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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Fuji-class battleship

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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 by Hawkeye7 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 18:46, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fuji-class battleship

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Nominator(s): Sturmvogel 66 (talk)

Fuji-class battleship (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

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The Fuji-class battleships were the first ships of the type in the Imperial Japanese Navy. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to built their own ships of such size and sophistication they were ordered from the UK shortly before the beginning of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894. Completed several years after that war they participated in the Russo-Japanese War where one ship was sunk by mines a few months after the start of the war and the other participated in all of the major naval actions of the war. The surviving ship, Fuji, was reclassified as a coast defense ship four years later. Thoroughly obsolete by that time, she spent World War I as a training ship and was stripped of her armor and guns in 1922 for service as a school hulk. She remained in that role throughout World War 2 and was sunk by the Americans in July 1945. She was refloated and scrapped in 1948. As always I'm looking for infelicitous prose, unexplained jargon and any surviving bits of AmEnglish in preparation for a run at FAC.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:36, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -- nice work as usual, Sturm...

  • No dablinks, duplinks, or EL issues.
  • Copyedited as usual, pls let me know any issues.
  • Structure and level of detail seem fine.
  • Image licensing generally looks okay but suggest US PD tags for the two drawings under Design and Armament; note also that images lack alt text but admittedly it's not a requirement.
  • Only took a cursory look at citations/sources but nothing major stood out; note however that "Preceded by: Kongō-class ironclad" and "Succeeded by: Shikishima class" are not cited in the infobox or mentioned/cited in the main body.

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:57, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

    • We never do cite the preceding or succeeding classes and nobody's complained at FAC, so I'm not gonna sweat that one. I'll deal with the photo issues once I get some more time. Thanks for looking this over.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:57, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

  • Can more be said about the decision to buy these ships? It seems to have represented a significant shift in naval doctrine, and the lengths the government went to to order them seems extraordinary.
  • Similarly, how was it indended to use the ships? Were they to be the centrepiece of a formal battle fleet, or operate independently?
    • Their precise role when they were ordered is unclear as the IJN was still in the early stages of developing its tactics. After the Sino-Japanese War, and the 1895 translation of Mahan, the IJN became wedded to the idea of a fleet organized around squadrons of battleships and the four battleships ordered after the war were specifically designed to operate with the Fujis.
  • "caused the Japanese to accelerate the schedule by two years" - "the Japanese" is rather unclear here - I imagine that you're referring to the IJN or Government
    • Good catch.
  • Why were the ships designed separately? This seems rather unusual.
    • No idea; none of my sources specify why, although I image that the IJN presented the builders with a single specification. Quite probably they wanted to see if one builder/designer was significantly superior to the other, but that's just sheer speculation.
  • Was the Royal Sovereign-class design considered state of the art at the time? (or was this before Japan started to attempt to offset having a limited quantity of ships by ensuring that they were of high quality
    • The strategy of individual superiority wasn't articulated until after the war with the concept of the 6-6 fleet. That said, the Fuji-class design was a smaller and improved version of the Royal Sovereigns with some features from the state of the art Majestics.
  • Were these battleships still considered first-rate units at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, or had more modern ships supplanted their role? Nick-D (talk) 05:02, 9 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Their major deficiency in comparison to the latest ships was that they used inferior Harvey armour rather than the latest Krupp cemented armour, but there's no real evidence that they were considered second-rate units by the IJN; the Japanese were outnumbered by the Russian 1st and 2nd Pacific Squadrons and had to use everything they had to offset the Russian numbers. And they were only about 7 years old when by 1904, so nowhere near obsolete by the standards of the time.
    • Some very good questions, unfortunately I'm gonna need more time to answer them as I need to get the relevant book through ILL.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:57, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support My comments are now addressed Nick-D (talk) 10:19, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments:

  • in the Ships section, this sounds a little repetitious: "During the Battle of the Yellow Sea..." and "During the Battle of Tsushima..." (two consecutive sentences starting with the same construction)
  • "armored" --> should be "armoured" if you are using British English
  • "center" --> should be "centre" if you are using British English
  • "armor" --> "armour"
  • "with accommodations for an admiral and his staff" --> just "accommodation" as a non count item in British English, I believe
  • "seniormost" --> not sure about this one, but it doesn't sound right to me. Does this exist in British English? I'd suggest "most senior". Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 05:15, 10 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments

  • Probably worth pointing out in the intro that these were Japan's first modern battleships - the lead in general seems a bit short. I'd probably also include that they were based on the Royal Sovereigns but incorporated several improvements.
  • When was Mahan translated into Japanese? According to The Influence of Sea Power upon History (the article, not the book) it had a significant effect on Japanese thinking - it would certainly be worth including if it played a role in the shift from the Jeune Ecole to the traditional battle fleet.
    • I'm not certain about any link between Mahan and the Japanese procurement of these ships as I had to return Evans & Peattie. I've requested it again and hope that it can answer your question as well as Nick's above. Lengerer merely goes through the legislative history and the IJN's procurement plans for 120,000 tons of warships, including 4 armored ships and never addresses why the strategy changed. The Chinese turret ships probably provided the impetus, but I can't say for sure one way or another until I get a hold of Kaigun again.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:57, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • The Jeune Ecole was really only suited for a combination of coastal defense and commerce raiding; the Japanese ambition to control Korea meant that they'd have to control the sea lanes between Japan and Korea if they wanted to land an expeditionary force there. That apparently seemed viable until they realized that the heavily armed cruisers that they'd ordered to counter the Chinese ironclads weren't up to the job and they need battleships of their own to defeat the Chinese ships. Like I said above to Nick, the experiences from the war and the translation of Mahan into Japanese drove the nail into the coffin of the Jeune Ecole.
        • Ok, that looks good to me.
  • The piped link to Chen Yuan should probably go to the (currently non-existent) class page rather than one of the ships. I might write the article tonight - need a break from all these Italian cruisers ;)
  • Probably worth pointing out that the funnels on the Royal Sovereigns were side by side while these ships.
    • Done.
  • I wonder how much experience from designing and building these and the rest of the Japanese pre-dreadnoughts were for the RN, since they were designed and built by the same group of ship yards. Are there any indications that the improvements over the Royal Sovereigns incorporated into these ships used in subsequent British designs?
    • Hard to say, as nobody actually discusses the issue. Since they're basically a cross between the Royal Sovereigns and Majestics, I'd have to say not much, although the boiler room layout may have been adopted for the next British class of battleships, but I can't say that for certain.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:10, 11 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • File:IJN Fuji 2.jpg - needs a US copyright tag
  • File:Fuji class battleship diagrams Brasseys 1896.jpg - same
  • File:Fuji class 12 inch gun turret right elevation.jpg - ditto Parsecboy (talk) 14:31, 12 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

I'm a bit at a loss on how else to expand the lede and would welcome suggestions. I suppose I can add a summary of the ship's armament, etc., but that seems a bit redundant and I'd prefer not to do so if I can avoid it. I'm also not sure if the changes in Japanese naval doctrine after these ships were laid down is really relevant to the article and would appreciate y'all's thoughts on the matter. I'd also like to thank y'all for your penetrating questions and thorough reviews.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 04:10, 11 December 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.


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