Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Western Australian emergency of March 1944/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.

The article was promoted by Laser brain via FACBot (talk) 16:17, 8 November 2018 [1].

Western Australian emergency of March 1944[edit]

Nominator(s): Nick-D (talk) 08:13, 1 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This article covers a little-remembered, but significant, incident during World War II. In March 1944 the Australian and US military leadership in the South West Pacific became concerned that a powerful Japanese naval force was headed for the important Western Australian port of Fremantle. In response, reinforcements were rushed to the area, several American and Dutch submarines put to sea and the city's air and coastal defences were placed on alert. The tension increased over several days, and on 10 March air raid sirens were sounded when what appeared to be an enemy aircraft was detected. However, it all soon proved to a false alarm. The only Japanese force at sea was a small group of warships which conducted an unsuccessful raid against Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean. Overall, the article provides an interesting insight into the strategic situation in early 1944, an example of the limitations of intelligence information, and a reminder that the war was not yet won.

I started this article in 2009, and greatly expanded it in 2016. It passed a GA review in early March this year, and an A-class review in April. It has since been expanded, and draws on all the relevant books I could locate at the National Library of Australia. I'm hopeful that the FA criteria are now met, and thank you in advance for your comments. Nick-D (talk) 08:13, 1 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments by Ian[edit]

  • Recusing coord duties, I reviewed/supported at MilHist ACR but have gone through again top to bottom -- as always, don't be shy about questioning elements of my copyedit; outstanding points:
    • "During early- to mid-March 1944" -- I think we could afford to simply say "In March 1944"; the current opening is a little fussy I think.
    • "It was thought that the purpose of any such raid would be to divert Allied forces away from the offensives they were preparing to launch in the Pacific." -- For the sake of the uninitiated, is "they" the Japanese or the Allies? In the context it could really be either.
      • I've tweaked the sentence to make this a bit clearer - does this look OK? Nick-D (talk) 09:27, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • I tried to simplify/clarify further after reviewing Odgers, see what you think. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:00, 4 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Source review
    • Links all work and formatting seems fine.
    • Generally no issues with reliability except re. Combinedfleet.com, I could see at least one of its contributors appeared to be a published author but I wouldn't mind getting your rationale for what makes it a reliable source.
      • Bio details of the site's contributors are at [2]. The site's managing editor is the author of two well-reviewed professionally published works on the Imperial Japanese Navy. One of the authors of the article cited (Bob Hackett) has served as an expert consultant on the IJN on multiple projects and written professionally-published articles on the topic. The website, including the records of ship histories such as that cited here, has also been used as a reference in multiple professionally-published works on the Pacific War [3]. Nick-D (talk) 09:27, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Image review
    • Links all work.
    • Licences appear satisfactory.
  • Structure is straightforward and the level of detail is appropriate IMO. A caveat is that I'm fairly familiar with this event so may take for granted things that might not be so obvious to the lay reader.

Well done as usual Nick. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:34, 2 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks a lot Ian Nick-D (talk) 09:27, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I commented pretty early so have run through changes since then and made only a couple of tweaks -- happy to support. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:11, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Hahnchen[edit]

  • Do sources actually call this incident the "Western Australian Emergency"? I understand "emergency" as a conflict, or a response to conflict. In this case, nothing happened. We should not be declaring an emergency when it is a false alarm. - hahnchen 23:12, 4 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • There isn't a consistent name for these events in the sources, with the main sources (the Australian official history of the war) not naming it at all. I picked this name as "emergency" is used in some sources and it seemed to best reflect what occurred. Some sources also use "scare", but this doesn't capture the fact that the highest levels of the Australian and US militaries regarded it as a genuine emergency at the time, with the response reflecting this (Gill notes that Rear-Admiral Christie referred to it as having been a "threat" in a letter written soon after the events). Remember that intelligence information is often partial and governments need to take precautionary action. Nick-D (talk) 09:55, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • The point I'm making is that is a false alarm. There may be an emergency response to a false alarm, but that in itself is not an emergency. I think "scare" would be a better term. If the main sources do not name it at all, then I don't think the event is significant enough for Wikipedia to term it an emergency. - hahnchen 11:38, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • "Scare" implies some kind of panic, which none of the sources support. Nick-D (talk) 22:36, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • I think an emergency can be as much about perception as reality, and in this case the urgent measures taken seem consistent with describing it as an emergency, even though those measures ultimately proved unnecessary. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:50, 5 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • Then just call it a false alarm. I don't think "scare" implies panic any more so than "emergency", and does not imply some formal state of emergency. The article title should reflect reality, not perception. If I call the fire brigade with a hoax call, the response is exactly consistent with an emergency, only it isn't an emergency at all. - hahnchen 00:23, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
              • No sources use that term. There was in fact a formal emergency, with the Australian and US militaries activating pre-prepared plans to reinforce WA and activate its defences (as described in the article). Nick-D (talk) 00:26, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
                • "The article title should reflect reality, not perception" -- sorry, I find that comment a bit simplistic. The perception relates to how authorities saw the situation at the time; as Nick notes, they took emergency measures based on that perception, and those measures were certainly real. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:13, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
                  • The emergency services would respond to a hoax call as if it were an emergency, that does not make it an emergency. Considering an emergency in the context of military history, the first thing that comes to mind is the Mau Mau Uprising which is on a completely different scale, with the government declaring a formal state of emergency. Nick notes the events are not significant enough to be named in the main sources. Using the term "alert" or "mobilisation" instead of emergency would be more in line with NPOV and OR policies. - hahnchen 13:52, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
                    • The events are significant - they are covered by several pages in the official histories and discussed in a number of other works. There just isn't a dominant name. No sources use "alert" or "mobilisation". Nick-D (talk) 22:02, 6 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
                      • Alert was taken from The Western Australian (who also use "scare"), and the official history preceding the threat quote. The current article title confuses an emergency response (such as the emergency response to a hoax call) with an actual emergency. There isn't a dominant name, so pick one that doesn't. - hahnchen 12:19, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Hawkeye7[edit]

