Talk:French battleship Dunkerque/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Nick-D (talk · contribs) 23:17, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments

This is a really good article, and I found it to be an interesting read - great work. My comments are:

• Please provide a translation for "1ère Division de Ligne" (though this is pretty obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of both naval terminology and French)
• "The French Navy spent the decade following the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty attempting to produce a satisfactory design" - surely it was the French Navy's ship designers who did this, and not the whole navy
• "Initially, the French sought a reply to the Italian Trento-class cruisers of 1925, but all proposals were rejected. A 17,500-ton cruiser was inadequate against the old Italian battleships" - were the ships needed to counter cruisers or old battleships? This wording is a bit unclear.
  • I didn't write this, I believe User:Paul-Pierre Valli did - I'll ask him for clarification. I'm assuming the idea is that 17,500t ship could handle the Trentos, but couldn't take on the older dreadnoughts.
    • The 17,000t battleship would have been able to counter the 10,000tW cruisers, as HMS Invincible similarly did with German armoured cruisers, in the Battle of Falklands Islands, but would not have been able to counter 305 mm gun armed battleships, as the same HMS Invincible in the battle of Jutland. So, it was considered hazardous to allocate an important part of the global battleship displacement (70,000t from the 175,000t allocated by the Washington treaty) to ships only able to «kill cruisers». I completely agree with User:Parsecboy for a wording as : « A 17,500t ship could handle the new Washington heavy cruisers, but couldn't take on the older dreadnoughts.»Paul-Pierre Valli (talk) 10:28, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
• "Parliamentary approval was given" - the common term is that parliamentary approval is "granted"
• "and eight large destroyers, and was based in Brest" - all the commas and the repeated "and"s here make this sentence rather breathless. It would probably be better to split the bit about where the ships were based into a separate sentence
• I think that you need some material noting that the Sudetenland Crisis didn't lead to war and tensions dropped for a while; the transition between the French fleet being on a war footing to making routine cruises to attend various ceremonies is rather sudden.
  • In the Robert Dumas's book (Dumas, Robert (2001) (in French). Les cuirassés Dunkerque et Strasbourg. Paris: Marine Éditions. ISBN 978-2-909675-75-6. Dunkerque), (p. 67)the sortie of the French Atlantic Fleet, from 14 to 16 April, to cover the Jeanne d'Arc return, is linked to the Sudetenland crisis which is obviously wrong, as the Munich Agreement occured late September 1938. There is possibly a confusion with the occupation of Checoslovakia, beyond the Sudetenland, namely the creation of Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, in mid-March 1939.Paul-Pierre Valli (talk) 12:45, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
• The article uses a combination of day-month and month-day dates - please standadise on one option
• "On 11 December, Dunkerque and the cruiser Gloire escorted a shipment of part of the Banque de France's gold reserve to Canada." - do we know what ship carried the gold? It seems odd that it wasn't embarked on the warships (which I think was the British practice at this time).
  • The line was "...she and the cruiser Gloire left Brest carrying gold to Canada..." - I had assumed this meant escorting a convoy, but you're probably right.
    • In my library, I did not find a reference about the Gloire shipping gold in December 1939. From a French languaged forum [[1]], about the La Galissonnière class cruisers, it is clear that the gold was shipped by the Dunkerque, and the Gloire cruiser was escorting her. However in the Robert Dumas book cited (p.68), it is indicated that gold was shipped on both ships.Paul-Pierre Valli (talk) 12:45, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
• "Repair work lasted for the entirety of 1941, and on 25 January 1941 another fire broke out. The temporary repairs were completed by 19 February" - was this 19 February 1942?
  • That was a typo, should have been 25 January 1942.
• "The Italians took control of the wreck, but they found her a total loss, and so they began to dismantle Dunkerque" - this sentence is rather fragmented: I'd suggest tweaking it to remove the repeated 'they'
• The copyright status of File:Croiseur de bataille Strasbourg 03-07-1940.jpg seems unclear - it appears that the photo was taken from a website, with someone other than its creator claiming ownership. Nick-D (talk) 23:49, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks for reviewing the article, Nick. I'll remove the image until it can be clarified. Everything else should be addressed. Parsecboy (talk) 16:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
    • Great work - As it's safe to assume that you'll follow up on my third point above, I'll pass the article. Nick-D (talk) 00:12, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
      • And it only took me two and a half months to get around to it ;) Parsecboy (talk) 14:38, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Assessment against the GA criteria

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources:

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   Possible issue with one image noted above Nick-D (talk) 23:49, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

   Nick-D (talk) 00:12, 25 April 2012 (UTC)