Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/German battleship Bismarck/archive1

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 not promoted by Ucucha 20:56, 28 January 2012 [1].

German battleship Bismarck[edit]

Nominator(s): Parsecboy (talk) 23:39, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Germany's most famous battleship, sunk on her maiden voyage after destroying HMS Hood. I completely rewrote this article in June, it passed GA in July, and just passed a MILHIST ACR (see here). I believe this article is at or very close to FA standards, and I look forward to working with reviewers to ensure that it exemplifies our best work. Thanks in advance to all who take the time to review the article. Parsecboy (talk) 23:39, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I feel silly, but could you double check to see if any sources give any indication that dazzle camouflage can be used against aircraft? Also check the source to confirm that's what it says? I'm afraid I don't at the moment have time to complete a review, but come back to me if this FAC languishes. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:31, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Huh, Bercuson and Herwig don't actually connect it with aircraft - I'm not sure why I thought they did. Thanks for making me check that. Parsecboy (talk) 12:17, 8 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by MisterBee1966 (talk · contribs)
- Christened by Dorothee (Dorothea) von Loewenfeld, daughter of Wilhelm von Bismarck, granddaughter of Otto von Bismarck, maybe worth mentioning her name? Hitler himself held the speech at the christening. All the other big shots like Göring were also present, there is a nice youTube video of the christening youTube
  - Grützner pager 145 MisterBee1966 (talk) 08:05, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Maybe also worth mentioning, while moored in Hamburg, she was embedded and engaged in the anti-aircraft defenses of Hamburg. She fired a couple of times without claiming any aircraft shot down.
  - This is from HRS, right? Do you have a page numbers for Hitler's speech and the Hamburg info? I don't know that von Loewenfeld's name is all that important, unless she's notable for some other reason apart from being Bismarck's granddaughter. Parsecboy (talk) 13:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- The crew structure and senior commanding officers are named and listed in Grützner page 149
  - Is there anything different from what's in the article already (i.e, division structure, Lütjens, Lindemann, and Schneider)?
- The different sea trials, test and traings are listed on page 153, they included (M.E.S), (S.V.K), (N.E.K.) and (E.K.K). I assume you are familiar with the German terminology for these tests?
  - Nope. What are the details?
- ~~Bismarck had a ship newspaper called Die Schiffsglocke (ship bell) Grützner page 166~~
- Bismarck's heavy guns were first test-fired in the second half of November, and Bismarck was shown to be a very stable gun platform. von Müllenheim-Rechberg pp. 44–45.
  - Added. Parsecboy (talk) 13:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Maybe explain and mention something about Bismarck's badge (not sure if this is the right term) which can be seen on this image File:Bb bismarck.png.

Source review - spotchecks not done. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Check alphabetization of references
Von Müllenheim or von Mullenheim?
FN 44, 59, 95, 124: formatting
Why give state for New York but not province for Toronto?
Be consistent in whether ISBNs are hyphenated or not. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Should all be fixed, thanks Nikki. Parsecboy (talk) 14:01, 10 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Vanguard displaced more at standard and at full load displacement.
What was the purpose of the radar sets? Gunnery, search, what?
Probably should inclose turret names in single quotes, just like we do for British turret names.
Explain/link L/52, etc.
Link sister ship, battlecruiser, destroyer, cruiser.
No cite for range.
Oil or coal-fired? More later.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:40, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Should all be addressed - thanks especially for pointing out Vanguard, I don't know how G&D missed that. Parsecboy (talk) 13:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Made a couple of small corrections. Bit about largest European battleship is still present in the Construction section.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:37, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Looks good. I had added a footnote in the Construction section to support the change, and then forgot to fix the wording. Thanks for catching that. Parsecboy (talk) 12:02, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not so sure that the fire from the 8-inch shell hit on Hood's boat deck was ever actually extinguished as she was sunk a few minutes later. See the cites to the Hood article for more info.

