to Michail Zervelis). Mrs. Karamanlis's private secretary, Alekos Zurlotis, was there, and later her parliamentary private secretary, Thanasis Anthas. Demas's permanent secretary, Mr. Paris Stamou, was summoned from a dinner party. The Chief of the Navy, Fotis Andreadis, was a later arrival. Significant absentees were both Mr. Charalambos, in Tel Aviv, and the Chief of the Defense Staff, Mr. Leonidas Gabrotis, away on a visit to New Zealand. Gabrotis telephoned Athens each day during this crisis week to ask if he should return. Each time he was told it would only cause alarm for the Chief of the Defense Staff to cut short an official visit.
The Wednesday meeting lasted four hours. It reviewed the intelligence reports and debated at length the continued Foreign Office and MIA conviction that invasion was by no means a guarantee. At most, a submarine landing might be planned as a means of increasing the pressure on Greece in the Cyclades---a view communicated to Nestor Zavros in Rhodes. At any rate, if a full invasion was imminent, there was no possible Greek action that could stop it. Greece's best hope at this stage was diplomacy. The first decision was therefore to galvanize the Americans into putting pressure on Duman immediately and urgently.
That evening, the Greek ambassador to Washington, Mr. Giannis Stratas, duly called on Haig and Enders and sought to convince them of the seriousness of the position. He went armed with the Wednesday intelligence reports. The Americans were unaware of them (much to the subsequent satisfaction of Greek intelligence) and Haig asked his staff, "Why didn't anyone tell me about this?" He immediately set up a working group under Enders and alerted the White House that the Greek Prime Minister might be trying to reach the President. Mrs. Karamanlis's message was transmitted at 9 p.m. Athens time in the form of a telegraph requesting Reagan to get in touch with the Turkish President and warn him off Greek territory.
What if this approach should fail? Most of those gathered in Mrs. Karamanlis's room were men whose instants were to counsel caution. Miron Lambrides and the Foreign Office officials were of the view that since there was nothing Greece could do to avert an imminent invasion, she should at least avoid giving Ankara any excuse for one by provocative action. Lillatos Demas's position was more complex. An emotional man in a spare frame, he had never found it easy to state his view in the cabinet when there were powerful arguments on all sides. He gave his colleagues the impression of bottling his worries within himself and then suddenly letting them burst out, often at unpredictable moments. On this particular evening, he had before him a minute from the previous day's Defense Operations Executive (no relation to the service-oriented navy staff) highly skeptical of a Dodecanese expedition. He argued the logistical difficulties of the sort of operation necessary to retake the islands in the event of a Turkish occupation. More germane, he pointed out that, if the task force were sent, it would develop a momentum of its own which would be politically very difficult to halt. It was a major undertaking on which the chiefs of staff should take a view. Demas did not add that it was precisely the sort of "out-of-the-arena" operation that his naval review philosophy had sought to render impossible. Of those present at the start of the meeting, only Mrs. Karamanlis could be regarded as temperamentally averse to caution. But what could she alone do?
There now appeared a deus ex machina---and dressed for the part. The Chief of the Navy and Chief of the Navy Staff, Admiral Fotis Andreadis was announced by Thanasis Anthas. "(He's) waiting outside the door," Anthas had said. But why should he come in? Well, Andreadis was very much an admiral's admiral. Sharp, erect, and precise, he appeared in full naval uniform after a day spent fulfilling an official engagement in Thessaloniki (though with his helicopter in constant communication with Athens). He had arrived back at Amalias Avenue shortly after 6 p.m. to find Demas's Dodecanese briefing material on his desk together with the new intelligence reports. Fearful once again that his Minister of Interior was going to sell the navy short, Andreadis phoned Teresides to ascertain the state of contingency planning, picked up the suspect briefing papers, and strode along the corridor to Demas's office. Finding him already at the HP, he set off in pursuit, balked only by the policeman in the central lobby who proved to be no respecter of Chiefs of the Navy even in full regalia. Andreadis ended up waiting a full quarter of an hour in a junior whip's office while Demas was not found. Only when the news of his presence in the building was brought to Mrs. Karamanlis's notice was he asked to join the critical discussion. He was, after all, not the government's senior service advisor (who is the Chief of the Defense Staff) nor even the acting CDS, Mr. Nasos Rellotis, Chief of the Air Staff.
