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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Operation Title/archive1

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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 promoted by Gog the Mild via FACBot (talk) 28 February 2024 [1].

Operation Title

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Nominator(s): Nick-D (talk) 05:46, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Operation Title was a valiant but failed Allied attack on the German battleship Tirpitz during October 1942. The attack plan was like something out of a thriller, and partially formed the basis of a postwar movie. It involved a small Norwegian ship smuggling two British manned torpedoes through heavily defended waters. While the manned torpedo crews were superbly trained and likely to have crippled Tirpitz, the operation failed at the last moment when shoddy workmanship caused both of the craft to be lost when they separated from the bottom of the trawler during a storm. The Allied personnel attempted to escape overland to Sweden, with one of the British seamen being captured and murdered by the Germans and the others making it across the border.

This is a return to the topic of attacks against Tirpitz I've been working on over quite a few years, with the others covering air raids on the battleship. I created the article in March 2023 and it was assessed as a GA in April. It passed a Military History Wikiproject A-class review in December, and has since been expanded and improved. As a result, I'm hopeful that the FA criteria are now met. Thank you in advance for your comments. Nick-D (talk) 05:46, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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  • Don't use fixed px size
  • File:Gerhard_Flesch_(6983604862).jpg: is a more specific copyright tag available? Nikkimaria (talk) 05:51, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is the tag used by the uploader to Flikr, the National Archives of Norway, which holds the underlying photo in their collection. It seems reasonable to presume that the archives applied the best tag here. It looks like the photo is from a collection of German occupation documents that the Archives holds, and would likely have the legal rights to. Thank you for these comments. Nick-D (talk) 06:04, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FM

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"Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but it may be repeated if helpful for readers, such as in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence in a section." The last eight words are a relatively recent addition. Gog the Mild (talk) 17:52, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In this case we have "Allied" linked twice in the intro alone, which I think would be considered overkill by any standards. FunkMonk (talk) 01:52, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed. Thanks for these comments. Nick-D (talk) 05:43, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Trondheimsfjorden (English: Trondheim Fjord)" technically "The Trondheim Fjord", as "en" makes it definite, but of course depends on what the source says.
  • Perhaps show the sinking ship in the Subsequent attacks section?
    • I'd prefer not, as the operation which sank the battleship took place in a different region and was an air attack rather than a submarine attack. I've added a photo of the ship at Kaafjord though, as it illustrates the main focus on this section. Nick-D (talk) 01:08, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "It was one of the incidents for which Keitel and Flesch were separately prosecuted after the war. Both were found guilty of war crimes and executed." Is there an article about these trials or what they were part of?
    • Keitel was found guilty at the Nuremberg trials and Flesch appears to have been tried individually in Norway. As these were separate processes and are well covered in the articles on the two men, I'd prefer to not try to shoe-horn a link to the Nuremberg Trials in. Nick-D (talk) 01:08, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The battleship was sunk there with heavy loss of life" This implies there could be heavy losses on both sides, but seems to be only on the German side? Maybe say "heavy German casualties"?

Comments from Mike Christie

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  • "Tirpitz sortied on 5 July, but was ordered to return to Narvik the next day". According to our article on the Tirpitz she returned to Altafjord, not to Narvik, so just checking that this is correct. The Tirpitz article does say she later moved to Bogenfjord, near Narvik.
  • "It was not possible to use full-sized submarines as the shallow depth of Fættenfjord meant ...": but the Tirpitz was no longer at Fættenfjord, was she? Per the above she was either at Narvik or Altafjord. The conversation about submarines seems to have started after the attack on PQ-17 so I wouldn't have thought Fættenfjord would be relevant. I see from the Tirpitz article that she returned to Fættenfjord in October, but that would have been too late to influence the planning.
    • The attack was always planned for Fættenfjord, as that was Tirpitz's home base and the British correctly deduced that she was going to return there - the article notes this. While the sources don't explicitly state this, it would have been because each attack required very substantial preparations so needed to be directed at a location where the battleship was based. As the battleship always had torpedo nets around her, conventional subs would have been useless at other anchorages as well - they're not given as a viable option. Nick-D (talk) 10:06, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Fair enough. I had a look through for the where you say the article notes that the British deduced she would return to Fættenfjord and couldn't spot it -- could you point me at the right paragraph? I agree that with that no change is needed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:24, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article is not excessively long, but I did wonder whether the details of why the British began to research small submarines were a digression. No problem if you want to keep it.
  • I'm surprised to see that we don't have Able Seaman A. Brown's first name -- is it not known?
    • Oddly enough, no source gives this. To make matters worse, his nick-name differs between sources: C.E.T. Warren and James Benson say he was 'Jock' Brown and Robert Lyman says he was 'Slim' Brown. Ludovic Kennedy just calls him Able Seaman Brown despite giving the full names of his comrades! I think that A. Brown is the best of the not-great options here. Nick-D (talk) 10:16, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • "including as he believed that": seems an incompletely edited phrase?
  • "He also argued that the use of the craft after the failure of Operation Title was a mistake, including as there was not a strong rationale for the subsequent Chariot operations": suggest "He also argued that the use of the craft after the failure of Operation Title was a mistake, among other reasons because there was not a strong rationale for the subsequent Chariot operations".
  • There are two harv errors showing: Kennedy 1979 and Lyman 2005 in the citations don't link to the works consulted section.

