Talk:Axis naval activity in Australian waters

Definition of 'Australian waters'

I have, arbitrarily, selected a very broad definition of 'Australian waters' as being the massive area which fell within the Australia Station, with the exclusion of the waters around New Guinea following the Japanese entry into the war. My rationale for this definition is that Australia's maritime area of responsibility stretched significantly beyond the Australian coastline. As such, actions such as the Japanese cruiser raid on the Aden-Fremantle route in early 1944 constitute 'activity in Australian waters' as this raid was targeting shipping heading to or from Australia (though this is about as far west as I think should fall into this entry). I propose excluding the Japanese actions in New Guinean waters as these operations formed part of the New Guinea campaign, which has its own entry.

There is, however, the question about how to treat Japanese attacks on convoys heading between Australia and New Guinea. I propose including these attacks in this article, though attacks on convoys heading between parts of New Guinea should be excluded. --Nick Dowling 01:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I think it's reasonable to adopt a broad definition, including some events mentioned on Japanese air attacks on Australia, 1942-43. But I don't think we should mention air attacks on ships by land based planes, which really belong at the other article. Grant65 | Talk 05:39, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. --Nick Dowling 09:36, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

Organisation of article

Nick, great work on this article. At the moment I'm thinking that it might be better to organise the article chronologically, rather than with the division into surface, aerial and submarine attacks. For example, if we end with the U-Boat activity in 1945, it gives a better idea of the ongoing nature of the threat, throughout the war. I think the list of ships sunk would be better at the end also, following the convention in other Wikipedia articles of having lists at the end. What do you think? Grant65 | Talk 12:18, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi Grant. That's an excellent suggestion. I've set up a possible lay out at User:Nick Dowling/sandbox - what do you think? I think that it's much easier to read and definetly highlights the continuing, but changing, threat Australia faced during the war. The only downsides are that list of ships sunk should be expanded to include those sunk by surface raiders and a bit of new introductory/linking text is needed. --Nick Dowling 10:45, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Yep, looks great to me. Grant65 | Talk 10:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, done. --Nick Dowling 11:44, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Submarine sunk off Victoria

There is a rumour of a submarine sunk by aircraft off SE victoria toward the end of the war, possibly axis, possibly allied. searches haven't found it as far as I know, but it's not mentioned in this article.

It's just a rumor - all the sources I consulted in writing my contributions to this article state that no Axis submarines were sunk off the east coast. The I-124 was the Australian military's only submarine 'kill' in Australian waters and she was sunk off Darwin. --Nick Dowling 09:58, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

HSK

The article uses an "HSK" prefix for German auxiliary cruisers (eg HSK Kormoran). Is this correct? I find no support here and it's not included in HSK. Folks at 137 15:57, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi 137, check HSK again -- it says "Hilfskreuzer or Handels-Stör-Kreuzer, a German term for Auxiliary cruiser". Grant65 | Talk 23:13, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Mea culpa!! Don't know what happened there, temporary blindness. There's still a point, 'tho' whether HSK should be used. My understanding is that, after WWI, German naval ships didn't use prefixes. I had to remove "DKM" and "KM" prefixes I'd added after being put right. Folks at 137 08:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

If you follow the link in the article, it goes to German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran. To explain: I created the Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran article, as distinct from articles about the two ships. My reasoning for the title was that the battle doesn't have a name because the closest landmark is unknown and "HSK Kormoran" was less wordy than German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran. If you Google " "HSK Kormoran" -wikipedia -site:wikipedia.org" there are 1,250 hits, which suggests that it isn't a term of my invention. Grant65 | Talk 10:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I didn't suggest it was. Just querying its validity. "KM" & "DKM" are also extant, but are definitely incorrect usage, as is "IJN". For all I know, "HSK" was used for other reasons - that's why I've raised it as a query here and here. Brevity still needs to be accurate; particularly in an A-class article. I'll dig a bit more, in case there's a definitive answer. Did a Google on "HSK Pinguin": found 183 hits. Did it again on HSK Pinguin (ie, unlinking the string) and got 15,400. Most hits pick up on HSK in isolation, used as a hull number - rather like the US CAnn, BBnn, etc and the German Znn for Zerstorer (destroyer). Also got 33,700 hits for Kormoran cruiser, ie with no HSK prefix and 520 for HSK Kormoran. Must get out more!Folks at 137 11:11, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The only reason I included the HSK prefix when I wrote that section of this article was that it was used on other Wikipedia articles concerning the ships. It's not used in the Australian Offical Histories though, so it probably should be removed if there's no consensus on this naming convention. --Nick Dowling 11:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

After thinking about it...HSK Kormoran is an abbreviation of Hilfskreuzer Kormoran i.e. "Auxiliary cruiser Kormoran", which is....the name of the Wikipedia article ( -"German").

