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A fact from Meri Avidzba appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 27 September 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that during the Second World War, Abkhazian female pilot Meri Avidzba flew 477 combat sorties and dropped 63,000 tonnes of bombs onto the enemy?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Meri Avidzba.

Wikipedia

There is something physically impossible for the claim that a pilot flew 477 sorties in a Po-2 aircraft (capable of carrying max 771 pounds of bombs per sortie) and dropped 63,000 tons of bombs (63,000 x 2,000 lbs/short ton, say) on the enemy. This means she dropped an average of 132 tons of bombs per sortie. A Po-2 itself, fully loaded, weighs only a little over a ton. Further, Avidzba's unit, the Night Witches, collectively only dropped around 3,000 tons of bombs throughout its entire wartime career. So something is fishy with the 63,000 ton claim. This is not to disparage Avidzba's contribution to the war. It's just that the 63,000 ton figure is physically impossible. A thousand plane raid of B-17 bombers could not do that, let alone a Po-2.

Just because there is an external written reference making that 63,000 ton claim, doesn't make the claim physically possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.88.133.113 (talk) 01:38, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 13:40, 22 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(

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Article history

)

... that during the Second World War, Abkhaz pilot Meri Avidzba flew 477 combat sorties, totalling over 1000 hours of time in the air and dropped 63,000 tonnes of bombs onto the enemy? Source: http://tamanskipolk46.narod.ru/p31aa1.html
- ALT1:... that Abkhaz pilot Meri Avidzba flew served as a navigator of the 46th Guards Light Bomber Night Aviation Regiment of the Soviet Air Force, who were known by the Germans as the Night Witches? Source: https://abaza.org/en/fearless-navigator-meri-avidzba

Reviewed: Ampersand's Entertainment Guide

Created by Lajmmoore (talk). Self-nominated at 13:42, 28 July 2020 (UTC).[reply]

Comment Abkhaz should not link to Abkhazia, the modern day de facto state which did not exist during WWII. (t · c) buidhe 02:08, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Lajmmoore: Long and new enough with little to no copyvio, and citations are decent all-around. Picture is public domain. Though, I don't think ALT1 is that interesting ("a pilot served in an aviation unit" is kinda a given), and regarding ALT0, I couldn't seem to find the 1,000 hours in the source? Also, this seems to be past your 5th DYK nomination, so please provide a QPQ. Juxlos (talk) 03:32, 29 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Juxlos and Buidhe: - I hadn't realised I had got to 5 nominations. I haven't done any reviewing in DYK yet, so will look at the guidance today and have a go! I'll return and address the points here once I've looked at the QPQ process. Thanks (Lajmmoore (talk) 07:27, 29 July 2020 (UTC))[reply]

@Lajmmoore: Have you reviewed and did the fixes? Juxlos (talk) 16:58, 16 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Juxlos: the nominator has not edited since August 15. Looks like this nomination is going nowhere. Yoninah (talk) 17:09, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
ALT1 is also very long and could be shortened if it is to be used. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 06:52, 22 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Narutolovehinata5, @Yoninah:, @Juxlos: Hi! I've been on holiday for the past fortnight, so haven't been doing any editing. Prior to that I was looking at the reviewer rules for DYK QPQ and in honesty, I got a bit over-whelmed. It is definitely something I would like to get involved with, but I haven't had a chance to see if there are guides, etc. outside Wikipedia, that might help. Please don't write me off! I'm just cautious and don't want to start building up DYK reviews, which might be wrong. If either of you have any advice, that would be gratefully received. Many thanks (Lajmmoore (talk) 08:11, 24 August 2020 (UTC))[reply]

