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 | A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on July 3, 2011. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that in 1943, Horsa gliders were towed 3,200 miles (5,100 km) from England to Tunisia during Operation Turkey Buzzard without knowing whether this would be possible? | ||||||||||||
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edit"The British Army called the operation Turkey Buzzard while in the Royal Air Force it was know as Beggar.[1][2]" The two refs cited don't support the claim that the Army called it Turkey Buzzard while the RAF called it Beggar. The cites merely record the names, not who favoured them. (As a side point: in fact the cites offer no supporting evidence that the operations were even the same thing, that Turkey Buzzard was the same operation as Beggar. There seems to be a lot of conflation here.)
The reason I first came to this is because we don't have Turkey Buzzards in the UK, so I thought 'Why on earth would either the British Army or the RAF call an operation after a non-native bird no-one in the UK was likely to have heard of?' It seems to me that the name Turkey Buzzard must have been suggested by someone on the US side who was involved.
As neither of the two names are given priority in the cites quoted, why has the article been named Turkey Buzzard over Beggar? If this was a primarly British operation, I can bet that it would have been called Beggar over Turkey Buzzard, and so that should be the name of the article. 86.152.240.132 (talk) 20:00, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
- There is another on line reference that confirms the turkey Buzzard come name for the Glider Pilots here [1] and here [2] Beggar for the RAF. Then there is this one here [3] that contains both names. Codenames are by there nature, just randomly selected and have nothing to do with any national criteria. There are no baobabs in the UK but there was an Operation Baobab. Huckabuck appears to be an American word but there was an Operation Huckabuck carried out by British Commandos. How would you suggest the article is named and which is given precedence? Jim Sweeney (talk) 20:22, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I notice the last gives it as Turkey hyphen Buzzard, but The Times use it unhypenated for this obituary of one of the pilots who got an AFM for it. It's quite possible that they had a large list of names compiled by someone and just picked one at random. I think per CommonName, since we lack further information, the article is at the right title. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:46, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
- I haven't delved into the operational history to be able to make a call on the name, but I would suggest that the service with the largest representation in the mission should take precedence in naming the article. Mark Sublette (talk) 20:53, 3 July 2011 (UTC)Mark SubletteMark Sublette (talk) 20:53, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
- The History of the Glider Pilot Regiment ISBN 1844156265 page 153 calls it Operation BEGGAR or TURKEY BUZZARD (not my capitals).Jim Sweeney (talk) 21:12, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
- I just added a citation to that paragraph, supporting the two names and the two British services that picked the names. Sharktopus talk 21:21, 3 July 2011 (UTC)