Don't forget this second round of comments.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 15:04, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

"Crashing" waves?
Either use HMS for each British ship or don't use it at all. Forex: light cruisers HMS Manchester, Birmingham, and Arethusa. My preference is not to use it as context makes it clear that these are British ships.
Link turbo-generator
It would probably be worth noting that Ensign Smith was on an exchange tour with the RN as the US wasn't yet at war with Germany.
From what I've read the stern torpedo hit by Ark Royal's Swordfish exploited a design flaw in the Bismarck and semi-collapsed the stern onto the rudders, jamming them into place. I can look through my sources, probably Means and White from the Hood article, if this isn't mentioned in any of yours.
Capitalize Schiffskanone in your note.
Don't remember about multiple destroyer torpedo attacks during the night. Should confirm this from another source as Garzke & Dulin's strength is in the technical description, not the operational account.
Might add that one shell, probably from Rodney, completely penetrated one turret (Bruno?) from front to rear and blew off the rear armor plate.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:32, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - "Hit the decks a'runnin', boys, and spin those guns around! 'Cause when we find the Bismarck we gotta cut her down!" - I grew up listening to that song, so to read the actual history of it is quite fun.

On my screen there is some text sandwiched between the 3-D image and the infobox at the beginning of the Construction section. Could we move the image down to prevent this?
- Moved down a paragraph - does that work now?
Construction, "titled Die Schiffsglocke (ship bell)." Should "ship bell" be capitalized, since it's a proper noun? And should be be "Ship's Bell?" The singular "ship" doesn't sound quite right to me.
Service history, "out-fitting process." Outfitting or fitting out?
Service history, "Scharnhorst-class" or "Scharnhorst class"?
Service history, "July–August." Change to "July or August"? July to August doesn't flow right.
Operation Rheinubung, "Raeder finally informed Hitler of the operation, who reluctantly gave his consent to continue the raid." Awkwardly worded, although I'm having a hard time thinking of a replacement right now.
File:Rheinuebung Karte.png should have an English description on the image page.
Subsequent expeditions, "A third, Anglo-American expedition in July 2001" I think there's a missing closing comma here.
I find it a bit odd that there is not even a mention of Sink the Bismarck! and Sink the Bismark (song) - both of which deal with the chase and sinking of the Bismark. I realize they're a bit pop-culture-ish, but I can't really think of very many ship battles that prompt songs that are still played on the radio over 50 years later...

Overall the article looks really good. These were all the issues I could find on a thorough reading, although I did not do spotchecks or look closely at all of the images. Dana boomer (talk) 20:57, 12 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

- Everything should be addressed, apart from the "Raeder finally informed..." line - it makes sense to me (but then I wrote it :). If Dank reviews the article, he might have a suggestion. Parsecboy (talk) 13:07, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - "By midnight, the force was in the open sea and headed toward the Arctic Ocean. At this time, Raeder finally informed Hitler of the operation, who reluctantly gave his consent to continue the raid.": How about this? "At midnight, when the force was in the open sea and headed toward the Arctic Ocean, Raeder finally disclosed the operation to Hitler, who reluctantly gave his consent to continue the raid." - Dank (push to talk) 05:04, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    - Dank, sorry for taking a couple of days to get back to this. Your version sounds better - it was the distance between "Hitler" and "who" that was causing my angst, and your solution is spot on. Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 19:26, 26 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Nice article. Read it for RW technical issues and general communication of the material. I found the battles sections hard to read/follow despite usually be good at such things. This is inherently challenging for complex battles, but it could use a bit more empathy for the reader in those areas, providing context for that large amount of detailed material presented there. IMHO the Operation Rheinübung and Battle of the Denmark Strait sections are each missing an intro sentence that says overall what those these things are...they just start in the with details as if everybody already knows. In the text the names of captains of large amout of secondary ships are mentioned but not (after the one initial intro) which side they are on. In other cases they refer to a ship without saying the ships name, just in essence, giving the captains name and saying "his ship" instead of the the name. (I know/assume that all of these were identified once) Those sections could possibly use a few higher level summary or explanatory statements to help the reader follow. Also suggest briefly explaining "citadel" when you use the word because the internal link really doesn't. These are just my opinions, feel free to use or ignore. Nice article. North8000 (talk) 12:28, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote the article essentially as one long, continuous narrative; the planning of Rheinübung is explain in the section before, and the last paragraph of the Rheinübung section sets up the Denmark Strait section. Perhaps a map of the Denmark Strait action would help, but I don't think we have one. What you're seeing with regards to the ship captains is the guideline (can't think of the link at the moment) that states individuals should be introduced once, and then referred to by their last name only afterward (no ranks, allegiance, etc.). In addition, it becomes extremely repetitive to say "Lütjens ordered Bismarck and Prinz Eugen..." every single time (and I sort of feel like by that far in the article, readers should be able to figure out the guy with umlauts in his name is German). As for higher level summaries in the sections, I really don't like the idea of breaking up the narrative, and one or two line summaries of the article are provided in the lead. Parsecboy (talk) 13:23, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. Regarding naming, I was speaking about things like a paragraph that starts with a sentence with "Tovey's two battleships" as the subject, but but nowhere does it say which two are his. Reading back farther I can see that he was aboard the King George, and reading elsewhere I found that that was a battleship. And reading elsewhere I read that the Rodney is a battleship, and in a recent paragraph it talked about the King George and the Rodney acting near each other. So the I eventually figured out that sentence was was probably referring to those two. That type of thing, On Rheinübung, I just meant that there is no sentence in there that says what operation Rheinübung is referring to. I looked in the Rheinübung article and now I know. You could just add something like: "The operation to have the Bismark interdict allied shipping was named Rheinübung " to resolve that. Sincerley, North8000 (talk) 18:44, 13 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

