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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Fusō-class battleship/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

This article was promoted by Ian Rose 10:01, 24 March 2013 (UTC) [1].[reply]

Fusō-class battleship

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Fusō-class battleship (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Dank, Sturmvogel 66 22:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For the FAC about the individual battleship, see WP:Featured article candidates/Japanese battleship Fusō/archive1.

Cam took this article to Milhist's A-class review a long time ago, but the current article is a substantial upgrade from that one. Sturm has thoroughly covered design and construction, and I've condensed the service histories from the work I recently did on Japanese battleship Fusō and Japanese battleship Yamashiro. Cam hasn't responded, so here we are. Both ships were sunk in the most dramatic battleship-on-battleship confrontation of World War II during the Battle of Leyte Gulf; one ship was long thought to have remained afloat and ablaze for an hour after splitting in two, defying the laws of physics and good sense, and the other bravely took on 6 battleships and 8 cruisers lying in wait, only to go down to torpedoes a few minutes later, taking her vice-admiral and almost all the crew down with her. I hope this is an engaging read, and we welcome your comments. - Dank (push to talk) 22:04, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a WikiCup nomination.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Comments - the article looks pretty good, just a bunch of nitpicks:
    • They were 4 heavy and 4 light cruisers, not 8 battlecruisers ;) I've fixed this in the article.
    • Might be worth noting these two ships were actually super-dreadnoughts
    • Is there a need to put "decisive battle" and "revolutionize" in quotes in the Background section?
    • Might be worth noting that all-big-gun battleships were known as "dreadnoughts" after the first one - the article talks about Dreadnought a couple of times and then about "Kawachi-class dreadnoughts" - the average reader might be confused by this.
    • Why "armor" and "draught"?
      • Because BritEng looks "normal" to me now and I didn't catch it ... which is sad. Fixed. - Dank (push to talk)
    • "the Miyahara boilers on each were replaced by six new Kanpon" - this is confusing. Did each set of turbines get 6 Kanpons (for a total of 12), or did each shaft get 6 (for a total of 24)?
    • The main guns were a Vickers design, so why did French design patents help with modernizing the guns?
      • They purchased the patents for autofrettage, which was more of a manufacturing advance than anything else. Deleted as pertinent only to the gun article.
    • Why are some guns given in Imperial, but others in metric?
      • Because the Japanese changed their designations from English units to metric in, IIRC, 1917 and I think that we've used metric for everything added after then. Do you think that it would be better to standardize everything in metric?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:11, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Might we use any photos showing their original configuration? File:Fuso trial.jpg, File:Yamashiro initial trial.jpg, or File:Yamashiro initial trial.jpg. In addition, the lead photo is pretty fuzzy, and I think it should be replaced with something cleaner looking.
    • File:Yamashiro Sparrow Hawk.jpg might be worth adding to the Aircraft section.
    • In the WWII section - " First Yamashiro, then Fusō, then Yamashiro again (on 4 October) - might it make more sense to simply state something along the lines of "the two ships alternated in the role of division flagship..."
    • "but she had been hit by two to four torpedoes, and after two more hits" - were these 2 more torpedo hits, or were they shell hits? Parsecboy (talk) 17:35, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comments Excellent, a nomination by Dank: time to run the red pen over his grammar! (joke!). Seriously, this article is in very good shape, and I have the following comments:

  • "Both patrolled briefly off the coast of China for one year before being placed in reserve at the war's end. In 1922 Yamashiro became the first battleship in the IJN to successfully launch aircraft." - if you're noting when they went into reserve you should note when they came out (presumably before 1922?)
  • On the topic of 'Both patrolled briefly off the coast of China for one year', the body of the article doesn't say that either ship spent a year off China.
  • "both were lost in the early hours of 25 October 1944 to American torpedoes and naval gunfire." - to be pedantic, one of the heavy cruisers which fired on the battleships (I think?) was Australian (HMAS Shropshire). An Australian destroyer (HMAS Arunta) also took part in the torpedo attacks, but I don't think that she scored any hits.
  • "in one big battle" - 'big' is a bit awkward in this context; how about 'major'?
  • Who designed the ships? The design section implies that there was a significant British contribution/influence, but who actually developed the plans is left unclear.
    • Is it clearer now?
      • A bit, but it still doesn't explicitly say who designed these ships (which is a common item of content for article on the BBs of other countries) - did an IJN team design the vessels, or did Japan have naval contractors do the work like the RN often did? (I'd be guessing the former). Nick-D (talk) 10:24, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Another complication was the need to fit extra insulation and air conditioning in the magazines of the amidships turrets to protect them from the heat generated in the adjacent boiler rooms.[21] Mounted amidships along the centerline of the ship, they had restricted arcs of fire,[13] and their position forced the boiler rooms to be placed in less than ideal locations." - the arcs of fire bit doesn't follow on from the previous sentence (about the magazines and boilers), meaning that this all is a bit confusing.
  • "In early 1941, the ship supported experiments with radio-controlled Kawanishi E7K2 floatplanes" - what did this support involve?
  • "the division sortied from Hashirajima to the Bonin Islands" - the word 'squadron' is used in the preceding sentence, with a note saying that Battleship Division is also used; please standardise on one or the other.
  • "the division set sail with the Aleutian Support Group,[48][49] commanded by Vice-Admiral Shirō Takasu." - did Takasu command the division (that word again!) or the entire support group?
  • You might want to note why the Japanese had resorted to the unusual practice of using battleships to transport troops around (eg, due to the heavy casualties which American submarines were inflicting on troop convoys)
    • If only the sources actually said that. The transport of the 25th Reg't seems to be a case of coinciding destinations, so I'm not sure that that was entirely true. Thanks for the review.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:05, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't know if this helps because it's just one incident and not in general, but Tully, p. 34, says: "Upon hearing of the invasion [of Saipan] on June 13, the Army Section of General Headquarters tried to reinforce the garrison by troop runs. Unfortunately for the Japanese, these were decimated by submarine attacks. Another way to transport the troops and equipment would have to be found." - Dank (push to talk) 11:15, 14 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Doesn't one of the other FAs on Japanese battleships discuss this? There's some material on this topic in Operation Kita, but that was later in the war. It was highly unusual to embark troops on battleships, and this wouldn't have been done only because the battleship happened to be heading in the right direction. The deployments to Truk in August and November 1943 appear to have been transport-only missions anyway (presumably related to the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign). Nick-D (talk) 10:24, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • Well, that one just deals with ferrying oil and a few oil workers. I've added a paragraph for you Nick ... it doesn't answer the question in general, but it does explain why Yamashiro came very close to being sacrificed for troop ferrying duties. It's the paragraph that starts "During the US invasion of Saipan". - Dank (push to talk) 14:09, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Tarakan Island in Borneo" - 'off Borneo' would work better IMO
    • Done.
  • "Yamashiro was ambushed" - 'ambushed' doesn't seem the right word given that Oldendorf was maneuvering in the centre of the straight and not attempting to hide at all. Nick-D (talk) 23:14, 13 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • As an extra point, can anything be said about why these ships were moved from training duties to active duties in 1944 (or even just some material explicitly stating this change in role) and how they were manned? (eg, did they keep their trainee crews?). Given that there's little on the IJN after Midway in the English language literature on the war this might not be possible. Nick-D (talk) 10:24, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • There paragraph I just added (mentioned above) answers one question of about how they wound up getting new roles. Tully says that it's not really known what the Leyte Gulf plan was, but Nishimura's wire (which I include) is one of the few clues we have: "We proceed till totally annihilated. I have definitely accomplished my mission as pre-arranged. Please rest assured." - Dank (push to talk) 14:14, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I strongly suspect that they were activated in '44 because Operation Sho-1 was intended as the decisive battle against the USN that the Japanese had been seeking all war and that every heavy ship was required. But I can't find anything that says specifically why the sisters were included, much less crew make up, etc.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:37, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support I've poked around looking for those details as well, but without any luck (if anyone reading this is a world class naval historian looking for a new project, writing a history of the IJN covering the period June 1942-August 1945 would fill a huge gap in the literature on World War II!). As such, I'm pleased to support this nomination. Nick-D (talk) 10:37, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Source review - spotchecks not done

Support with two minor comments:

Delegate comments

  • As is my standard practice, I'll be leaving this review open to see if we can get someone outside of MilHist/Ships to give it the once-over for accessibility to the wider audience.
    • I'm not sure if i'd qualify as the someone you are looking for, but I have had a bit of input in this/closely related articles and GA reviewed at least one of them from memory, I'm quite satisfied that the article meets all the FA Criteria and I feel it's prefectly accessible to a wider audience, if you have any questions on what I've said, feel free to ask ★★RetroLord★★ 12:44, 20 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Re. the footnotes without references, I can see they're not causing too much consternation but clearly they're raising some questions. While I appreciate they're there for the reader's benefit, and are obviously outside the main body of the article, some are, to my mind, a little problematic. #1, for instance, is a well-known fact to most people interested in military history, but the man in the street who doesn't know that might like a reference, and I wouldn't have thought it too hard to find one. In #3, the first sentence is reasonable editorialising for the reader's benefit, and can hardly be cited, but the second sentence's speculation seems less desirable. Similarly, in #4, I'd have thought we could stop after BatDiv, and lose the unreferecned speculation.
  • You have a few duplicate links that may be justifiable if there's enough prose between each, but pls review in any case with the script.

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:09, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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