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Contents 1 Possible dispatch? 1.1 Edit Break 2 Multiple articles for service history of USS Tennessee 3 Annnd the spotlight falls on ... USS Massachusetts (BB-59)! 4 Query 5 Breyer's Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905–1970 6 Battlecruisers? 7 Working groups 8 Netherlands 9 Armament 10 Armour specs 11 Roberts's Battlecruisers 12 Tiger class BC 13 Japanese battleship and battlecruiser pictures 14 KGV compared to North Carolina (Comparison sections redux) 15 French BC/BB designs of 1927/8 16 USS Illinois (BB-65) 17 Iowa class battleship Featured topic upkeep 18 Are they pre-dreadnoughts or ironclad warships? 19 Russian predreadnoughts 20 Conway's Eclipse of the Big Gun 21 General concepts 22 Spansih Battleship 23 Limit scope? 24 Dutch 1913 battleship proposal? 25 HMS Neptune 26 Early Austro-Hungarian ships 27 Invincible class battlecruisers for GT 28 Battleship cleanup via Ships project 29 French BC designs 30 Ship discovery and reliable sourcing 31 Hoax classes 32 Letters to those whom it may concern 33 Conway's Battleships: The Definitive Visual Reference to the World's All-Big-Gun Ships 34 Auto-Archiving?

[edit] Possible dispatch?

I've tried to cook something up in an old, forgotten sandbox of mine about our little project here. Can you guys take a look? User:The ed17/Sandbox2 —Ed (Talk • Say no to drama) 20:29, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

It looks good (though I am still not use to seeing my name in lights :) I made two small tweaks to the text, hope that was ok. Were you planning to get this out in The Bugle or The Signpost, or was it just meant as a sort of all hands request? TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 05:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Heh, apparently logging on now was a good idea—caught you just three minutes after your post. ;) Your tweaks were good. I included the South American battleships in case someone saw the post and wanted to counter systemic bias, I'll tweak that more now. I didn't even think of The Bugle because I got the idea from looking at your and Maralia's old Iowa WP Ships FT milestone dispatch. What do youguys think? Would it even be long enough for the Signpost? —Ed (Talk • Say no to drama) 05:12, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

One other thing: define "battleship"! ;) Looking at List_of_ships_of_the_Argentine_Navy#Battleships, I'm afraid I missed some? Or are they not 'true' battleships (only being described as such at the time)... —Ed (Talk • Say no to drama) 05:17, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

If you're going to include it on the signpost as opposed to the bugle, it might be better to include Parsec's work on the German battleships and you and Cam's work on the Japanese battleships. If we want to avoid systemic bias, maybe we should have all of them included (American, British, French, German, Italian, South America, Japanese, Austro-Hungarian, Russian). The British have one: HMS Royal Oak (08) is a FA as well (and it looks remarkably well for a March 2007 promotion!). Break the project out to the continents with the lists and roll it out via the Signpost. -MBK₀₀₄ 05:35, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

(ec)My definition of battleship has been anything above the "ironclad" classification - principally, therefore, we are looking at predreadnoughts and dreadnoughts. As for the signpost: I suggested that they may want to consider running a special page once a month titled "classifieds" so that we can put individual initiated projects like this can be brought to the attention of others on the sight who may be interested in participating. I suppose I could bounce the classifieds idea off Roger and see if anyone else thinks including that in the newsletter would be a good idea. And yeah, this is usually when I log onto wikipedia to check stuff cause the news is over and I am not tired, and I feel I have to do something education for a while :) TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 05:39, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

(@ MBK) - that's a really good idea; a piece highlighting the quality content that has come out of the maritime warfare TF articles would (I think?) make a good featured content dispatch—and it'd also be the first one since May, too. I'll try to get something written up tomorrow; in my mind right now it'll take the form of differentiated sections between countries with the article list(s) at the bottom. Having said that, I'm not sure that we want all of those article lists; first, that'd be long and probably disconcerting to a reader, and second, that's a lot of work to put together... maybe the lists should be omitted altogether in favor of links to User:TomStar81/Operation Majestic Titan#Where we stand?
(@ Tom) - OK, so pretty much anything after 1890-ish. I think that with MBK's idea, this will be able to make the Signpost outside of a 'classified' section; however, for the Bugle, either the current article, focusing on OMT, or your classifieds idea should suffice. (anything beyond OMT would overwhelm our poor newsletter, IMHO :). —Ed (Talk • Say no to drama) 07:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I think something in the Signpost/Bugle would be great. Just in case, I worked up a German list, and I added the BCs to it.

In regards to the Argentinian ships, Conway's 1860-1905 rates Almirante Brown as a central battery corvette and the Libertads as coastal defense ships. Neither fits in our project here. Though Chile appears to also have Capitan Prat, a pre-dreadnought launched in 1890 and scrapped circa 1935. Conway's has a bit, but not nearly enough for even a decent B-class article. Chile also had Constitucion and Libertad, though these were both bought by the UK and renamed HMS Swiftsure (1903) and HMS Triumph (1903), respectively. Parsecboy (talk) 12:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

See if SandyGeorgia (talk · contribs) would be willing to run a dispatch for the material, that I think would be our best avenue of aproach for the signpost, and our fastest route into the upcoming edition. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 13:52, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

If you're going to add the battlecruisers, then we need to as well for the French, British, Japanese and American listings. -MBK₀₀₄ 13:58, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Battlecruisers are actually apart of another operation I have in mind. For that matter, so are heavy cruisers. we can include them here, but be forewarned that I do intend to get all the bug gun ships up to featured, so they may get shuffled around when other operations start. Assuming of course that this one proves to be successful enough to warrant the creation of more ops :) Got class now, will be back on in a few hours; failing that, then this evening at some point. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 14:25, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I like BCs, but how about we keep them out of the dispatch and this page in favor of simplicity? The list(s) are going to be big enough as it is already. :-) I'll be happy to start a BC work group later tonight (after work...)

Parsec, you have 1860-1906? I'll add Capitan Prat to the list after work.

Oh, and Tom? Good luck getting all of the big-gun ships to FA by yourself. ;-) —Ed (Talk • Say no to drama) 15:45, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I suppose keeping the BCs and BBs separate makes sense. I suspect that in total, there will be fewer BCs than even just the American BB articles, and between Ed and me, we've got a significant chunk taken out (speaking of BCs, when are we going to take Amagi to FAC? It's been sitting lonely at A-class for months now! :P

Yeah, I broke down and ordered it a few months ago. I figure if my goal is to be a world-renowned naval historian, that's a good book to have :) Parsecboy (talk) 16:32, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

@ ed: I have no intention of getting all the big gun ships up to FA myself, I only plan on getting 51% up to FA status by myself; that way, I can claim I did the most amount of work ;-) TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 18:23, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

(@ Parsec) - you're probably right. Maybe we'll have to knock some of those off after some of these American BBs—I've been wanting to rewrite the Renown-class battlecruiser article for some time now, but I just don't have the necessary sources. There's 20 BC articles for the British, about ten(? at the ships of the Mackensen class) for the Germans, one for the Americans, six for the Japanese, three for the Russians/Soviets, and one for the Dutch. Then we'd have to debate about whether or not to count the 'large light cruisers' Glorious etc., the 'large cruiser' Alaskas, the 'Super Type A' B-65s and the 'not exactly sure what they are' Scharnhorsts.