That's everything; the article is well and clearly written, and these are minor points. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:55, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Fixes all look good. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:47, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

SC

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Lead
  • "manned torpedos": just checking on the variety of English used here. Both BrEng and AmEng use "torpedoes" as the plural
Early attacks

Done to the start of Preparations; more to follow. - SchroCat (talk) 09:05, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And finishing off:

Preparations
Subsequent attacks

That's my lot. I hope this is helpful. Cheers - SchroCat (talk) 11:15, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments from JennyOz

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Hi Nick, another fascinating Tirpitz article. A few questions and comments from me...

lede

  • on board a small boat named Arthur - fishing boat? ie emphasize not a naval vessel?
    • Sources just describe it as a small boat or similar. I had it in the article as a fishing boat initially, but on re-checking the sources found that it wasn't actually called this by them! Bishop introduces it as a generic 'craft' for instance (p. 59). Nick-D (talk) 03:15, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • with the other – a British serviceman – being taken prisoner by German forces - is "being" redundant?

Background

Prelude

Plans

  • head of the Norwegian Section of the SOE, Lieutenant Colonel John Wilson - is J. S. Wilson (John Skinner Wilson), was Boy Scout per Bishop and, per this from Further reading that article was "Head of the Norwegian section (January 1942 onwards)" and "attempt to sink the TIRPITZ (1942)".
  • Horton and Wilson were jointly given overall responsibility for the operation - were given joint overall responsibility?

Preparations

Bishop on p. 151 has "Two men, encased in canvas and rubber suits" and on p. 156 "one-piece dry suits and they had earned the nickname 'clammy death'". This is the Sladen Suit. (Its image came from here.) David Grant in A Submarine at War : the Brief Life of HMS Trooper this book on p. 26 has Geoffrey Sladen in 1942 "working on a flexible underwater diving suit that used a closed-circuit oxygen breathing system similar to the Davis Submerged Escape Apparatus [DSEA]. The Sladen Suit, prototype of all subsequent British frogmen's apparel, was to be irreverently nicknamed "The Clammy Death Suit"... and goes on to talk about Larsen and Tirpitz. I don't know if Grant is a RS. I think Konstam mentions the suit on p. 19? There are many results for a search of 'sladen suit tirpitz'. Robert Macklin in One False Move here has "Sladen suit... prototype for the men who would ride the torpedoes at the Tirpitz.

Final planning

Attack

Escape

Assessments

Subsequent attacks

Consistency

  • There are a few places where commas appear contrary to most of the format style. (Eg "On 6 March 1942, Tirpitz", "By April 1942, 30 men had" and "On 2 July 1942, Tirpitz and") whereas there are around 12 other sentences beginning with date phrases that do not have a comma.
  • Likewise some Oxford commas seem contrary. Eg "pistols, and a small quantity of food", "accompanied by Craig, Evans, Tebb, and Strand" and "comprised Brown, Causer, Kalve, and Bjørnøy", but elsewhere eg "including extreme cold, heavy seas and gales", "The Chariot had a crew of two, a commander and a number two"

See also?

categories possible

Thanks for this very interesting account Nick. JennyOz (talk) 04:26, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

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Spot-check upon request. Is Angus Konstam a good source for WWII? Otherwise, it seems like formatting is good and sources too. Are there any sources here that could be used? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:06, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Konstam has been widely published by several major companies and has specialised on the naval war in Europe during World War II. Osprey, the publisher here, has a pretty good reputation. The Google Scholar search doesn't seem to add anything new - I've checked Jstor and Internet Archive for resources. Thank you for this, Nick-D (talk) 05:29, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like this passes, with the caveat that spotting not-obviously-unreliable sources in military matters is hardly my strength. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:58, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]


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