Talk:Bombing of Tan Son Nhut Air Base/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Sp33dyphil ^{"Ad astra"} 02:51, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Initial impression.

Very well written and informative.

Lead

• de-cap "Bombing".
• wikify North and South Vietnamese, reconnaissance, Presidential Palace and A-37.
• not sure, but "forth" is mispelled.
• "following the withdrawal of the United States military in 1973" replace with "following the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973"
  • I have implemented your first suggestions for the lead section.Canpark (talk) 08:01, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Background

• " to avoid being hit by anti-aircraft missiles", from what I've learnt previously, it's either "surface-to-air missiles", or "anti-aircraft artillery".

• • Fixed. I used 'surface-to-air missiles' instead.

Prelude

• "and made preparations for" --> "and prepared for"
• "On April 1 Quy Nhon" comma after 1.

• Both fixed.

Attach on TSN

• "Soviet-made MiG-17 fighter" remove "-made"
• "U.S. fighter-bomber" plural s?

• • Fixed.

Images and formatting

• Please provide alt text for images. See WP:ALT

• Done.

• In "Notes" section, books are publications, such as "Tambini, p.28", must have the year of publication following the last name of author(s). For example AUTHOR SURNAME YEAR OF PUBLICATION, PAGE (RANGE). Note that there's a space between "p." and the page numbers.

• Done.

• In "References", the years of publication should precede publisher, instead of being next to title in brackets.

• • I used the standard Wikipedia reference template so I don't feel the need to implement this suggestion.Canpark (talk) 12:45, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Strong oppose to GA assessment and status. Article as it stands is factually incorrect (attack was on Tan Son Nhut Air Base not Tan Son Nhut Airport), poorly written (e.g. a sentence should never start with "And"), inadequately cross-referenced (e.g. Phu Cat Air Base has its own page), references are improperly cited (e.g. Van Tien Dung's surname is Dung not Van as stated in the Reference list) and the losses arising from the attack are impossible to substantiate, North Vietnamese accounts of South Vietnamese losses being notoriously unreliable. Even if the article is cleaned up, it doesn't warrant having its own page for the reasons given in detail below. Mztourist (talk) 09:22, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

• Personally I don't feel the need to justify anything with anti-Vietnamese history police here on Wikipedia, but this really push my nerve. Firstly, the spelling of "Tan Son Nhat" is more widely used Vietnam, and both spelling are acceptable as you will find on Google search. Today the sign above that airport uses the words "Tan Son Nhat International Airport"; we Vietnamese don't need non-Vietnamese to teach us our own language. Secondly, "Van" is the General's family name, so in Western standards that is his surname but you can disagree as much as you like. You can say Vietnamese accounts are "notoriously unreliable" and I can say the same things about U.S. and Australian accounts of the conflict, which can often read like a script from a Rambo movie (eg. Operation Ivory Coast, U.S. claims 58 dead VPA soldiers after firing a few shots in the dark! Talking about "notoriously unreliable"!). I don't force North Vietnamese figures down the audiences' throat like the gospel truth, hence why I use the term "the North Vietnamese claim". You may not consider this a notable event from your seat in a Western country, but in Vietnam it means something as the first successful bombing operation of the VPAF, and that alone is good enough to have its own article. After all, the Vietnamese perspective on the war is virtually unknown here in the West so how could you decide what is a notable event and what is not? Most of the events which occurred after the U.S. withdrawal are not widely documented in Western histories, therefore not notable, but does that make everything that happened between 1973 and 1975 not notable and not worthy of an independent article? Again, you can disagree as much as you like, but such dressing down of Vietnamese history often make me fed up with Wikipedia, and make my contributions seem worthless. I contribute to Wikipedia with one aim of sharing Vietnamese history with non-Vietnamese audiences, and provide something Western readers don't normally get in their countries and that's why articles like this were created.Canpark (talk) 12:29, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with Canpark. We are here not to find the truth, but present the views from both sides of the table. If North Vietnam says 1 million were killed, and the figure came from a published and independent source, it is perfectly acceptable on Wikipedia. I think Canpark did a great job here, comprehensively presenting the information in excellent prose. Sp33dyphil ^{"Ad astra"} 12:39, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Canpark, you clearly didn't read my comments thoroughly, so let me set them out more clearly for you:

• The attack of 28 April 1975 was against the Tan Son Nhut Air Base not Tan Son Nhat Airport, I wasn't pointing out a mere spelling mistake of Nhut vs Nhat, but a fundamental error underlying the whole article. The attack properly belongs on the Tan Son Nhut Air Base page.