Looks pretty good. Some comments:

  • 154 submarines made 341 combat patrols from the port The reader might infer from the foregoing that these were all US submarines, but some were British and Dutch.
    • Good point - I've noted when the Dutch and British arrived. This makes sense of why Dutch subs were lurking of Rottnest island later in the article. Nick-D (talk) 01:19, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) militia personnel The reader might infer that the VDC was part of the Militia. Suggest changing "militia" to "part-time"
  • General Headquarters directed General George Kenney should be Lieutenant General George Kenney
  • The two US Navy submarine tenders based at Fremantle were sailed to Albany Suggest deleting "were"
  • The commander of the raiding force and Tone's captain were convicted of this crime after the war and imprisoned. Not sure what's going on here. The commander of the raiding force was Rear Admiral Naomasa Sakonju. He wasn't imprisoned; he was hanged.[4] (Tone's captain, already mentioned in the article, was Haruo Mayuzumi [ja]. He was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment in 1947 but was released in 1951.)
    • Given that I did most of the work on the GA on the raid, I shouldn't have got that wrong! I've removed the penalty as it's not really relevant to this article. Nick-D (talk) 01:19, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • fn 29 should be pp. 388-390
  • Link Stanley Kirby in the references.
  • Link Indian Ocean (since you've linked the Pacific)
  • Fighter aircraft is linked in "Japanese redeployments" but is first used in the previous section
  • Just a suggestion: I would move the ships over to the right and the map to the left, so the ships were sailing into the article.
    • I take your point, but that would mean that all the images are on the right-hand side. Moving the map to the LHS to offset this looks a bit odd to me (especially as it uses portrait dimensions, so is long). Nick-D (talk) 01:19, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:35, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks a lot for these comments Nick-D (talk) 01:19, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments by JennyOz[edit]

Hi Nick, some minor suggestions/questions...

  • Infobox pic caption "One of the anti-aircraft guns assigned to the defence of Fremantle during a training exercise in November 1943" - possibly add comma after Fremantle?
  • augmented the Australian forces, and conducted - is that comma necessary?
  • conduct raids into the Indian Ocean - south into?
    • There was concern that they could have headed west and attacked Ceylon or the Bay of Bengal. Nick-D (talk) 10:39, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • east towards Surabaya.[18][13][19] - ref order
  • improve the area's defences.[18][13] - ref order
  • East Indies on 16 March.[17][16] - ref order
  • Perth - no dab needed?
    • No, the result of the large Perth RM a few years ago was that the Australian city ended up as Perth. Nick-D (talk) 10:39, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • in which he stated while - insert 'that' after 'stated'?
    • Thanks, that reads better Nick-D (talk) 10:39, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perth–Fremantle v Fremantle–Perth - intentional?
    • Not at all - I've standardised on "Perth–Fremantle" Nick-D (talk) 10:39, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. 452 and 457 Squadrons - Nos?
  • Blair book, Silent Victory : - is space before colon intentional?

Thanks, JennyOz (talk) 05:18, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks for these comments Jenny. As a note, I'm going to be out of town until the weekend and won't be able to monitor this review until then I'm afraid. Nick-D (talk) 10:39, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • We can remove the Perth dab? I'm happy to support (and that the emergency didn't turn into the 'Western Australian attack of March 1944.' Regards, JennyOz (talk) 10:51, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments by Kaiser matias[edit]

  • "These included six Royal Australian Air Force flying squadrons." This feels like a sentence fragment to me, and I'm wondering if it could maybe be added to the subsequent sentence, with a semi-colon replacing the period, or something else?
    • That would make the previous sentence over-complicated, and I think it's considered good practice to have a mix of long and short sentences. The six squadrons were the main reinforcements dispatched. Nick-D (talk) 08:31, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • ..."and most units were stood down..." This may be my unfamiliarity with military terminology, but this phrase seems odd. Is there another way to state they were not on (what I presume to be) high alert? Or is it acceptable wording?
    • I think that that term is quite widely used? Nick-D (talk) 08:31, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sidepoint: neat to see the Pacific theatre with the Japanese territory in white and Allied in red; seems most maps have it the otherway around.
  • "...eventually became the US Navy's second-largest submarine base." Would it be worth noting what the largest one is, if only to clarify that it is the largest base globally, or just in Australia?
    • Done - Pearl Harbor was the only larger base Nick-D (talk) 08:31, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • "...which stated that while Japanese forces could conduct raids against Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean: "it is not thought that serious danger..." Is a colon appropriate here? Feel that should be a comma.
  • "...six hours, rather than the normal warning time of 24 hours." I thought there was something in MOS:NUMERAL regarding mixing spelt out numbers and numerals, but it doesn't seem like it. Either way seems it should be consistent with one or the other (either 6 and 24, or six and twenty-four).
  • "The commander of the raiding force, Vice Admiral Naomasa Sakonju, and Tone's captain were convicted of this crime after the war." Would it be relevant to note that they (or Sakonju at least) were executed for this?
    • As noted in response to earlier comments, I don't think that's relevant to this article. The GA on the raid covers it. Nick-D (talk) 08:31, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not a lot to go over, more questions and clarifications on my end. Interesting article overall. Kaiser matias (talk) 22:33, 21 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good to me, please with the explanations and the article as a whole. Kaiser matias (talk) 23:35, 22 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you again for reviewing the article. Nick-D (talk) 10:25, 23 October 2018 (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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