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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Greek battleship Salamis

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article promoted by AustralianRupert (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 23:30, 11 November 2017 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

Greek battleship Salamis

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Nominator(s): Parsecboy (talk), The ed17 (talk)

Greek battleship Salamis (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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I wrote this article, originally, almost 8 years ago, but after substantially overhauling it (with help from Ed, with whom I'm sharing credit), I think it's ready for A-class (and hopefully FAC after that). This article is about a battleship (or battlecruiser, depending on who you ask) ordered by Greece from Germany during a small naval arms race with the Ottomans in the 1910s. The ship couldn't be completed after WWI broke out, and was the subject of postwar litigation between the shipbuilder and the Greek government. Proposals to finish the ship to counter the Turkish Yavuz came to nothing, and the contract dispute finally ended in 1932, in favor of the builder. Thanks to all who take the time to review the article! Parsecboy (talk) 13:18, 5 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

  • I found the lead caption a bit tough to parse - wondering whether there is a better phrasing possible
    • See how it's worded now.
  • File:Averof_Today2.jpg is sourced to itself - I'm guessing this should be own work?
    • Yeah, I would think so - fixed.
  • File:Early_Salamis_design.png: do we know Proceedings of what?
  • File:Battleship_Salamis.jpg: is an artist or earlier source credited in Conway's? Nikkimaria (talk) 20:40, 9 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments I find articles on the political-military-strategic stories behind armaments programs to be very interesting, and this is a particularly good example of the genre. I have only the following comments:

  • "The ship was to have had a top speed of 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph), higher than other battleships of the period, which has led to the ship to be sometimes described as a battlecruiser" - "the ship" is repeated in this sentence
    • Good catch.
  • "The Greek government selected neither firm's designs." - this is a bit awkward, especially as it seems that the Greek Government didn't order any ships at this time. Something like 'The Greek Government did not pursue these proposals" might be superior
    • Sounds better to me too.
  • Do the sources describe the scale of the financial burden of the naval arms race on the Greek Government? It must have been a huge commitment for a small, new and not very rich country. The article notes at various times that the program put pressure on the Greeks, but some figures around the extent of this would be helpful (eg, the proportion of the government budget or national GDP it represented, etc)
    • No, unfortunately not with any of those kinds of specifics. Fotakis does talk a little about the budget on page 35, but with the vagaries of Google Books, I can't see that page beyond what the snippet preview shows. I've requested it from the library, and hopefully that can add a little.
      • I've added a little, but Fotakis isn't very helpful when it comes to the budget - the best I could wring from him was that Greek finances were tight, but he doesn't give any numbers. And even if he did, it wouldn't have been very helpful, since the figures he does provide (like the cost of modernizing Salamis) are in drachmas, and the price we have for Salamis is in British pounds. Parsecboy (talk) 12:30, 29 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Salamis was 569 feet 11 inches (173.71 m) long...", etc, in the sub-sections of the Design section: it seems a bit odd to refer to the ship's characteristics in this way given that she was never completed. I'd suggest tweaking the tense.
    • Yeah, my thinking was since the hull was finished, the dimensions should be in past tense.
  • Can a citation be provided to support the identification of Salamis in the 'Unfinished battleship Salamis (far right) in Hamburg' photo? Nick-D (talk) 11:04, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Probably not, unfortunately - it's based on discussion, and while it's ORish, it's a reasonable conclusion - the other two hulls have been identified elsewhere and this one obviously isn't a Mackensen or Bayern, and there wasn't any other kind of dreadnought type ships under construction in Germany, let alone in Hamburg. Parsecboy (talk) 16:50, 15 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support My comments have now been addressed, and I'm pleased to support this nomination. Nick-D (talk) 11:04, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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  • Watch for rounding errors in your conversions
    • Think I've got them all - you'd think by now I'd have remembered that, but apparently not. I blame the fact that I originally wrote the article forever ago.
  • Need a link for caliber length and for magazine and monitor
    • All added.
  • Nicely done, but I'll make a second pass later to see if I notice anything else.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:50, 26 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Sturm. Parsecboy (talk) 20:36, 31 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Iazyges

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Perhaps "Which had significant effects on the First Balkan War and World War I."
"that" is better, grammatically
  • "In 1911, a constitutional change in Greece allowed the government to hire naval experts from other countries, which led to the arrival of a British naval mission."
Did the Greeks solicit this mission, or was it involved in the arrival, or did the mission just "show up""?
How does swapping "arrival" for "invitation" sound?
Sounds good. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 20:22, 31 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • " by ordering the ship's armor in the United States."
"In" the US, or "from" the US?
"From the US", to my mind, implies there was some government role in the purchase, but it was just from Bethlehem.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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