• My sources say the attack was against the military section of Tan Son Nhat Airport which is the airbase itself. Even today the airbase is still part of the airport, and I have used the words "military section" to describe the North Vietnamese target.Canpark (talk) 11:20, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Canpark, there is a whole page called Tan Son Nhut Air Base which you totally ignore, please tell me why is that? I can only assume this is because you don't want to accept that this whole page should simply be a section of the TSNAB page. 12:02, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

• In relation to Van or Dung, whichever you adopt, use it consistently, you refer to Dung in the footnotes, but then use Van in the Reference list. Which is it? I note that General Vo Nguyen Giap is always referred to as General Giap, and so am surprised that you claim that General Van Tien Dung is General Van.
  • Now I actually appreciate you pointing out that mistake, and I have fixed it accordingly.Canpark (talk) 11:20, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
• There is no reliable source for the casualties of the attack, the RVNAF had effectively ceased to exist and Tan Son Nhut was coming under artillery and rocket fire from the NVA. Who's to say how many men were killed or planes were destroyed in those circumstances? The official USAF report: Tobin, Thomas (1978). USAF Southeast Asia Monograph Series Volume IV Monograph 6: Last Flight from Saigon. US Government Printing Office. ISBN 978-1410205711. p 70 only refers to "several" aircraft being destroyed.
• In relation to what you obviously see as my bias, I live in Saigon and I have written or improved numerous articles relating to the Indochina Conflict. I have a great interest in the conflict and am regularly exposed to the outrageous claims and propagandizing of the Government in relation to the conflict, so I know that one needs to be very careful to draw from objective sources rather than just relying on the Government narrative. If insisting on adopting reliable sources is what you call "dressing-down of Vietnamese history" then I'm afraid you need to widen your references. I note that on your user page you state that "In 2006, whilst in high school, I discovered Wikipedia and was shocked and disgusted by the level of pro-American bias on Vietnam War-related articles, so I decided to sign up and contribute from a Vietnamese perspective.", which is all fine, but Wikipedia is supposed to have NPOV and so relying on Vietnamese Government sources as much as you do clearly does not acheive this aim. I note that you have been criticised for this in the past here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vietnam#User:Canpark writing VN War battle articles purely from communist newspapers
• The attack is not notable, the VPAF carried out a number of ground attacks during the war including the attack on LS-85 and the attack on the USS Higbee (DD-806). The event simply doesn't justify its own page. As I have said below, you can drop the attack into a new section on the Tan Son Nhut Air Base page or rewrite the article as The Quyet Thang Squadron page, but just cutting and pasting vast amounts of information as background and prelude to bulk up the page do not make this minor event noteworthy.
  • The North Vietnamese attack on LS-85 and the USS Higbee (Battle of Dong Hoi) both has its own pages, so why not this one? Even the events which occurred as part of the Action of 1 March 1968 is not notable, so why don't you complain about that article as well? I will repeat this for one last time; if you don't like it that is your problem, don't put down other peoples' contributions.Canpark (talk) 11:20, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Canpark the air attack on LS-85 is just included on the LS-85 page, not as a separate page, which is exactly how the attack on TSNAB should be covered, as a section of the Tan Son Nhut Air Base page. The attacks on the USS Higbee and USS Oklahoma City were fairly notable events, though its arguable if they really deserved their own pages or should have simply been sections on the relevent ship pages.Mztourist (talk) 12:02, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

• the writing is terrible and the page is inadequately referenced and cross-referenced. If the page deserved to exist I would correct this, but it doesn't, so I won't Mztourist (talk) 14:18, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Sp33dyphil you clearly haven't reviewed the article thoroughly, as shown by the errors that I have already pointed out. In relation to your comments that figures coming from an "independent source", surely you can see that casualty figures taken from a book written by the NVA General who led the attack on Saigon and first published in the Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan and subsequently published by the Monthly Review Press, part of the "Monthly Review, an independent socialist magazine" [1], is not an independent source? In relation to Canpark's "excellent prose", I note the vast amount of changes made earlier today by your friend User:Kyteto, but ecven with those changes, do you honestly think sentences should start with "And" or "But"? As I have said earlier, Canpark has put in a vast amount of extraneous information into the Background and Prelude sections to try to bulk up what is otherwise a minor incident. The history of the RVNAF from 1972-75 is either irrelevant or can be covered by way of a simple cross-reference, but of course without it the whole page wouldn't have the weight needed for a Good Article the amassing of which seems to be very important to Canpark. Mztourist (talk) 14:52, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

