Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Operation Mascot

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

Article promoted Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:57, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Operation Mascot[edit]

Nominator(s): Nick-D (talk)

This article covers an large, and totally unsuccessful, Royal Navy air strike on the German battleship Tirpitz on 17 July 1944. While it's a fairly short article for an A-class nominee, not a great deal has been written about this operation, most likely as it did not produce any significant results.

I developed this article as a follow-on to the Operation Tungsten article and I think that it provides an interesting insight into the nuts and bolts of World War II-era carrier warfare where major raids were conduct almost routinely but were often frustrated by combinations of bad weather, bad luck and bad aircraft (the latter being the single most important factor here). The article passed a GA nomination a couple of weeks ago and has been subsequently expanded. Thanks in advance for your comments. Nick-D (talk) 10:45, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Not a huge article, but it's nice to see a smaller, but no less interesting, subject here. I'd say this easily A-class material and would probably do well at FAC, but it wouldn't be a proper review without a couple of quibbles:
- "of 20 Fairey Barracuda dive bombers escorted by 40 fighters were not detected during their flights to Kaafjord and managed to hit the battleship with 15 bombs"—Do we need the "managed"? It strikes me as editorialising.
  - That's a good point: removed. Nick-D (talk) 09:25, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- "The commander of the Home Fleet at the time, Vice Admiral Bruce Fraser"—Isn't "at the time" redundant? I see what you're trying to do with Moore as the "new" commander, but would it be better to remove both and go with "Admiral Sir Henry Moor, who took over from Fraser as commander of the Home Fleet", and perhaps the date he took over?
  - Also a good point, and I've made this change. Nick-D (talk) 09:25, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your comments Nick-D (talk) 09:25, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support w. comments:

Happy with prose and structure after copyediting but of course let me know if you disagree w. anything. Minor point: In Submarine actions, all links to U-boats except U-968 are duplicates.
- Fixed Nick-D (talk) 03:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Knowing your talent and reliability re. research I'm taking the content largely as read. One query: 44 Barracudas took off on the raid, 2 spotted Tirpitz, 37 others aimed at her gun flashes, and 3 seem to have attacked other targets -- that leaves 2 unaccounted for or is my arithmetic wrong? I mean, I wouldn't normally expect you to account for every aircraft but since so many are it tends to make those 2 stand out by their absence... ;-)
- The reference unfortunately has the same problem: Brown 1977 is the only source which gives numbers for the number of Barracudas which attacked each target, but he leaves these two aircraft unaccounted for. I've tried to be a bit vauge, but there's not much I can do (I suspect that the missing two planes are the pair which weren't armed with the expensive and rare 1,600 pound bombs, and as a result they weren't included in whatever Brown's source was as the results of their bombing was of less interest). Nick-D (talk) 03:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - Understood, no prob. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:55, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Image licensing looks fine to me. Re. presentation, I know you tend to leave the default image size alone but I think the first pic of Tirpitz in the fjord could stand being a fair bit larger, say with an upright parameter to make it proportionally larger rather than a fixed size; I use a decent-sized (14-inch) widescreen and the ship is invisible to me. Less of a problem but the Barracuda image might also benefit from being larger, as the plane seems to get a bit lost in the background.
- I've bumped up the image sizes: does this look better?
  - Better, I can see Tirpitz now...! FYI, I'd use "upright=1.2", which comes out about 260px and I've gathered is better as a proportional increase rather than a fixed size but won't make a fuss... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:55, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - I just tried that, and it looks a bit better - thanks. Nick-D (talk) 04:38, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Referencing generally looks good but is uboats.net really considered a reliable site?
- Yep: it's often referenced in recent books on the Battle of the Atlantic and has been used in various FAs. Nick-D (talk) 03:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - Okay, fair enough. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:55, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:22, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your comments and tweaks to the article (especially fixing all those awful spelling mistakes...) Nick-D (talk) 03:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- No prob, good work as usual... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:55, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support with comments:

Wolf Junge is mentioned in the infobox as the German commander involved in this operation. However the article does not address in what role he commanded the German forces. I assume as commander of Tirpitz?
- Yes, that's right. None of the sources actually describe him (or any other German for that matter) as having a role during the raid, but he was the CO. Nick-D (talk) 03:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - How about making this clear as a footnote or as a relative clause such as Tirpitz, commanded by Kapitän zur See Wolf Junge? MisterBee1966 (talk) 09:49, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    - That's a good idea: done Nick-D (talk) 10:31, 11 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
disambiguation links checked no action required

Good to go MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:35, 6 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your comments Nick-D (talk) 03:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support - excellent article Nick. The only suggestion I'd make is to replace the uboat.net citations with page 350 of Rohwer's Chronology of the War at Sea - the full ref can be found in the Tirpitz article. Parsecboy (talk) 19:57, 11 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support on prose per standard disclaimer. I would link to my edits, but there weren't any. - Dank (push to talk) 13:13, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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