Didn't I say that I was going to nom Amagi awhile ago (and never did?) If I remember this time, I'll nom it after Lexington-class battlecruiser's FAC.

(@ Gloryhog Tommyboy :) - not if I get 51% before you do! The problem, of course, is that you have a head start. ;-) —Ed (Talk • Say no to drama) 03:03, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Re: Japan: are we going to count the Tsukuba and Ibuki classes? I know the Japanese classified them as BCs, but I'm a little questioning of that; they only had 4 heavy guns like a pre-dreadnought armored cruiser. If so, that'll add another 6 articles for Japan. I'd say "yes" to Glorious and Courageous but "no" to Furious, since the former two actually saw service as BCs (2nd Helgoland) while Furious was converted almost immediately. As for the Mackensens, I think what may end up happening is redirecting the ship articles, like you did for the Lexingtons, so that'll cut down the number of articles for Germany.

Alrighty, that sounds good for Amagi. I've got Kaiser class battleship at FAC right now, otherwise I'd take it m'self. Parsecboy (talk) 11:07, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

←I'm adding in the tables for the other nations in Ed's Sandbox: User:The ed17/Sandbox2, but I know that I am omitting a few articles from Japan and I am also not putting the articles for the captured Russian battleships from Tsushima (they do have articles linked from List of ships of the Japanese Navy). Insomnia really does suck, at least I'll get to see Stage 20 of the Tour de France live... -MBK₀₀₄ 06:23, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't know anything about that; having been a night owl my whole life I am of the mind that being compelled to retire after the late edition of the news sucks. To each his own I guess, although I do wish you the best with your insomnia. On the bright side though, at least tommorow is a day that most get to sleep in, and if you are in that group then your inability to sleep now will be partially compensated for by your ability to sleep in later. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 06:41, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Tom. I'll go ahead and add to my error log, I have only added the dreadnoughts for Italy, the pre-dreadnoughts do not have articles, but I cannot tell which ones were pre- and which ones are ironclads on this list: List of Italian steam battleships. -MBK₀₀₄ 08:13, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Let me check Conway's 1860-1905. Parsecboy (talk) 11:07, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Alright, I've added the Italian pre-dreadnoughts to the list. Just a mental note, we still need Russia, but there's this list which should make it a bit easier. Parsecboy (talk) 11:22, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, as for Russia, don't forget about the UK as well. I was going to do those, but I fell asleep. I'm getting started on them now. -MBK₀₀₄ 17:51, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Britain done, now only Russia remains. -MBK₀₀₄ 22:36, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

And between Ed and myself, I think we have finished Russia, but one or two may have gotten through the cracks. -MBK₀₀₄ 03:21, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Edit Break

←Ok then. For ease of organization, do you guys want to leave a link to the tables in the sandbox out on the mainpage? It may help convey the overall scope and thus woo in people to help. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 03:32, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Now there are a few ships/classes we need to sort out:

• Lexington class battlecruiser & and the individual ship articles which probably merit redirecting (except for Saratoga and Lexington)
• Alaska class cruiser
• Sovietsky Soyuz class battleship - one ship article (redirect worthy)
• South Dakota class battleship (1920) - individual ship articles need to be redirected
• Design B-65 cruiser
• Deutschland class cruiser - they are "big-gun"
• Mackensen class battlecruiser - we need to decide if the individual ships are redirect worthy or not
• Tsukuba class cruiser & Ibuki class - Ed has raised concerns about their classification as battlecruisers
• Do we want to add a table for just Design 1047 battlecruiser
• HMS Glorious (77), HMS Courageous (50), and HMS Furious (47) + Glorious class aircraft carrier (no battlecruiser article exists contrary to the situation with Lexington class battlecruiser and Lexington class aircraft carrier)
• I also would like someone to take a look at the pre-dreadnoughts of Russia and Britain to see if I made a mistake or forgot some ships (which is a possibility).

We also need to figure out the logistics of all of this plus answer Tom's question at the top of this section. -MBK₀₀₄ 20:25, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

• Logistics should start with a discussion of how many of these tasks we want to run at the same time. I think it would be wise for us to finish major work on Majestic Titan before opening Operation Steel Talon (battlecruisers) or Operation Iron Sides (heavy cruisers) since running two or three major article development initiatives at the same time would be taxing on what little support we already have.—Preceding unsigned comment added by TomStar81 (talk • contribs) 21:04, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Well, to be honest here, I'll be helping in this effort, but I'll be jumping back-and-forth as I get bored with battleships or battlecruisers (whichever I am working on at the time). So I don't have an opinion on how many we should run. :-)
  • Re question at top: sure, why not? Gives people an idea of the scope of this project!
  • (@ MBK) - some opinions for you:
    • Lexington class should be in "Steel Talon", ship articles should not—they don't deal with the battlecruiser part enough
    • Deutschland - no...while they had big guns, their armor was nowhere near that of a capital ship
    • Mackensen - let's see what Parsec thinks
    • Tsukuba - Conway's 1906-21 says that they were classed as armored cruisers until being reclassified as BC's in '12 and then first class cruisers in '21; I'd say no, but let's see what other think. Both were armed with four 12" guns and had a top speed of 20.5 knots.
    • Design 1047 - Maybe an "other" table with three rows (one for country?) - would be able to add the South America ones in so everything most of it is organized by country
    • Alaska, B-65, Glorious etc. - though not 100% right, not including the first two would be worse. Glorious is another matter; they were classified as "large light cruisers" and had 3 inch armor. I think that a BC, at the least, should be able to withstand a light cruiser's fire... :-)
    • Russia's pre-dreads should be okay assuming the list Parsec linked to above is OK —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 23:49, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
      • For the Mackensens, I decided to just redirect them, since there isn't enough information on the individual ships to warrant their own articles. The German class articles are about done, only Ersatz Yorck class battlecruiser remains. Just to note, I transcluded my subpage list onto Ed's, so I wouldn't have to update both every time I improve another article. Parsecboy (talk) 14:54, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
    • Ok. Your welcome to add your lists pages to the main page here so others can see this is not limited to US built ships, if you want. Otherwise, thanks for the updating. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 16:12, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

<- Just to note, I redirected SMS Württemberg (1918) and SMS Sachsen (1916) (both unfinished Bayerns), so that's two less we have to do :) Parsecboy (talk) 21:04, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple articles for service history of USS Tennessee