A search of .de sites turned 213 hits for "Hilfskreuzer Kormoran" and 34 for "HSK Kormoran", so it seems to be an acceptable abbreviation, just as "AC" would be (by way of analogy) if it was a common English abbreviation for auxiliary cruiser. Grant65 | Talk 10:17, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a lot of debate about the "HSK" thing on the Sydney/Kormoran battle page. Basically, "HSK" is a prefix for a building number, it's not reflective of German naval practice, it's not an abbreviation of "Hilfskruezer" and it seems to be used entirely by Australian wikipedia contributors. There's no legitimate prefix for ANY Kriegsmarine naval vessel and the idea that the Hilfskreuzer should get a special one is highly suspect. It should go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.254.246.252 (talk) 16:53, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Headings

Nick, I went along with your reversion of my restucturing previously, but I still feel strongly it would be better to do away with the simple year headings ("1942", "1943", etc) and incorporate them into the other headings ("German surface raiders, 1939-41", "Early Japanese submarine patrols, 1942", "Japanese naval aviation attacks, 1942-43" etc). A simple division into years is not considered good practice in historical writing as (other than basic timelines) as the flow of events doesn't conform to calendar units.

That aside, it was a good idea to request peer review and I think the article is close to featured article quality. Grant65 | Talk 15:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Grant. I think that the single year level 2 (==) headings should be retained to make it very clear that these sections include all the Axis operations in Australian waters during these period. However, adding dates to all the other headings seems like a very good idea. I've had a go at doing this at: User:Nick Dowling/sandbox - what do you think? Due to the episodic nature of the Axis attacks against Australia I think that sticking to a conventional cronology is the best way to approach writing the article (eg, in broad terms, the Axis offensive against Australia was German suface raiders, then Japanese recon patrols, then Japanese air attacks, then the attacks on the East Coast, then the actions of Japanese raiders in the Indian Ocean and finally the 'U-862's cruise. --Nick Dowling 10:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I've just incorporated new headings with dates into the article. I think that they definetly make things clearer. --Nick Dowling 01:33, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

FA

I think this article is ready for FA nomination. Cla68 06:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I see that it has made FA. Well done Nick. Grant65 | Talk 17:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot Grant. Thanks also to everyone who voted and provided comments. --Nick Dowling 07:00, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Watermark removed

This is a copy of the original image with the watermark removed per request at the bottom of the page. Sadly, the image is locked because it's on the front page so I couldn't replace it. SteveBaker (talk) 04:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Dubious

"Orion entered Australian waters in the Coral Sea in August 1940 and closed to within 120 miles (190 km) north-east of Brisbane on 11 August"

Why in the world would a German warship, or for that matter, some Australian or New Zealand commentator, be using statute miles in this context?

Furthermore, is such this measurement really is expressed in those unconventional miles, they need to be explicitly and visibly disambiguated as such.

How does something like that slip through featured article review? Gene Nygaard (talk) 05:46, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Gene, the source probably wasn't clear on what type of miles they were, statute or nautical. When I was writing the Ehime Maru and USS Greeneville collision article, the sources often didn't specify which type of mile was being given. Cla68 (talk) 07:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The source for that part of the article is the Australian official history, which was written before Australia switched to metric measurements. The exact sentance in the official history was "On the 11th August Orion was 120 miles north-east of Brisbane". The book doesn't define what kind of miles these were. --Nick Dowling (talk) 07:56, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The book doesn't have to define what those miles are. Wikipedia editors using sources need to be able to interpret what they read, in order to do so effectively. Doing so often requires more than looking at an isolated sentence taken out of context.