• • I get nothing for contributing time and effort to these articles, so whether my contributions receive a GA status or not that is almost irrelevant to me. However, I want the Vietnamese perspective to be represented equally along with all other perspectives, so when articles such as this achieve a high status it is a sign that the Vietnamese perspective which I presented are appreciated. Furthermore, putting an article through GA nomination is a valuable learning process, and it actually help an article improve even if it does not pass for GA, so the learning process is something I value most. Not just the mere statusCanpark (talk) 11:20, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Judging by your user page and the speed with which you try to push articles through GA status it certainly seems to me that it is very important to you. Whatever, we all have our own motivations for being here, all I care about is that whatever we produce is notable, neutral and non-duplicative and I feel this article fails on at least 2 of those counts. Mztourist (talk) 12:02, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm a bit half-and-half on the article. I feel it could use a severe redrafting, and rearrangement of information. A large amount of the 'wider picture' content needs to go, as it can be covered by the relevant articles. I think the article is salvagable, but it needs an overhaul and a lot of irrelivant content to mission put elsewhere. I would have expected the details on the Presidential Palace attack and the Preperation for the attack to come in the Background or Prelude sections, followed by the central The attack, with a relatively small reflection on what the attack meant for the War (which is there). A great deal of the wider politicial/military conflict history needs to be tuned down to the bare minimum, the present Prelude and Background sections need to be 1/4th of their current size in my opinion. The attack isn't the central issue talked about by the article, which is odd considering its name. This is just my opinion, you can feel free to reject me for talking out of place. Kyteto (talk) 19:02, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Kyteto, I agree and believe it should be broken up as per my comments below. The actual attack should either be a section on the Tan Son Nhut Air Base page or user Canpark should rewrite it to be a page about the Quyet Thang squadron.Mztourist (talk) 11:52, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I've taken the time to create Talk:Bombing of Tan Son Nhat Airport/GA1/redraft, the redraft I mentioned earlier. Perhaps it'll be of use. Kyteto (talk) 13:44, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the effort, mate. However, I don't believe that is necessary because Vietnamese histories use the words "Tan Son Nhat Airport" not "Tan Son Nhut Air Base". If Mztourist is correct, than every word of Vietnamese histories must be wrong. I refuse to change an entire article to satisfy one individual.Canpark (talk) 14:28, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Canpark, have you ever been to Tan Son Nhut or looked at it on Google Earth? If you have been there, then you will have seen the hardened aircraft hangars with the Mi-24s and Mi-8s inside. There is an Air Base and a civilian airport at Tan Son Nhut. The attack was on the Air Base where the military planes were parked, not on the airport and certainly not on the civilian terminal pictured in the infobox for your article which only opened in 2005! Vietnamese histories are wrong or just lazy if they say that the attack was against the airport. If you check any non-Vietnamese sources its pretty obvious that the air attack was against the Air Base, but it seems you don't wish to acknowledge that because then that would mean that the whole article should just be part of the section on Tan Son Nhut Air Base. As for your comment that me saying that if Vietnamese history is wrong on this point then its wrong on anything, well that just shows your faulty logic.Mztourist (talk) 14:49, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Kyteto thank you for attempting a redraft (by the way how do you do that?), unfortunately there is a basic disgreement over the facts of the incident which undermines the whole page:

• the article refers to "attack Tan Son Nhat Airport, primarily the military section of the airport", the military section of the airport is of course Tan Son Nhut Air Base, but user Canpark is unwilling to acknowledge this
• the number of aircraft involved in the incident is in dispute, Canpark cites references (to which I do not have access) stating that five planes took part in the attack, but other sources variously state that 3, 4 or 5 A-37s took part in the attack (see the official USAF report: Tobin, Thomas (1978). USAF Southeast Asia Monograph Series Volume IV Monograph 6: Last Flight from Saigon. US Government Printing Office. ISBN 978-1410205711. p 70 and [[2]] at p 10 and footnote 43).
• total casualties - General Van Tien Dung apparently claim 24 aircraft damaged or destroyed and 200 personnel killed, but the sources referred to above only refer to several aircraft destroyed or 3 AC-119s and several C-47s destroyed with no mention of casualties Mztourist (talk) 04:58, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Some slight grammatical errors, i.e. "As the North Vietnamese had captured a large number of U.S.-made aircraft from the RVNAF at Pleiku and Da Nang Air Bases, so it was decided to use captured aircraft instead."