I don't know what we want to do with this. USS Tennessee (BB-43) has quite a few subsidiary articles all linked from {{USS Tennessee (BB-43)}}:

• USS Tennessee (BB-43) 1941–1943
• USS Tennessee (BB-43) 1944
• USS Tennessee (BB-43) 1945

As far as I know, this is the only ship with this type of presentation. -MBK₀₀₄ 22:32, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

...yeah, this was brought up back in 2005. The guys writing for DANFS got intametly familar with Tenneessee for some reason, the best solution at the time was to break up the battleship's history into more managable sub articles and move from there. I'm still not exactly sure how to tackle this one; the additional information is awesome but the places to put that info are slim. Perhaps moving relevent info into battle articles would allow us to cut down on the extra pages, if not out right eliminate them, but I am open to other suggestions if anyone has them. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 22:38, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

A quick estimate of the total size of the three sub-articles is about 90kb worth of text, and the current main article is another 35kb, a good chunk of which is duplicated in the sub-articles. Even if we assume that only 10kb worth of the current article would be retained after merging them all together, that still puts us at 100kb, which is pretty huge. Surely there can be a good deal of trimming to bring the article to a better level of detail. For instance, the 1945 article has in the "Iwo Jima" During the afternoon, an OS2U Kingfisher seaplane from the cruiser Pensacola (CA-24) found a Japanese A6M Zero "Zeke" on its tail. The observation pilot, determined to put up all the fight he could, went at the fighter though his plane was much slower and less maneuverable, and armed only with one .30-caliber forward-firing machine gun plus a second flexible gun in the observer's cockpit. Against all the odds, the "Zeke" went down in flames. Why do we need to know this?

A significant deal of that portion of the article is about the invasion itself, not only Tennessee's participation in it. I could write articles about the German BBs just as long if I duplicated the contents of Battle of Jutland. I suspect the other sub articles have this same problem. If we cut out a lot of the unnecessary detail and move what useful parts there are to the battle articles, as MBK suggests, we should have a much more manageable "USS Tennessee (BB-43)". Parsecboy (talk) 01:15, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thats why one of the original idas batted around was to move content to the battle pages; as we do we can add sources to the battle articles, which in turn improves their readability. On the matter of cutting out unneeded material, I can go for that if others like the idea. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 01:19, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Annnd the spotlight falls on ... USS Massachusetts (BB-59)!

USS Massachusetts (BB-59) has been selected to receive the recently-reactivated Spotlight during the week of 1 August. Any help that could be offered would be greatly appreciated! Some sources available for use in expanding the article can be found here. Cheers, —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 05:53, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Query

Are we taking the wrong direction by attempting to run this off of working groups? Splitting it may seem like a good idea, but remember that one of the reasons why MILHIST is so successful is that it covers a big range of topics and so brings together many editors. Perhaps it would be easier to force recruit new members who can help us toward our goal if we utilized one central page where four of us comment semi-frequently rather than multiple working groups where we rarely comment? Did that make sense? I'm really tired ;) Will clarify if need be in the morning —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 05:51, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I understand what your saying, but there are two things to consider here: 1st, if we do run this off working groups then those working groups - subdivision of the task forces we run such as it is - will in fact have the all glory. And this page WILL shrink as we complete the work here on it and move the articles to working groups, until eventually like the sun we exhaust our article supply. At that point, we can discuss option for disbanding the working page. Remember that as large as this project is it would be almost a task force unto itself if we let it run that way, and that from a psychological perspective smaller clusters of articles seem more user friendly, hence the reason why I am encouraging people to break this down by working group. Another point to consider is that some editors may only join to edit specific articles like the Iowas, not the whole thing, so breaking it down into working groups of smaller size has the advantage of allowing people to work just on the task at hand. As always I am open to other people's take on the matter, I assumed that this would be the best method to employ so that the work would get done. TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 05:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Just a quick comment as I'm getting ready for bed, but I have to agree with Ed, I'm not a big fan of the working group set-up as it stands for this project and prefer having it all together like a task force. The talk page comment thing is exactly what I was thinking since the working group pages are literally dead and we are really getting the work done here. People can still choose to work on individual articles, but if some people would join only one working group thinking it was the only one but they have an interest in all of the ships, than the single big project concept would make sense. (I know that we are heavily linking these things together, but that still does not beat seeing all of the articles in tables on one page). The work will still get done, and we need to remember to do just that instead of quibbling about the set-up of this project constantly, so let's decide once and for all so we can get on with the goals of this project. -MBK₀₀₄ 06:09, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok, its 2:1 at this point. Lets give it 24 hours and if nothing changes we can see about combining everything. I suppose we will have to come up with an actual name now since working groups should not be named operation x or project y or so on in that pattern. Any ideas for name? TomStar81 (Talk • Some say ¥€$, I say NO) 06:26, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

We don't need to put a time limit on this, why don't you drop the question on Parsec and Cam's talk page and direct them here since they are impacted in this project as well, plus drop a reminder on Ed's since he started this discussion. (I'm not going to be here tomorrow due to some family events). -MBK₀₀₄ 03:53, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with everything MBK said. :-) Re Tom: I think 'Operation Majestic Titan' is actually pretty cool; it's certainly unique, and I would want to know more about it if I saw the name. Oh, and I will probably will not be on tomorrow either; I'm having four teeth pulled, followed by working three to eleven. :| —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 04:21, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

It doesn't really matter to me one way or the other. I do see an advantage to putting it all together, if only for motivational reasons. I don't know how you guys feel, but it makes it seem like we've got a better handle on the project when I see all the blue boxes (like in this version instead of this one). Parsecboy (talk) 11:13, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Breyer's Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905–1970

Just got this book today through inter-library loan. Anyone need any information from it? —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 05:35, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

If you've got the time, I rewrote Florida class battleship and Delaware class battleship over the past couple of days. Can you take a look and see if there's anything in Breyer that I've missed? Thanks. Parsecboy (talk) 19:08, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Ok, Floridas:

• Something about they were going to be armed with 8 14" before reverting beck to the 10 12" (p. 199)
• Florida was decommissioned 16 Feb 1931, "deleted" (struck?) 6 April 1931, "broken up until 20th September 1932 (p. 199)
• Utah was "deleted" (again, struck?) 13 November 1944 after attempts at salvage were met with "exceptional difficulties"; only a few 5 in and smaller weapons could be fished out. (p. 199)
• Building costs were about 6.5 million each. (p. 199)

Delawares:

• He's got a paragraph on their modifications post-WWI, not much though (p. 197)
• I think he says that funds for ND was authorized on 2 March 1907 (p. 196)
• Delaware apparently had a boiler explosion on 17 Jan 1911? It caused "moderate damage". (p. 196)
• Delaware was sold 5 Feb 1924 to the Boston Iron and Metal Company for breaking up—price was approximately $232,000
• ND was decommissioned 22 Nov 1923 and sold to the breakers on 16 March 1931. (p. 196) —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 03:45, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and Breyer covers all BBs and BCs from 1905–1970. Read: British, German, Japanese, Italian, Austro-Hungarian, Russian/Soviet, French, South American, Greek, Dutch, Spanish and Polish. So feel free to ask away on German ships too :-) —Ed (Talk • Contribs) 04:09, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Battlecruisers?

