Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Courageous class aircraft carrier

Courageous class aircraft carrier

Nominator(s): Sturmvogel 66 (talk)

• Featured article candidates/Courageous class aircraft carrier/archive1

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because I've incorporated many of the suggestions made on the related articles and I think that it's ready. Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 21:52, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comment—A1, citation presentation quality:

  General Sub-edit: Friedman, Norman (1988). Extraneous full-stop in title. Nailer, Roger (1990). Is Gardiner perhaps Editor?

  • Friedman fixed; Gardiner is the editor, that's the way the template displays it.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:53, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

  Short citations: Jenkins, front endpaper. Could specify p. front endpaper for clarity? "Britain 2-pdr [4 cm/39 (1.575") Mark VIII"]. apparent failure of wiki-markup.

  • Fixed.

  All else good. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:24, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

• Technical stuff
  • No dab links or broken external links.
  • Alt text missing from infobox image. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:30, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Support - I did some copyediting and spotted no glaring errors. Image concerns: I can't find the lead image here, so I can't ensure that it is from the USN. File:HMS Glorious last picture.jpg has the same problem, except I can't find it on their site period. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:27, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comments - from the top, section by section:
  • Infobox and Lead
    • The Infobox puts their service careers as 1921-1945, yet the subpage for Furious has her being commissioned a full four years earlier, at which point she was considered a hybrid aircraft-carrier/cruiser (she's properly considered the first aircraft carrier ever built).
    • The infobox also says that they carried 48 aircraft. Do we know what the breakdown of their standard air-group was, or was it constantly shifting?
    • Somewhere in the lead, I'd link Courageous class battlecruiser.
    • Mention in the lead what year Furious started her reconstruction
    • Third paragraph, mention and link that it was U-29 that sank Courageous
    • Same thing with Glorious, mention that it was Schanhorst and Gneisenau that sank her.
  • Careers as battlecruisers
    • Mention what year the Washington Naval Treaty was signed (we know it's 1922, but it's good to repeat those things outside the lead for context's sake)
  • Conversions
    • The second paragraph of Furious's conversion mentions that the arresting gear weren't used for slowing down aircraft, and then the third paragraph says that no arresting gear were fitted. My guess is it's just a terminology confusion problem, but either way it's confusing the hell out of me.
  • Description
    • The ships had a complete double bottom.[11][12] is one of the shortest sentences I've ever seen on Wikipedia. Could it somehow be combined in the previous sentence just so it's not so abrupt?
  • Armament
    • What are "PI Mounts", as mentioned in the first paragraph of the Armament Section on Furious?
    • I'd suggest keeping number/letter measurements consistent. You put on as "5.5-inch guns" and the other as "four-inch guns". While either one's ok, it's good to be consistent with them.
    • In the sentence They fired a 4-inch (100 mm) 31-pound (14 kg) high explosive shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,387 ft/s (728 m/s) at a rate of ten to fifteen rounds per minute., saying "they fired a 4-inch" is redundant. It's the 4-inch guns we're talking about; if they were firing something other than 4-inch projectiles I'd be worried.
    • Same thing with The Mark VIII gun fired a 4.7-inch (119 mm) 50-pound (23 kg) high explosive (HE) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,457 ft/s (749 m/s) at a rate of eight to twelve rounds per minute., we know the diameter of the shells they're firing; it's implied by the gun diameter.
  • Fire control
    • No issues here.
  • Protection
    • Again, no issues.
  • Air Groups
    • You keep talking about "two groups of fighters, etc", without mentioning how large a group actually was in terms of the actual number of planes.
  • Pre-war Service
    • Do we have a slightly more specific date on when transverse arresting gear was fitted on Furious than "the mid-1930's"
  • World War II Service
    • No issues. This section is very comprehensive and superbly well-written. Well done!
• Fix these issues and I'll be happy to support. Cam ^(Chat)(Prof) 03:11, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comment: just be careful of mixing US and British English variations. I found a couple during a quick read. For example, US spelling "self-defense" in the Description section; "organized" in the Second World War section. AustralianRupert (talk) 12:56, 16 September 2010 (UTC)