But unlike the book, Wikipedia does define them, by including a conversion as if they were statute miles. The only real question before us is whether or not this Wikipedia definition is accurate.

I don't really think there is any serious doubt what those "miles" are, nor that they are improperly converted. If the same book talked about litres, I have no doubt that you and other Wikipedia editors would have no problem interpreting them, without the source explicitly saying what they were, as the dinky little Australian litres, where it takes 4.54 of them to make a gallon, rather than the hefty American liters, where only 3.78 of them are sufficient to make a gallon. ;-) In like manner, there is little serious doubt which miles would be used in a nautical context like this in an official document. 69.57.89.171 (talk) 12:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC) That was me, not logged in. Gene Nygaard (talk) 12:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Gene, I think Nick would indeed have done "more than looking at an isolated sentence taken out of context" in building this article. Having on my own account done a search on the entire chapter from which this citation is taken, as well as checking the book's preface, I can see nowhere that the author has defined 'miles' as either statute or nautical. In that absence I see no reason that we should not take 'mile' to most likely mean statute mile; in my experience, 'nautical miles' are generally expressed as such even in an obviously nautical context. I'd be in favour of removing the 'dubious' tag and letting the passage stand as is. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:35, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

No, nautical miles are most often not identified as such in a clearly nautical context. But in any case, even if you could show that these are indeed statute miles, then we need to explicitly identify them as such, because in this context many people will assume they are nautical miles. Furhtermore, unless you can show these are in fact statute miles, there's about a 90% chance that they are misconverted as if they were when they are not. Gene Nygaard (talk) 04:12, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Does it give distances in miles between fixed points (cities, islands, etc.) from which it can be determined what those miles are? Latitude and longitude? How about some figures such as x hours at y knots to cover a distance of z miles? Gene Nygaard (talk) 04:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

The source, which is very reliable, states that the ship was '120 miles' from Brisbane and includes a map which shows that she was near Brisbane, but not close (the book is online, so this can be verified). I've removed the conversion as this seems to have been the problem here. I've also been bold and removed the 'dubious' tag as placing it in the article made it look like you were disputing that the ship came this close to Brisbane. I'm happy to continue discussing this, but I'm not sure how we can resolve it without original research. --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:34, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

It is simply a matter of interpreting what your source is telling you, something we need to do all the time.

In this case, it isn't that hard to figure out what this book is telling you. All you need to do is to look at something like this on pages 51 and 53:[1]

• Australia's area of closest settlement was in the south-east and east of the continent, where major ports were most closely spaced, but even there, more than 500 miles in each case separated Adelaide from Melbourne, Melbourne from Sydney, and Sydney from Brisbane. In the west, Fremantle was 1,378 miles from Adelaide by sea, while the northern port of Darwin was distant 1,848 miles from Fremantle on the one hand, and 2,048 miles from its nearest major eastern port of Brisbane on the other.

Then go back and look at footnote 4 on page 47 and compare the numbers:

⁴Cairns to Brisbane 837 nautical miles.

Brisbane to Sydney 523 nautical miles.

Sydney to Melbourne 580 nautical miles.

Sydney to Hobart 633 nautical miles.

Melbourne to Adelaide 515 nautical miles.

Adelaide to Fremantle 1,378 nautical miles.

Cairns to Fremantle 3,067 nautical miles (north about).

and you can see that the book follows the normal, expected usage. Gene Nygaard (talk) 11:10, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Date of Italy entering WW2

The article gives the date of Italy's entry as 11 June 1940. The Italians would say it was 10 June 1940. Is the 11 June date Australian time? JMcC (talk) 19:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's correct. The reference (the Australian official history) states that "War with Italy began at 9 a .m. on 11th June Eastern Australian time". I've just tweaked the article to clarify that. Thank you for spotting it. --Nick Dowling (talk) 10:39, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to remove date-autoformatting

Dear fellow contributors

MOSNUM no longer encourages date autoformatting, having evolved over the past year or so from the mandatory to the optional after much discussion there and elsewhere of the disadvantages of the system. Related to this, MOSNUM prescribes rules for the raw formatting, irrespective of whether a date is autoformatted or not). MOSLINK and CONTEXT are consistent with this.