Was under the impression we were going to handle battlecruisers in a separate op later on, although if you guys want to include the battlecruisers in this op thats fine I guess, means more work but also more reward. TomStar81 (Talk) 05:52, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

There is enough overlap plus see this line from the lead of Dreadnought: "The term 'dreadnought' gradually dropped from use after World War I, as all battleships shared dreadnought characteristics; it can also be used to describe battlecruisers, the other type of ship resulting from the dreadnought revolution." -MBK₀₀₄ 05:57, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Considering both Ed and Parsec have been busy on the type I don't see why we shouldn't include them now since I thought the project was for all big-gun warships, i.e. pre-dreadnoughts, dreadnoughts, battlecruisers, fast battleships... (excluding the cruisers where another op could be made much like Ed's Large Cruiser project could evolve) -MBK₀₀₄ 05:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

(quadruple edit conflict) Fair enough. If you are going to pursue this angle though then we should merge both Steel Talon and Iron Sides into Majestic Titan, therefore I would move that this page be expanded to include heavy cruisers as well. Also, since we are relaunching this operation, should we also include light cruisers in this push? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd say lump the battlecruisers in with the battleships but keep the rest in a separate op to be run later, using which ever name you prefer, encompassing the Large cruisers that we haven't classified as battlecruisers, heavy and light cruisers of WWII and beyond with guns, armored cruisers and the light cruisers of WWI and before. -MBK₀₀₄ 06:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Alright then, we'll (tentatively) recycle Steel Talon for cruiser operation. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:16, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

(out) - Random thoughts of a sleep-deprived mind: I kinda liked this image with the quote.[1] It gave a whole sense of meaning to the name of the operation and seemed like a good inspiration. If MILHIST could live with a 300px image—like the lead image of an article—above the navbox, we should do it. —Ed (talk • contribs) 06:06, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

That is why I moved it to where I did, because I thought we should keep it, but still have the uniform appearance at the top of the page with the rest of the project-space pages within MILHIST. -MBK₀₀₄ 06:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I could create a paragraph or two explaining the origins of the name so we can add the image there. Would that work for everyone? TomStar81 (Talk) 06:10, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

@MBK - you had deleted it when I wrote that. :-)

@Tom - I like it. A lot. —Ed (talk • contribs) 16:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Ed, sorry to nit, but I moved it to the bottom, check the diff -MBK₀₀₄ 19:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Missed that. :-) —Ed (talk • contribs) 20:07, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

(out) - Just to note, when it eventually comes up, I've got a list of German WWI cruisers here. Parsecboy (talk) 10:53, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Working groups

Are you guys planning to merge Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Maritime warfare task force/Iowa class battleship and Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Maritime warfare task force/South Dakota class battleship back into this page at some point? Kirill ^[talk] [pf] 06:03, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd say yes, but let's wait for Tom's opinion before doing anything. —Ed (talk • contribs) 06:07, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

(quadruple edit conflict)I think this would be for the best. Originally, the idea was to run this off the working group concept, but since this now qualifies as a special project me thinks we should merge everything here and finally be done with it. I hate saying that seeing as how I put so many of you thorugh tech trouble trying to get the Iowa's out there into a working group, but I feel this for the best. TomStar81 (Talk) 06:08, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Netherlands

Hi all. I was going through my copy of Conway's All the World's Battleships to see if there were any that I missed, and the Netherlands apparently had a proposed class of dreadnoughts before WWI. The book doesn't give a name, however (nor for the 1047s Ed worked on either), so I haven't added it to the table. Has anyone come across any other references to this class? Parsecboy (talk) 01:13, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey Parsec, I added it to the table before I saw you say this. I made up a name ("Dutch 1913 battleship proposal", though "Dutch 1913 dreadnought proposal" would also work), but it would be really nice to have a design number or something instead. —Ed (talk • contribs) 01:33, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Cool. Perhaps eventually we'll find an actual name at some point. I checked Navweaps, and he didn't have any information on the 14" guns the ships were going to use. Parsecboy (talk) 11:43, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Armament

Should we begin tables for armament articles? Like 30.5 cm SK L/50 gun and BL 15 inch Mk I naval gun? Parsecboy (talk) 11:23, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Not at this time, I think. Not least because they would consist of most of the naval guns used by a particular navy. It's easy enough to poke around on the list of naval guns and see what's needed or to follow the links that we've (hopefully) been putting in the articles.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:37, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Armour specs

I'm in the middle of my rewrite of the Kongo class battlecruiser article in my sandbox, and I've got lots of info on each vessel, the propulsion, and the armament batteries of the ships. What I'm lacking, however, is detailed specs on the armour of the four fast battleships. I have thicknesses, but I don't have armour types. Ed, I know you found some great info on the armour of the Yamato class, but I don't want to assume that all Japanese battleships used the exact same armour types for everything. Does anyone have anything that has good info on Japanese battleship armour? Cam ^(Chat) 19:32, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

I have absolutely nothing (Axis and Neutral Battleships in World War II only covers the Yamatos), but you are certainly right to not assume that all of the armor was the same; I'm almost certain that it wasn't, not after the tests upon Tosa. Have you tried Cla68 (talk · contribs)? He has a lot on Japanese ships, so he might have something on the Kongo's armor. —Ed (talk • contribs) 20:43, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Given that even the Invincibles used KC and KNC armor, I really can't imagine that the Kongos used anything different. They certainly didn't used Harvey or any of the other old armor types.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:06, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Roberts's Battlecruisers

Just bought this book; it covers all the British battlecruisers built so I should be able to upgrade most of those articles to B-class or better. It's really good for design history stuff so I'll begin with the class articles, but I really don't have a lot on hand for WWI battles so I expect that I might need some help in fleshing out those sections to get them up to B-class. Just post a message on my talk page to avoid editing conflicts as happened when several of us were working on the Stalingrad-class BC article at the same time. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Alright. Sounds like a plan. I think Parsec has quite a bit of information on the naval battles of WWI, so I'd suggest asking him if you need further help with that. Cam ^(Chat) 22:36, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I certainly do; drop me a line on my talk page when you need help, Sturmvogel :) Parsecboy (talk) 22:58, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

I've cobbled together some accounts of the battles from Massie and some other stuff; enough so that it's good enough for B-class. They can be fleshed out when I nominate it for GA.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's certainly looking good so far. :-) —Ed (talk • contribs) 20:20, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Tiger class BC

There's a separate class article and an individual ship article for this ship; shouldn't they be merged? All of the other one ship classes just have one article on the ship itself. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:12, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