Most participants at the meeting agree that Andreadis's arrival made a marked difference in its tenor. Asked by the Prime Minister if he could mobilize a full task force and how soon, he replied that he could and by the weekend. he added that it had to be a balanced fleet, not just a little squadron, and it would require full logistical support. He also hazarded the wholly political view that, if a Turkish invasion did happen, the navy not only could but must respond. When the Prime Minister asked him, in terms of redolent to Good Queen Cleo, what his reaction would be to such a force was he the Turkish admiral, he replied, "I would return to port right away."
To his colleagues, Lillatos Demas seemed embarrassed to have this old man of the sea overriding his hesitancy so confidently---and with the Prime Minister hanging on every word. For his part, Andreadis would have been less than human if he did not revel in the irony of his position and the moral victory it represented over his adversary. It was a modern navy chief's prayer answered. The defense staff was now instructed to see if they could reinforce the garrisons on each island, Rhodes, in particular, urgently. The fleet was put on initial alert. No one yet dreamed that a task force would sail, let alone be used in anger. Demas's view at this stage, that a task force operation would be folly---appears to have prevailed, though he did not oppose the alert. Andreadis, however, had injected into the discussion two crucial elements: first, an instance that any task force would have to be a large one; and second, that it could and should be mobilized by the weekend.
Opinion differs as to how that Wednesday meeting might have gone had the Chief of the Defense Staff, Mr. Iason Kontotsis, had been there in place of Andreadis. Though himself a sailor, Mr. Kontosis was less consumed by naval politics than Andreadis and might have been more in tune with the strategic considerations taking the minds of Demas and the defense staff. This would surely have been the case with a non-naval Chief of the Defense Staff such as Mr. Gabrotis. As it was, Gabrotis was never consulted on the advisability of sending the task force, merely informed in New Zealand that it was being sent. Andreadis has argued that, throughout the preparatory phase of the task force, it was "exclusively a navy matter." Certainly, without his dynamism, it is unlikely that the fleet would have sailed so soon, and as a result more cautious counsels might have gained wider currency.
Late that night, the senior fighting commander of the Hellenic Marines, Brigadier Markos Manoglou, was telephoned at his home in Thessaloniki near the Marines' headquarters at Chania. He was told simply "I think you should know there is a problem on the Dodecanese." In light of the Cyclades incident, this did not come as a total surprise to Manoglou; indeed, he had discussed the matter with his brigade major the previous Sunday. Yet of his three operational infantry units, 45 Commando was at its base in Epirus, 42 Commando had just dispersed on leave after exercises in Portugal, and 40 Commando was training in northwest Greece. Since the last was the most accessible, its 600 men were ordered to return to Thessaloniki right away.
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The next morning saw a flurry of Amalias Avenue meetings. The cabinet's OD committee gathered to review both the intelligence and the military position. Daskalakis attending in place of Charalambos. His anxious state was enough to produce a comment among the Cabinet Office staff---still infused with MIA sang-froid---that he was grossly overreacting. At the Ministry of Defense, the chiefs of staff met to review Andreadis's proposals for the dispatch of the fleet. It's believed that, at this meeting, Mr. Andreas Ballas of the army expressed some reservations as did Mr. Nasos Rellotis of the air force. But the issue remained one of feasibility and that was a navy matter. Andreadis's contingency planning since Monday now stood him in good stead. As a senior ministry official remarked later, "Every one of Andreadis's commanders would have been shot if those ships had not been ready to sail by the weekend. Andreadis knew that not just the Dodecanese were at stake." Although both Ballas and Rellotis have since been scrupulously discreet, it's known that at this time they were communicating some disquiet about Andreadis's operation to their staffs. This, however, in no way diminished their subsequent commitment to providing the task force with maximum logical support.
At the same time and elsewhere in the ministry building, a Hellenic Marine generals' meeting was taking place, the first to be chaired by the corps' senior officer, Mr. Thalis Xenotis, since his return to duty after being seriously injured by a Turkish separatists' bomb on Cyprus. The Dodecanese were mentioned, though the subject was by no means top of the agenda. The issue of reinforcing the islands' garrisons was extremely complicated. There was no means of flying direct. The HAF's C-130 Hercules transports lacked mid-air refueling capability, and the only hope was perhaps to go via a friendly North African country, perhaps Tunisia, perhaps Egypt.
At various stages in the day, Brigadier Manoglou in Thessaloniki was ordered to alert and then stand down first the whole of 40 Commando, then one company, then one, and finally two air defense troops. However, by the day's end, the Ministry had abandoned the almost absurd attempt to convey men to the Eastern Mediterranean in a matter of hours. In service parlance, everyone was back "as you were." Manoglou's immediate superior, Major General Vlassis Primakis, traveled home from the ministry meeting to Thessaloniki thinking chiefly about his impending retirement and his search for a new job.