There are at least six disadvantages in using date-autoformatting, which I've capped here:

Disadvantages of date-autoformatting

• (1) In-house only

• (a) It works only for the WP "elite".
• (b) To our readers out there, it displays all-too-common inconsistencies in raw formatting in bright-blue underlined text, yet conceals them from WPians who are logged in and have chosen preferences.
• (c) It causes visitors to query why dates are bright-blue and underlined.

• (2) Avoids what are merely trivial differences

• (a) It is trivial whether the order is day–month or month–day. It is more trivial than color/colour and realise/realize, yet our consistency-within-article policy on spelling (WP:ENGVAR) has worked very well. English-speakers readily recognise both date formats; all dates after our signatures are international, and no one objects.

• (3) Colour-clutter: the bright-blue underlining of all dates

• (a) It dilutes the impact of high-value links.
• (b) It makes the text slightly harder to read.
• (c) It doesn't improve the appearance of the page.

• (4) Typos and misunderstood coding

• (a) There's a disappointing error-rate in keying in the auto-function; not bracketing the year, and enclosing the whole date in one set of brackets, are examples.
• (b) Once autoformatting is removed, mixtures of US and international formats are revealed in display mode, where they are much easier for WPians to pick up than in edit mode; so is the use of the wrong format in country-related articles.
• (c) Many WPians don't understand date-autoformatting—in particular, how if differs from ordinary linking; often it's applied simply because it's part of the furniture.

• (5) Edit-mode clutter

• (a) It's more work to enter an autoformatted date, and it doesn't make the edit-mode text any easier to read for subsequent editors.

• (6) Limited application

• (a) It's incompatible with date ranges ("January 3–9, 1998", or "3–9 January 1998", and "February–April 2006") and slashed dates ("the night of May 21/22", or "... 21/22 May").
• (b) By policy, we avoid date autoformatting in such places as quotations; the removal of autoformatting avoids this inconsistency.

Removal has generally been met with positive responses by editors. Does anyone object if I remove it from the main text in a few days’ time on a trial basis? The original input formatting would be seen by all WPians, not just the huge number of visitors; it would be plain, unobtrusive text, which would give greater prominence to the high-value links. Tony (talk) 13:23, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

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WP:URFA/2020A

Looking at this as part of the ongoing WP:URFA/2020 sweep of older featured articles. There's some uncited text in the Australia Station and Australian defences section, and from a quick look at the sources, I doubt that warsailors.com or bismarck-class.dk would be accepted at FAC these days, and combinedfleet and uboat.net aren't really preferable for FA level. I'm not particularly familiar with this subject - @Hawkeye7, Nick-D, and Peacemaker67: do any of y'all see any other content issues here? If not, this shouldn't be too hard to tune up, as the majority of the sourcing looks fine to my untrained eye. Hog Farm _Talk 21:20, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Also ozatwar.com and cofepow.org.uk. From the looks of the article history, Nick has been most involved in trying to bring it up to scratch. Definitely salvageable. I'd be happy to help. I'll start a list. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 22:06, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

List of points needing work to ensure retention as an FA

A non-exhaustive list, feel free to add:

• replace warsailors.com re: capture of Storstad (I'd be surprised if Gill didn't mention this), and the three sinkings by Michel Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:52, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
• replace bismarck-class.dk re: see what it adds to Gill regarding where India was sunk and where she was going at the time (I don't think this is a critical bit of info. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:52, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
• replace uboat.net re: the voyage of U-862 being the only u-boat to operate in the Pacific during the war
• replace combined fleet.com re: current consensus on the sinking of I-178