If you read the class article you will see that there was a second unit of the class planned but not built, which brings this class in-line with what is acceptable per Admiral class battlecruiser and HMS Hood (51). -MBK₀₀₄ 19:59, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Are we sure there was another planned? Conway's 1906–1921 doesn't list one and say "under the 1911–1912 Estimates there was provision for only one [battlecruiser], an improved Queen Mary." —Ed (talk • contribs) 21:47, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure, and although we can't use Massie as a source (because of the issues of no footnotes), he does mention in Castles of Steel of the second unit. -MBK₀₀₄ 21:54, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

There's no mention of a second ship in Roberts, and he gives the strong impression that only one was intended to be built, just like Queen Mary was the only BC of the 1910-11 Programme. He has nothing to say about any BC planned for the 1912–13 Programme that saw the QE's built. And given that they had the same speed as Invincible had it's easy to see why no BC was ordered. And considering that the QM's differences from the earlier Lions are fully covered by Roberts, I would take the lack of any such discussion for a sister to Tiger as prima facie evidence that no such proposal reached the design stage and thus isn't notable. Anybody got access to Burt's British BBs of WWI? That might might have a definitive answer.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

I'll ping Simon Harley (talk · contribs), our resident English naval historian. He should be able to give us a definitive answer. —Ed (talk • contribs) 15:57, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Breyer was writing a pile of s*** when he wrote about the mythical Leopard. You can't just plan a ship and expect not to pay for it. See a draft I did ages ago at User:Simon Harley/HMS Tiger (1913). As Sturmvogel says John Roberts doesn't give the idea credence in his BC book, and neither did Campbell in his monograph on WWI BCs. I could ask Roberts what he thinks (totally OR) and I imagine I would receive a whopping put-down for daring to mention it! --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 08:03, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying this. I hadn't though of looking through the Naval Estimates to see what had been actually planned as I'm not particularly knowledgeable in the British procurement process; I was going to look for copies of the relevant Brassey's on Google Books. Your sandbox article had some very useful material that should be included in the main article on this ship. Can I copy it once I'm ready to work on the article, or would you prefer to merge it into the article and let me fill out the rest of it? In the meantime I've put up merge tags on the Tiger article to give others the opportunity to comment.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:37, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

There was already an HMS Leopard (1897), a C class destroyer (1913) in service in WW1. best, Sunil060902 (talk) 12:42, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't necessarily prove make a difference. The pre-dreadnought New Zealand was renamed Zealandia so the name could be used for the battle cruiser, the same goes for the Revenge becoming Redoubtable for the dreadnought. The name would have had to be approved by the King anyway, and as far as I'm aware no one has uncovered from either the Royal Archives or Churchill's papers a mention of a Leopard. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 12:48, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Simon, that seems quite a definitive response! So, um, why hasn't the merge/redirect happened yet? best, Sunil060902 (talk) 18:56, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Done. :-) —Ed (talk • contribs) 19:42, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

(Outdent) By all means, take what you want and incorporate it. I was originally going to improve the article when I saw the statement claiming that Tiger was influenced by Kongo, a claim categorically denied by Roberts in his Warship articles. Alas, I get easily distracted, so use the information at your pleasure. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 18:11, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of Kongo... would you happen to have a ref for that? I'm currently helping Cam with User:Climie.ca/Sandbox/Kongo-class, and the current draft there states that Tiger was influenced by Kongo, referenced to Robert Jackson's The World's Great Battleships. —Ed (talk • contribs) 00:43, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

From Roberts, John Arthur (1978). Preston, Antony. ed. "The Design and Construction of the Battlecruiser TIGER". Warship Volume II (5): p. 2 and p. 4.  Roberts says that Tiger gained many more of her features from the Iron Duke class than from the Queen Mary upon which the initial design was based. He also states that there is only one mention of Kongo in the Ship's Cover on the design of Tiger, and this notes the addition of a 3-inch thick two foot six deep strake of armour below the main belt to heighten the side armour in Tiger to improve protection for the 6-inch battery. The Director of Naval Construction at the time explained that the Japanese regarded this feature "with great importance." This was, notes Roberts, being done to all Japanese armoured warships under construction, and not just Kongo.

This is what Roberts has to say about the claims of Tiger being based on Kongo:

“

Claims that the design of Tiger was heavily influenced by that of the Japanese ship seem to have been based on the similarity in appearance and the adoption of the same heavy secondary battery whereas, as can be seen from the above, these features resulted from entirely different considerations completely unconnected with the Kongo.

”

--Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 15:07, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Awesome. I'll add that information to the page; thank you very much! —Ed (talk • contribs) 16:27, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese battleship and battlecruiser pictures

Oda Mari has confirmed with a Japanese government official that all pre-war pictures of Imperial Japanese warships are public domain. I have a Japanese picture book with good pictures of most of the heavy ships of the IJN, so whenever someone starts work on one of those articles, please let me know and I'll try to get the pictures scanned and uploaded. Cla68 (talk) 06:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Do we still need a first publication date though? —Ed (talk • contribs) 15:15, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Based on what Oda Mari found, the first publication date does not appear to be necessary. Cla68 (talk) 02:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well that is cool. :-) Should we create a template for that—citing page 27 of the document he mentioned—on Commons for this situation? —Ed (talk • contribs) 02:40, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

That is a very good idea. Cla68 (talk) 02:42, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I've raised a query at their Village Pump[2]. —Ed (talk • contribs) 02:51, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] KGV compared to North Carolina (Comparison sections redux)

It is too bad that Tom isn't around since he is the only one left with the first hand knowledge of the wars that surrounded the comparison section in the Iowa class article. Now there is a proposal to place one in King George V class battleship (1939) which would also impact North Carolina class battleship (listen up Ed). See the talk page on KGV as well as this new article which needs a lot of help if it is to stay (and I am unconvinced): Comparison between HMS King George V and USS North Carolina -MBK₀₀₄ 00:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem, of course, with all comparisons between ships of different countries is that they are designed with varying goals in mind. For example, the Italian rebuilt First World War battleships and the Vittorio Veneto classs had good to great speed but low endurances because they were designed to operate in the small Mediterranean. On the other hand, earlier American battleships—pre-North Carolina—were designed with low speeds but extremely high endurance and good armor protection because they were meant to cross the Pacific to take on the Japanese fleet. My point here is that any comparison between two countries' ships is going to have large disparities because, while nominally the same type of ship, they are meant to fill different purposes. So it is with KGV and North Carolina; the former was designed to counter Germany's newer ships, but political compromises resulted in ten 14" (a far smaller broadside than other ships of the time) rather than 16" guns, while the latter was designed to counter a Japanese fast battleship class, the Kongo class, while still being able to fight in a battle line with the older, slower battleships. —Ed (talk • contribs) 01:24, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I left a comment on the talk page of the King George V class article. I think comparisons are fine if they are created as separate articles and clearly indicate why a comparison is appropriate. Cla68 (talk) 02:43, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison between HMS King George V and USS North Carolina. Comment if you get the chance. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:01, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] French BC/BB designs of 1927/8