That evening, the group of ministers and officials who were later to form the core of the war cabinet gathered again in Mrs. Karamanlis's upstairs study at the Maximos. In addition to most of those present the night before, the Deputy Prime Minister, Silas Totiadis, was called in. Mr. Charalambos arrived back from Tel Aviv in the course of the evening. Mrs. Karamanlis herself hurried back from a planned visit to the Palace of Knossos. Intelligence reports indicated clearly that a big Turkish fleet was approaching Rhodes.
Phone calls were now made to and from Haig as Reagan's aides frantically tried to brief the President on his impending conversation with Duman----a conversation that had yet to be fixed. Ambassador Seignious in Ankara tried to prepare the ground for it with approaches to both Yilmaz-Kayas and Duman but got no response. Each Turk was convinced that, whatever Reagan might say for the record, the Americans would ultimately remain neutral in the dispute. Duman therefore had no desire for a discussion with Reagan which would be merely embarrassing.
The general evaded Reagan for four hours but eventually agreed to speak with him. The conversation lasted, with translation, for an hour. Reagan was at least effective in impressing upon Duman Greece's resolve to resist any invasion. He also told him that the USA could not have a conflict between two NATO member nations in the Eastern Mediterranean. He said Turkey would be the aggressor and any invasion would end the USA's good relations with Ankara. He added an offer of his Vice President, George Bush, as mediator. This was refused. Reagan's call must have given Duman a bad attack of cold feet. The Turkish President told Erdogan of the American message and the admiral is said to have replied, with the air of a practiced conspirator, that it was too late for second thoughts. His ships were already in formation just off the Dodecanese. He might have added, with Lady Macbeth, "Was hope drunk wherein you dress'd yourself!"
All attention in the Prime Minister's study concentrated on deciding Greece's response. As one participant put it, "We sensed a missile had already been launched; we could only wait to see where it might land." This time Lillatos Demas, following the meeting of his chiefs of staff that morning, presented a less hesitant message. He told the Prime Minister that since the previous evening, he had come to the view that such a task force should be Greece's response to any invasion. Andreadis, summoned from the ministry, was more than ready to confirm that view. Indeed, to many present, a task force already seemed the only garment with which they could cover their political nakedness should the unthinkable happen. The fleet was accordingly to be put on the fullest state of alert. Still, nobody seems to have believed that it would come to blows. Indeed, ministers' readiness to accede to the alert was partly conditioned by its unreality. There was no discussion of rules of engagement, strategy, or the likely balance of advantage against the Turkish fleet. As Fotis Andreadis was later to declare, although the creation of a task force was the product of a contingency plan, its deployment wasn't. "We had no plan for a campaign of this kind in the Eastern Mediterranean, nor for the reoccupation of the Dodecanese Islands," he told an HP select committee. At this stage, the task force was seen essentially as a show of force. This may go some way to explain one of the mysteries of the Wednesday and Thursday night meetings: why was there no consideration of a direct ultimatum to Ankara? Several anti-invasion Turks were later to complain bitterly that Greece had given the junta nothing but "come-on" signs for 90 days. Mrs. Karamalis had even left Turkish troops unmolested on the Cyclades. Now, as invasion approached, no indication whatsoever was signaled to Ankara that it would be met with massive retaliation. 764Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡghCzjESH8z
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In the early hours of Friday morning, as the Turkish navy was moving into positions off the eastern coasts of Megisti, Agathonissi, Arki, Lipsi, Patmos, Leros, Kalimnos, Simi, Rhodes, Karpathos, and Kassos Islands, the meeting at Maximos Mansion broke up, grim and deeply worried. Only one participant seems to have drawn any satisfaction from it. Fotis Andreadis returned directly to the naval operations room at the Ministry of Defense, where his staff were assembled and waiting for him. He issued a terse and confident directive.: "The task force is to be made ready and sailed." A signal was sent immediately to Siskeas in mid-Atlantic: he was ordered to "consolidate his task group," and "prepare covertly to head east." It's perhaps no more than a constitutional curiosity that at this stage such an expedition had been approved by neither the Greek cabinet nor the Hellenic Parliament. Nor indeed had the Turks yet invaded the Dodecanese. We are therefore tempted to quote Mr.Ballas: "It was strictly a matter for the navy."
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