This proves to be problematic. Gill (p. 260) states that I-178 was sunk on 25 August 1943 southeast of the Solomons by USS Patterson, and cites a 1946 White Paper entitled German, Italian and Japanese U-boat Casualties during the War. While this is fine, it contradicts the information at combinedfleet.com. Perhaps @Parsecboy and Sturmvogel 66: have access to sources that clarify the sinking of I-178? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:43, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't think we're going to be able to nail it down definitively, but we can note the claims. There's a journal article listed at Japanese submarine I-178 that supports the Patterson claim, but presumably it covers others. Parsecboy (talk) 10:21, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I've tweaked the text to address this issue, I think. Combinedfleet is a reliable source and Gill is pretty elderly for sourcing disputed information on losses given the amount of subsequent research into the topic. Nick-D (talk) 01:27, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I actually think the Navy article by Crowhurst is far better than combinedfleet.com (it gives good detail of the RAAF claim and explains why the others are wrong). Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:33, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• replace ozatwar.com re: the Japanese landing party, surely this detail is mentioned in a clearly RS like the OH?
• replace cofepow.org.uk re: the fate of the passengers and crew of Behar and the subsequent war crimes trials
• the first para of the Casualties subsection has a lot of detail which can't be covered by the uboat.net citation (it also needs to be replaced), there is also an uncited sentence in dot point two.
  • Needs some more work, but should be a lot better now. It seems that no historian has ever bothered to come up with an estimate of the total casualties despite this probably being doable from the official histories so what I've been able to provide is fragmentary. Nick-D (talk) 05:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• fn 102 with the compiled figures is going to take some checking.
  • Removed Nick-D (talk) 05:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• the refs need to be alpha-ordered by surname, the Dr.'s taken out etc, generally needs a clean-up.
  • Done, and many thanks to GraemeLeggett
• there will probably be some web archiving to do
  • I've been able to salvage most of the references. Nick-D (talk) 05:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• a light c/e after the sourcing is fixed IOT improve the prose
  • Done, but further opinions on this would be great. Thanks also to AustralianRupert who's been plugging away on the prose to good effect. Nick-D (talk) 05:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• there is some image sandwiching

That's all I can see on a first run through. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 22:31, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Striking as I address things. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:58, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@Hog Farm and Peacemaker67: I've been kicking the work needed to get this up to modern FA standards down the road. I'll get cracking now. As a self assessment in addition to the points raised by Peacemaker, some issues to be fixed are:

• There's some unreferenced introductory material (which was considered OK at the time this was nominated for FA, but not OK now!)
• Too many images at times
• The casualty figures need to be completely reworked, as it's difficult to explain how I compiled them (...not sure I completely remember!) and better sources are now available.
• The way the references are presented is clearly not up to modern standards
• There's the usual range of eccentricities in the text for an elderly FA, so it needs a general copy edit to sort this out
• There hasn't been much new coverage of this topic since the article reached FA, and I have updated it in parts, but I'll need to re-check this.
• If sources support it, I'd like to add a section on the remembrance and historiography of this campaign. Nick-D (talk) 06:03, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Still working on this, which is tricky as there doesn't seem to be a central source on the military memorials. Nick-D (talk) 05:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

That sounds great, Nick. Let me know if you want any help? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:19, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd be really grateful if you could continue to plug away as you see fit, including covering any of the issues above: the article would definitely benefit from multiple sets of eyes and opinions! Nick-D (talk) 07:30, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• Lots of references, most of which half don't seem to be in use. GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:18, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I think that the unused ones have now either been removed or moved to the 'further reading' section. Nick-D (talk) 05:15, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I think that most of the issues noted above have now been addressed. Nick-D (talk) 05:14, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Great job, Nick. I'll give it a re-read and make any tweaks I see. Then we should be in a position to mark it as satisfactory for retention. Perhaps it could be run as TFA again soon? There are some suitable 80th anniversaries in 2022. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:35, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I've also added some material on the experiences of civilian sailors. I have some skin in the game on this topic (my granddad served in the Merchant Navy and survived the attack on the Allara), so would be grateful if other editors could review it. Nick-D (talk) 00:53, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

G'day, Nick, that addition looks good to me. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 02:35, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Once this is determined to be worked back up, could y'all consider marking it as satisfactory at WP:URFA/2020A? I'm quite busy in RL right now, so I might not be able to get back to this one for awhile. Hog Farm _Talk 02:50, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi Nick-D, I've been through now. Almost all minor stuff, but I did cut out a para and a pic about unarmed Italian liners. Put it back in if you wish, it didn't seem germane to Axis naval activity to me. I reckon it is adjacent to current FA standards now. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:43, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

PM, Nick-D, AR and Sturm, Hog Farm is traveling this week, so I will wait until he has more time to revisit before having a look towards adding my “S” mark, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:05, 5 January 2022 (UTC)