Why is "rendering" capitalized in the image caption? Also, the operation is italicized in a later caption - be consistent
- Fixed.
File:War_Ensign_of_Germany_1938-1945.svg: source?
- Does it really need a source? It's demonstrably PD. Asked the creator regardless.
File:Bismarck_reconnaissance.jpg: why the doubled tag?
- No idea - removed.
File:Rheinuebung_Karte.png: on what source(s) was this image based?
- Asked the creator.
  - Nothing yet...
File:Bismarck_victorious_attack.jpg: honestly, I'm not sure this image is helpful, as you can't really see anything in it
- I went back and forth on including the image in the first place - I think you're probably right.
File:HMS_Ark_Royal_h85716.jpg: can we use the actual navy/military tag instead?
- Is there one for the US NHC? I can't find one here or here.
File:HMS_Ark_Royal_swordfish.jpg: source link as currently configured will not work properly - if you're using that template, you need to just use the number
- Fixed.
File:Bundeswehr_Kreuz_Black.svg is tagged as lacking source and author info. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Asked the creator.
  - Should be fine now.

Oppose, 1a. It's a great piece of work for sure—please do not mistake my opposition for dislike of the material or research. It needs further editing and fit & finish before it reaches the necessary prose standards. I found lots of issues reading just through Service history. The issues obscure meaning in many instances—but more important, they make it difficult and thick.

Clarity: "Bismarck conducted only one offensive operation, codenamed Rheinübung, in May 1941." One operation in 1941?
- See how it reads now.
"was to break out into the Atlantic Ocean" Break out of what?
- Does removing "out" address the issue? I could explain that they were breaking out of the confined continental waters, but I feel like that makes the sentence too long and less focused.
"detected ... off Scandinavia" Is this normal language? Does "off Scandinavia" mean "near Scandinavia"? Or in Scandinavian waters?
- Yes, it's pretty common - you could say Costa Concordia ran aground off Isola del Giglio, for example.
"The destruction of Hood spurred a relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy with dozens of warships involved." Kludgy... "involving dozens of warships" would be more elegant.
- Yes it would.
"The Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg was awarded the contract, where the keel was laid on 1 July 1936." The keel was laid on the contract?
- Reworded
"Fitting-out out work followed her launch" Extra word?
- Fixed.
~~"yielded a maximum speed of 30.01 kn (55.58 km/h; 34.53 mph) on speed trials" In speed trials?~~
- No, the ship is 'on' trials when her speed was measured. During also works, but 'in' is inappropriate in this context. Bismarck is not a drug in trials.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:23, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"The first six divisions were assigned to the ship's armament, with divisions one through four for the main and secondary batteries and five and six manning the anti-aircraft guns." A frequent construction found in this article—but the "with" following the comma is extraneous.
- Removed.
"When Bismarck left port for the sortie into the Atlantic"
- Fixed.
"Bismarck hosted a visit by Captain Anders Forshell" Hosted the visit or hosted Forshell?
- Fixed.
" He returned to Sweden with a detailed description of the ship, which was subsequently leaked to Britain by pro-British elements in the Swedish Navy; this gave the Royal Navy its first full picture of the vessel, although it lacked specificity on important information, including top speed, radius of action, and displacement." Needs to be broken up and rewritten. By time we get to the vague "this" following the semi-colon, it's hard to follow. This what? Then, we have "although it lacked". What does "it" refer to? The picture? The description?
- See how it reads now.

--Laser brain (talk) 01:12, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the article did not benefit from Dank's keen eyes during the MILHIST ACR (I think a result of him taking on more work at FAC and less at ACR), though I hope he'll have a look shortly. Parsecboy (talk) 16:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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