Just got the new book on French Battleships 1922–1956 and it's got some interesting stuff on a French proposal for a 33,000t BC and a 27,000t BB variant in the late 20s. Design work was fairly well advanced, apparently in case resources and a need for new capital ships were found. Interestingly the designs were discarded once the details of the Panzerschiffen became known as they wouldn't have been a good match against them. Anybody else seen mention of these? Apparently they're a recent find in the French archives so this may well be the first publication.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:55, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946 has a very brief mention on page 255 ([3]); Allied Battleships in World War II has no reference to them. —Ed (talk • contribs) 21:50, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Wait, I lied. Allied Battleships has a bit on a late '20s design for a 17,500 LT "Croiseur de Combat" which was discarded with Germany's announcement that Deutschland was under construction, leading to the design of Dunkerque. —Ed (talk • contribs) 19:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I have it from John Jordan that any information on a 37,000 tonne ship (33 knot and 27 knot variants) or a 23,333 tonne protected cruiser is new and hasn't been published before. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 12:17, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] USS Illinois (BB-65)

I have absolutely no idea where they go their photos from, but Allied Battleships in World War II has four pictures of armor intended for Illinois on pp. 26–27, including the torpedo protection system, "communications tube[s] with 16-inch sides, and "tapered armor plates" from 1–12.2 inches thick. Can anyone somehow confirm where these are from? If they are U.S. Navy, it'd be really nice to add one or two of these to the article. —Ed (talk • contribs) 17:00, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Iowa class battleship Featured topic upkeep

Bringing a potential issue here before it becomes a real one... An inexperienced user, Ehbowen (talk · contribs) has created an article in his userpace that would complement the topic (User:Ehbowen/Iowa class battleship manning) but I do not feel as though it would meet the comprehensiveness and notability requirements as it currently stands. If the article is moved into the article namespace, then we would have three months to get the article to GA or else the topic is de-featured. Any suggestions for this, because frankly I am at a loss to see how this could be salvaged to a point to be properly published and if the user goes ahead and publishes it, I feel the topic will have zero chance at being able to remain featured which will be an extreme shame especially since we just went through a retention period to be able to get USS Missouri grounding incident added. Tom would definitely want to be notified of this, so I plan on sending him an email tomorrow. -MBK₀₀₄ 05:21, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Hey MBK, I saw that too. I think that for it be comprehensive, it would need a crew list for WWII too. Notability, though... I have no idea. I told him to e-mail Tom, so between all these we should be able to figure it out.

Speaking of upkeep though...USS Illinois (BB-65) and USS Kentucky (BB-66) are in need of a lot of work. I don't know what happened, but I found a surprisingly large amount of unreferenced material today when I went through them. —Ed (talk • contribs) 05:58, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I don't want to cause any trouble; I was responding to a request on the Iowa class battleship talk page. If someone has any concrete suggestions as to how the article could be brought up to standard, I will see if I am able to carry them out. If not and push comes to shove, I could delete it from Wikipedia and publish it as an addendum to my personal web site. If any editor feels that the information is worthy of note, he could link to it from one of the topic pages.Ehbowen (talk) 21:58, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

No no, please don't feel like you are causing trouble! I just have two concerns: first, that it may not be comprehensive in the sense that there is no WWII complement list, and second, that it may just be too detailed for an encyclopedic article. I could be wrong, however, so I'll ask for other opinions at WT:MILHIST. —Ed (talk • contribs) 23:06, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I think that with some work and re-organizing, that could be turned into a decent list-type page. I'll volunteer if needed. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 00:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Would it actually matter. If people made an FT by getting all the US presidents to FA, would it fail because heaps of Obama subarticles are already FA so all the others need their inauguration/campaign/policy subpages as FA as well? Aren't there some cyclones FTs where some of the cyclones have their own forks as well? YellowMonkey (bananabucket) 01:10, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, generally when a new article is created and falls within the scope of an existing series, there's a three month grace period to allow for people to re-unify the topic. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 01:28, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Are they pre-dreadnoughts or ironclad warships?

Brazilian battleship Riachuelo (1883) and Brazilian battleship Aquidabã. Also, if they are ironclad warships, should the articles be renamed? —Ed (talk • contribs) 01:55, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Conway's 1860-1905 calls them battleships in the header, but turret ships in the prose, which I think would fall into the category of ironclad warship. I think they should remain at "battleship", since at the time they were referred to as battleships, even though they don't fall into what we would today consider a proper turret battleship. Parsecboy (talk) 02:36, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Alright, thank you :-) —Ed (talk • contribs) 17:41, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Russian predreadnoughts

I started a class article on the Admiral Ushakov class and they're too small to be genuine predreadnoughts at less than 5000 tons, no matter what they were called. And when I started to look through Conway's I noticed a bunch of Russian battleships, 10,000 tons or larger, that weren't listed even though they're comparable to the British Admiral class ships. So I added them to the list. They need a bunch of work, but that's what we're all here for, right?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:39, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

How many coastal defence battleships ever fought in a line of battle though? I'd include the three Ushakovs just for that. Watts includes them in the category "Capital Ships" in his book on the Imperial Russian Navy. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 08:16, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Good point, I'd never considered that. But is it enough to justify inclusion? And if we include them should we include the slightly larger Gangut that ran aground a few years before Tsushima? The terminology of the time was often coast defense battleship or coastal armored ship so that's really no guide. Thoughts?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:15, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd be wary of including Gangut; the ship was armed with a single heavy gun, which doesn't really meet our criteria. It's classified as a barbette ship in Conway's 1860-1905, which doesn't come close to a battleship. The Ushakovs are classified as coast defense battleships in Conways. My opinion is that coast defense ships shouldn't be included, even if they did fight in the line of battle. Parsecboy (talk) 17:52, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Conway's Eclipse of the Big Gun

Has anybody seen this? I expect it a rehash of Brown's work on the RN, but what the coverage of other nation's ships like?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:27, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I have it, but have not looked at it in quite a while. I'll now go and pull it out of the bookshelf and take a look. -MBK₀₀₄ 05:51, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'll look tomorrow since it is past midnight and it is in another room (I don't want to wake everyone up). -MBK₀₀₄ 06:04, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I own this book. It has about 15 pages on BBs and BCs so is written at a high level, but seems to provide reasonable coverage to all the countries which operated these ships and includes some useful-looking analysis of BB/BC design, their relevance to war during the period and wartime performance. Nick-D (talk) 10:37, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] General concepts