@Lajmmoore: Hi, if the you're not going to contribute the QPQ, please withdraw the nomination, otherwise this DYK should be rejected for lack of a QPQ. --evrik ^(talk) 02:28, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- @Evrik: Thank you, I didn't say I wasn't going to do a QPQ, but rather asked for some support? I would really like to, but the guidance is quite confusing! I'm hopefully going to be at Meet-Up in a couple of weeks, and I was going to ask if anyone there could help me out. (Lajmmoore (talk) 08:48, 25 August 2020 (UTC))[reply]
  - It's really not that hard. Go down the list of nominations. Find simple one, probably among the newer ones. Use the guide. I would annotate that you are reviewing one, and then ask for help there if you still need assistance. --evrik ^(talk) 18:12, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Buidhe: what do you think about the Abkhaz issue? --evrik ^(talk) 18:16, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- It would preferably be unlinked, since you want readers to click on the bold, but it could also be piped to Abkhaz people (assuming that is meant). If there is no source for her being ethnic Abkhaz, the word should be dropped from the hook as misleading. (t · c) buidhe 18:21, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Donating QPQ Alan Swallow - @Lajmmoore, Buidhe, Evrik, Juxlos, Yoninah, and Narutolovehinata5: I did this review in February of this year, so it should be OK.— Maile (talk) 20:23, 9 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Lajmmoore: for future reference on your next nomination, please look to the top right-hand corner of this template and see the DYK Toolbox. Those are all the things you need to do a review. Within that toolbox is a reviewer's template to help. Just click on that template, and it brings up a window that has the specific criteria you need to check. Don't worry if you don't get it perfectly. It takes a little repetition, and seldom gets perfect for any reviewer - those challenges, you know. — Maile (talk) 21:07, 9 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Maile66: fyi they have already done two QPQs but havent inserted them. They havent edited for a while so I am not too sure what’s the status. Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 21:42, 9 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Well, in that case, I strike my donation. Thanks for letting me know. — Maile (talk) 21:52, 9 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Everyone! First of all, apologies if it seemed like I was disappearing - I was trying to get some experience reviewing so I could earn my own QPQ for this. Perhaps I should have put a note here to say so, sorry. Also many thanks to Maile66 for the donation (& I totally understand the retraction too) - there is a lot going on at home and I didn't see the notification in August for the donation. I'm sorry if it seemed like I ignored it. However I have just done a close on a review Template:Did you know nominations/Ampersand's Entertainment Guide so hopefully that will work here? As I've said before I'm keen to learn, but find all the DYK layers confusing at the moment BUT I am sure with practice that will change. Very grateful to everyone who has helped me so far! @Maile66, Vincent60030, Evrik, Juxlos, Yoninah, and Narutolovehinata5: (Lajmmoore (talk) 08:52, 10 September 2020 (UTC))[reply]

Alright, should be good now. Just remember to use the subst:DYKtick template when approving a DYK nom next time. Juxlos (talk) 09:06, 10 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I came by to promote this but I too could not find the 1000 hour thing mentioned in the source for the hook. @Lajmmoore: could you address this please? Courtesy ping Juxlos Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 18:18, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I have also found lots of grammar issues. The article needs a copyedit. Tagging it. Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 18:20, 11 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Vincent60030 and Juxlos: thanks for the comments. I've done a copy edit and checked the link. The source was wrong (my bad), but I've got it now. Here is the revised text:

... that during the Second World War, Abkhaz pilot Meri Avidzba flew 477 combat sorties, totalling over 1000 hours of time in the air and dropped 63,000 tonnes of bombs onto the enemy? Source: https://abaza.org/en/fearless-navigator-meri-avidzba

Thanks very much for all the help! (Lajmmoore (talk) 07:31, 22 September 2020 (UTC))[reply]

There were still a number of grammatical and neutrality issues, but I have fixed them. Restoring tick per Juxlos. Let's get this going. Vincent^LUFan (talk) (Kenton!) 08:22, 22 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

63,000 tonnes? I ... doubt it.

The text of this article, incorporated into the DYK for 27 Sept 2020, says she "dropped 63,000 tonnes" of bombs on the enemy while flying 477 combat sorties. Do the math: that's over 130 tonnes of bombs per sortie. Considering that the plane she was flying (Polikarpov Po-2) barely weighed one tonne itself, I rather doubt this. Even if "tonne" is a mistranslation of some source's word for "kilogram," so that the tonnage is overestimated by a thousand, it's way beyond the normal bombload for a Po-2.

An error like this should never, never, NEVER appear in a DYK. -- Bill-on-the-Hill (talk) 01:28, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I saw that and agree with you 100%. Jackfork (talk) 01:43, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I checked the original reference, and it said 63 тыс. килограммов, that is, 63,000 kilograms. 63 metric tonnes over 477 sorties would be credible - that's about 300 pounds each. Mahousu (talk) 11:27, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's still rather pushing it, requiring her tiny Po-2 to fly at a fair fraction of its very limited maximum payload capacity on each and every mission and successfully drop whatever it carried. Neither of these happened all the time on WWII bombing missions, particularly harassment missions. However, it's "credible enough." I see the DYK has been fixed, but I repeat: an error like this should never occur on a DYK. -- Bill-on-the-Hill (talk) 17:24, 27 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Bill-on-the-Hill and Mahousu: - just a not to say hello! I put the DYK forward, so its my mistake. I'm not familiar with the payloads, and trusted what I believed the translation to be. There's a lesson for me there in scrutinising translation! Thanks for flagging it, and working out the discrepancy. I agree mistakes like this shouldn't happen, but I made the DYK nomination with good faith that all was well. I've taken all the feedback seriously. Happy editing. (Lajmmoore (talk) 18:49, 27 September 2020 (UTC))[reply]