Talk:Sopwith Dolphin

Admiralross2400 01:58, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Anonymous reversion (Vandalism?)

I have re-reverted this - the "new" version contains many innaccuracies - such as that the fixed upward firing lewis guns on the dolphin were "flexible".

Anyone with any real issues with the article as it stands please list these here!!!

Soundofmusicals 00:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism, that's very amusing. Since I wrote most of this article, I am most interested to discover that my reversions are now vandalism.

Apparently I vandalized the article by writing that the Lewis guns were flexible. I am merely adding the points made by vandals J.M. Bruce and Norman Franks in their books. J.M. Bruce writes in "British Aeroplanes 1914-1918" that the Lewis guns "were capable of limited movement." In the specifications section, he writes that the Lewis guns "could be moved."

In "Dolphin and Snipe Aces Of World War I" Franks writes of the Lewis guns that "The pilot could fire these upwards from a fixed position or move either one in a similar way to guns fitted to the top wing of both the French Nieuport scouts of 1916-17 or the British SE 5 machines."

Your assertion is disproven. I'm well aware that you will attempt to claim that published sources are wrong, that photographs are retouched, that flexible guns are impractical, and that only you know the truth. Don't bother, I will NOT respond to your guesswork and theorizing. Again, Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research are among Wikipedia's core content policies. You apparently fail to comprehend that "The obligation to provide a reliable source lies with the editors wishing to include the material, not with those seeking to remove it." Your persistent efforts to add unverified, unsupported, and inaccurate content to various pages demonstrate that the only vandal here is you. M Van Houten 19:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

In the jargon of the day, "flexible" guns could be turned to fire in different directions. This was very obviously impossible with the Dolphin's guns mounted where they were. The Lewis gun mounted on a Nieuport or a S.E.5a was not considered "flexible", although it COULD be fired at different upward angles as well as directly forwards (unlike the Dolphin's Lewis guns, which could only be fired upwards). Incidentally I had no idea at the time that it was you who did the reversion, as your name was not in the history, presumably as you were not "logged in" at the time. Try to relax a bit please, initially you wrote to me quite reasonably about a revision I made to one of your articles, and I made what I thought was a sensible reply to it. It would have been fascinating to have been able to continue this discussion, as it is clear we share a passion about this period of aviation history.

My edits to this article (on the whole an excellent one, incidentally) were mostly improvements and clarifications to your English - the one or two that were actually material were not "assertions" but pretty well common sense.

And I never said you used retouched photos - just remarked that a photo you supplied to me just might have been retouched. Since the photo concerned is about ninety years old it was around for a long time before either of us so there was plenty of opportunity for others to have retouched it - retouching photos was very widespread at the time, and often (considering the crudity of the methods available) very neatly done. This was usually done for intelligence reasons - for instance to change or delete serial numbers. Many photographs of German WWI aircraft show signs of retouching for this reason, as full German serial numbers were quite revealing.

My main objection to the photo was not the posibilty that it might have been retouched anyway - but that it was of a squadron line up rather than a batch fresh from the factory, and therefore did not actually support the point you were making. There is a lot of clear evidence of this - for instance the individual pilots' markings.

"Original research" is one thing - but one does have to combine common sense and critically evaluate sources in the light of each other. Some sources are very plainly more reliable than others. In fact many books and articles on WWI aircraft are very plainly derived from each other (whole sentences and paragraphs being lifted or paraphrased). Others have statements that seem to originate in misinterpretation of an older, more reliable source. And above all, they contradict each other a lot - so the fact that a source is "published" does NOT indicate that it is necessarily right at all. In fact you made a point of rejecting what a very well known writer had to say yourself! (Not saying you were necessarily wrong either!!)

Chit-chat on a web forum - even if all the chatters were equally well informed (just to take one example) is not a reliable "source", either.

Soundofmusicals 11:13, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I can't pretend to the level of knowledge of you guys but generally I thought that the article was heading upwards on the quality scale, so recently I assessed it (maybe a bit prematurely) as a 'B' but I wouldn't want to change that. I still think its an excellent article, despite the technical differences you guys have between you. Maybe I should keep out of this but I'd love to see some WWI aircraft articles heading up the rankings; they have the potential to do so and the worth. From a UK perspective and with a personal interest, I'd really like to see the Sopwiths being part of that. Its strange that the 'talk' pages generate some 'lively' discussion (see also on the Camel) but there again, I guess its because the facts matter, particularly at the technical level which is appropriate to this type of material. I'm a bit out of my depth on this stuff but I'd like to wish you power to both your elbows and say that I appreciate what has been accomplished. Scoop100 20:44, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Prototypes

Currently there seems to be some dispute about which prototype respresented the final production state - while I am unsure what Bruce says in the 1961 Air Pictorial article, by 1969 in War Planes of the First World War:Volume 3, he was saying that the production Dolphins were "virtually identical with the fourth prototype". It does not state which prototype eliminated the cut-outs. Does anyone have any more definative sources?Nigel Ish (talk) 17:50, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Nigel, the cut-outs were only used on the second prototype. Mick Davis's book also says "A fourth prototype had been constructed and was of the form adopted by production machines." M Van Houten (talk) 18:01, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, in checking the references, you are correct because Bruce states the "fourth prototype was virtually the production form of the aircraft" although the third prototype was nearly identical, the only changes were in the rear top decking and a lowered and revised cockpit. My apologies for dragging on a very trivial point. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 18:58, 2 August 2009 (UTC).