Every time I come across your articles percolating upwards through the review system, I stop and smile, at the Olympian Hubris of the task of getting your titans all in a row. I check your article list, hoping to see fewer redlinks, and more high quality articles, and am happy. One thing I noticed your list doesn't include: general scope articles. Battleships of the United States for example, talking about the mentality of the Navy, the pressures dictating design, strategy, deployment, operation. I also don't see you boasting of the fact that Dreadnought, Pre-dreadnought and Battleship are all FA. (Their sister, Battlecruiser, doesn't yet bear that lofty award). Is there a scoping reason that you aren't dealing with these issues? Fifelfoo (talk) 08:44, 5 November 2009 (UTC) (forgot to sign)

Good question... as for the articles you've mentioned, The Land (talk · contribs) was been working on them for years (but he has gone semi-inactive) to build a featured topic via this template: {{BBhistory}}. -MBK₀₀₄ 09:03, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I just checked Battleships of the United States and its a list, not a discussion of design, strategy, function, etc that makes US battleships distinct from UK or JP or DE or RU/SU or IT... Fifelfoo (talk) 10:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia generally doesn't do that kind of thematic article well (if at all). Nick-D (talk) 11:00, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Its a known flaw. On the other hand... Military history is in many ways the premier project of the Humanities and Social Sciences. If anyone can start to get FA synthetic judgemental content going within wikipedia, I'd say the grogs could. In many ways you've handled the polemical (religion, nation, politics) issues better than other projects. And, despite being the most theory oriented kind of social historian, I have great respect for the concept and work of Majestic Titan. Obviously noone aims to gazump The Land's work. Fifelfoo (talk) 11:15, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

The more I think about this, the more I like the idea of such an article that Fifelfoo proposes, but it would be quite an undertaking and would likely be the largest FA on Wikipedia since for the US there were four different evolutions that were quite different from each other. The closest we have right now are Fast battleship and Standard type battleship. -MBK₀₀₄ on the iPhone 18:17, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Spansih Battleship

Arnt you guys forgetting to list the Spanish battleship Pelayo in the main list? XavierGreen (talk) 21:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Limit scope?

Question... should we start to focus exclusively on dreadnoughts and battlecruisers (since they are technically dreadnoughts as well)? I know Parsec has done a few and I have done one, but at the current pace, OMT's goal will come to fruition 50+ years from now. If we can narrow the scope to dreadnoughts, we have a smaller article base so that we might actually finish sometime in the next five–ten years in addition to the added benefit of a more-clearly defined topic (no debate about ironclad warships v. pre-dreadnoughts). —Ed (talk • contribs) 22:18, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Once Tom returns I have a feeling that the pace will increase, especially also once he graduates and has more time and the same will ring true for me since I've got only 25 hours left for my degree. -MBK₀₀₄ 23:35, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, but should we limit it to dreadnoughts anyway to set and reach a more reasonable goal before moving to the pre-dreadnoughts? :-) —Ed (talk • contribs) 23:40, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Same for me, in about 3 weeks the quarter at OSU will be over and I'll have applied for graduate school. I'll still have my Honors thesis to worry about, but I've got plenty of time for that. Once my schedule frees up a bit I'll be able to start working on articles again.

As for pre-dreadnoughts, I'd say leave them in. But maybe that's just my bias given that I've got a handful of pre-dread GAs and one A :) Parsecboy (talk) 23:48, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm of the mindset that pre-dreadnoughts should be cut from the scope, as should any and all battlecruisers built before the 1906 era. Incidentally, should we set that as the starting-date for "battleship/battlecruiser" so as to ensure a clearly-defined dividing line. I'm in the middle of several large IB papers at the moment, most of which should be done post Christmas-break. I'll have all kinds of time to work on OMT stuff in January once all of that is done. Oh, and for those of you in the British Commonwealth: enjoy Remembrance Day. If you're in the States: Enjoy Veteran's Day. Cam ^(Chat) 00:15, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Personally I'm not a fan of the pre-dreadnoughts, but I see no reason to delete them now. I'll probably build some of the Russian ones up to stubs just to have something other than a red link. But I think that the WWI contest might provide some people with motivation to work on all those ships. Hell, maybe we can even get Simon to move some of his draft material out of his sandbox and finish off some articles on British ships of the period. I do know that I'll start work on the Indefatigable class BCs once the WWI contest starts in a few hours.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Alas, if I focus on anything with the WWI contest it will be with Royal Navy flag officers - however, I've found my envisioned strategy is somewhat blunted because some ass-hole has created loads of s***ty stubs robbing me of new article points. I'm also away from all my sources other then Parkes - the best I could do is go through some of the British pre-dreadnought articles and sort out pageless references to British Battleships. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 12:46, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Dutch 1913 battleship proposal?

A Dutch 1913 battleship proposal article has recently been created, with the only reference being a link to http://books.google.com/ (though it's indicated that there's a ref to Conways to support it). Does anybody know anything about this proposal? Nick-D (talk) 09:29, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

The editor in question has also created 1913 battleship. This is what Conway's has to say (p. 363):

“

The Commission reported on 2 July 1913, and proposed building a new fleet for the Netherlands and her colonies to maintain neutrality and to defend the Indies against direct attacks. Nine battleships, each of 20,668 tons and 21 knots, should be built, five for the East Indies and four for home waters, in reserve, refitting etc … These recommendations caused a cabinet crisis, and, although approved by the government, which slightly enlarged the battleships specifications and invited detailed plans from foreign shipbuilders, no decisions to place orders or even on financing the scheme were taken before August 1914 killed it.

”

p. 366 has a projection of a 1914 Germania design for a battleship - presumably there's something like it in Breyer? Can't say the Royal Netherlands Navy is really my thing. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 09:50, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to spoil the fun, but I feel it is necessary. Nick and Simon, take a look at WP:NEWT and then this: User_talk:The_ed17#Redlinks_tell_all -MBK₀₀₄ on the iPhone 19:18, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Also, see above in the section titled "Netherlands": Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Maritime_warfare_task_force/Operation_Majestic_Titan#Netherlands -MBK₀₀₄ on the iPhone 19:23, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, have been offline. And yes, Slagschip (talk · contribs) is me. <simultaneous sheepish and evil grin> Just experiencing being a noob; I'd actually recommend trying WP:NEWT, as it's quite illuminating. Regards, —Ed (talk • contribs) 20:59, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

How does that differ from WP:BEANS or WP:SPIDERMAN? Nick-D (talk) 21:47, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand? —Ed (talk • contribs) 22:43, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Creating a new account to deliberately make dodgy-looking edits which other editors follow up on seems to be contributing to Wikipedia's problems rather than solving them. I just removed the prod tag someone had placed on this article as I assume that you're going to expand and reference it? ;) Nick-D (talk) 07:05, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

If the only design actually tendered was that by Germania in 1914, then surely it should be "Dutch 1914 Battleship Proposal"? --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 07:10, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

(out) - it's meant for new-page patrollers, not to net people with dodgy edits. ;-) I was trying to imitate a noob. Anyways, yes, I'm going to expand it in time, though it'll probably always be rather short. Not sure on the 1914 part, feel free to move it if you think it is right. —Ed (talk • contribs) 00:00, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] HMS Neptune

HMS Neptune is a single ship class. We should combine the class and individual ship articles, n'est-ce pas?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:43, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

If the WP articles are right and the Colossus class is normally separated from Neptune, then yep. :-) —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 17:58, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd say delete the class page, it's mostly unreferenced dross anyway (or easily refuted dross). --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 18:12, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

That's where I was leaning, but both Conway's and Burt list Colossus as a separate class.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:20, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Oops, I was referring to the Neptune class page. Colossus class is definitely a separate ship class. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 18:33, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Merged.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 07:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Early Austro-Hungarian ships

I just got a batch of Warship Internationals and one of them has an article on the A-H Monarch class ships. They're pretty consistently called coast defense ships there as well as by Conway's. And at 5600 tons it's hard to argue with them. The Kronzprinz class ships are called barbette ships by Conway's and have tonnages ranging between 5075 and 6830. I think that all of these really aren't pre-dreadnoughts and should be dropped from the project, which would leave the Habsburg class as the first A-H ships that we cover. What do y'all think?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:58, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Everything I've come across refers to the Monarchs as coast defense ships. And as for the two Kronprinzs, those are definitely not within our scope. As an aside, they're not even in the same class; Erzherzog Rudolf was significantly larger than Erzherzogin Stefani. I'd agree with the removal of everything older than the Habsburgs. Parsecboy (talk) 02:23, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Invincible class battlecruisers for GT

Prompted by MBK004, I've nominated the Invincible class battlecruisers for GT. Please feel free to comment on the nom at WP:GTC.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:20, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Battleship cleanup via Ships project

I'm dropping this note and then running. 12 articles under this project scope rated GA or higher have multiple issues. See list here. --Brad (talk) 05:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] French BC designs

Hi everybody. I was looking through the French section of Conway's this morning (I'm thinking about working on Bretagne-class battleship), and I noticed there's three BC proposals on page 200. It doesn't look like there's enough info to warrant three separate articles, but we could probably combine it into a 1913 French battlecruiser proprosals like the Dutch example. Thoughts? Parsecboy (talk) 13:36, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Combining them is the best bet, though I'd much prefer it if they'd been closer to choosing a single design. I'm not aware of any articles or books discussing these proposals so it's going to be very hard to get even a consolidated article past GA for lack of background information. Frankly I'm not in favor of these sorts of articles unless they were far more advanced in terms of designs, bids, etc. than is the case here.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:16, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Given that Conway's has entries on them, so should Wikipedia. I agree that a single entry would be best. I imagine that books and journal articles on French naval construction in the pre-World War I period will provide further information. Nick-D (talk) 03:01, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Ship discovery and reliable sourcing

The discovery of Japanese battleship Yamato was recently added to the article, which is an A-Class article. I have some pause about the reliability of the sources that were used for this. See the edit: [4]. Also, this new section as well as the text added to the lead could use some heavy-duty copyediting. -MBK₀₀₄ 04:27, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, at the least the added information and sources appear to be accurate, if not relible. No harm in leaving it in until Cam and/or I can source it all and add more. I may be able to rework it tonight, depending on how fast I can get some Minas Geraes and North Carolina stuff done. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 04:31, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

We could develop some standard guidelines for what to do about this though so that if other discoveries are made you can have a plan of action in place. That said, as Cam was the one who did most of the work I think it best to leave the new info in his hands. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:27, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

IMO that would just add instruction creep... —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 01:03, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree - the standard approach to this kind of edit is to replace unreliable sources with reliable ones where possible or remove the material outright if it can't be sourced. Nick-D (talk) 07:23, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I'll deal with this when I get back on the 4th. Cam ^(Chat) 20:13, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Hoax classes

I don't believe we ever made a decision about whether we were going to include planned classes which were hoaxes as part of the Cold War, the Soviets duped the western world with their K-1000 battleship. -MBK₀₀₄ 23:39, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really inclined to get into them, unless we can find a source that discusses the hoax and its impact on their opponents in detail. Simply trawling through Jane's and correlating entries by year doesn't seem to be a profitable use of our time, especially since it didn't seem to have much of an impact on ship and weapon programs, barring the fear-mongering used to justify them.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 00:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

I think they ought to be included, but as the class was a hoax, I'd put these ships under phase 4 of the operation. They were never really going to be built, but as demonstrated with the Montana class you can produce an FA out of an incompleted battleship class, and that is more or less what we have here. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:07, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Letters to those whom it may concern

I have been entertaining the idea of writing to the eight U.S. battleship museums to see if they can help us push some of these articles to FA status, and I have also thought about writing a letter to the U.S. Navy to see if we can get some assistance from them on matters like engine plants and armor specs. I wanted to bounce the idea off the rest of the members and see what everyone thought before going ahead with this though, while I think it could be a worthwhile endeavor and could help lay the ground work for museum displays like what the anthropology project has done it could also backfire on us if we are not careful. What do the rest of you think? Should we do this? TomStar81 (Talk) 00:04, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

That seems worthwhile, though you'd need to be careful about OR issues, of course. It's best to write to institutions on specific matters rather than asking for general assistance. Nick-D (talk) 00:14, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Just as general thoughts: for obvious reasons, these are all extremely busy people. I was in contact with one of the archivists there about a week ago trying to find a drawing of the North Carolina-class battleship's proposed "XVI-C" design and he remarked upon the time and money it took to digitize millions of records. I tried to get into contact with the SS United States Conservancy people about two weeks ago, but I never received a reply. It's obviously worth a shot, but it may be a mistake to hope for too much...

As for OR, I don't know if it would be too much of a problem. They could cite the original government documents that I am sure they hold in their possession much like IronShip (talk · contribs) and USS Texas (BB-35), which although they are primary sources, could be of immense benefit for specific infobox statistics, modernization modifications, battle damage and quoteboxes. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 03:01, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

There will be other considerations as well; for one, although present for the time the ships were in commission, the vets will unable to simply add there stories to the article unless they can produce paper work to that effect. Another point is that in the spirit of WP:SIZE we will have to decide how much of the material we get (if we get any) goes up and what gets filed away. All in all though ed, I think you hit the point right on: ask about specifics, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:14, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Conway's Battleships: The Definitive Visual Reference to the World's All-Big-Gun Ships

How useful is this if I've the three relevant volumes of Conway's?--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 06:27, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Auto-Archiving?

With Wernerbot offline at the moment I am interested in knowing whether anyone would object to having Mizabot pickup the slack. The bot already archives the main milhist talk page and the talk page for USS Constitution, so it shouldn't be too hard to configure this page for archiving as well. TomStar81 (Talk) 00:01, 27 December 2009 (UTC)