Talk:Pennsylvania-class battleship

Clarifications

In several US battleship class articles, there is a standard paragraph at the end regarding "'Standard type battleship' concept of the US Navy..." It states: "a tight tactical radius (~700 yards)". This doesn't make any sense. A tactical radius of a battleship should be something along the lines of 700nm, not 700 yards. Is it perhaps denoting a TURNING radius of 700 yards, a DEFENSIVE radius of 700 yards (seems small), or is it just a unit error and should be Nautical miles instead of Yards? BBODO 15:49, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The "radius of action" listed in is 8,000 nautical miles at cruising speed of 12 knots for the Pennsylvania class. The tactical radius of 700 yards denotes turning radius giving all standard type battleships similar operating characteristics. Naaman Brown (talk) 17:07, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Improvements to this page

This is supposed to be about the Pennsylvania Class Battleships and not about the indivual ships. I would expect this to be about the design and influence of the class along with flaws and not a deployment record. All in all a pretty poor page. I am about to begin upgrading it. Any and all comments are highly desired please. Tirronan 22:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Underwater Protection

This section doesn't seem to make much sense. An Artillery shell in a torpedo? A 'Davis' Torpedo? It sounds as if someone's heard about Davis Ammunition and gotten confused; can anyone elucidate as to what this section's trying to say? njan 15:22, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes there actually was such an animal, it was called the Davis Torpedo and consisted of a short barrel and projectile housed in a torpedo. It never made it to actual production but it seemed to hold U.S. Battleship underwater protection systems in some state of confusion. Norman Friedman's book goes into this at some detail. In point of fact regular torpedos turned out to be much more dangerous and so it goes. Actually it also lead to greater understanding of why shells diving under water were actually a hazard later. Interestingly Japanese shells were designed with this in mind so that if a shell landed short it would fly fairly straight under water for at least a short period and strike underneith the armor belt. Tirronan 16:10, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Great! Any chance of documenting that on wikipedia and/or finding a reference to provide? njan 16:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually I have a great reference for it and I'll put it in tonight. I am at work right now so pulling out my reference book wouldn't look too good. Tirronan 20:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

plainlinks

The "plainlinks" span is a rarely used technique that makes external references look like interwiki links and is therefore surprising to the the reader when clicked on. It should be replaced by a normal external link per WP:CITEFOOT NE Ent 12:13, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we need a cite link at all, since that is normally provided on the photograph page. --Yaush (talk) 03:24, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hi NE Ent and Yaush, while I appreciate that plainlinks are rarely used, the approach passed FAC without attracting comment, and it's a better solution than scattering the external link arrows throughout the article. Furthermore, they certainly aren't citations—it's a way of acknowledging credit for the photos (which is also very non-standard, but thankfully Wikipedia allows a wide leeway to article writers), many of which were specifically scanned and uploaded by the National Archives and Records Administration for this article and USS Arizona (BB-39). Best regards, Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 03:29, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

The fact that it passed FAC isn't particularly relevant -- it's such an obscure technique I doubt the reviewer(s) thought to look for it. Per Yaush, I've removed the link altogether. NE Ent 09:26, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

And as I've stated, that's a personal choice of mine, and Wikipedia has traditionally given wide stylistic leeway to the people who are writing the article. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 02:28, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

You chose to submit content under the conditions "Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—". Note per Template:Plain_link/doc {{Plain link}} is intended for local and interwiki links, not external ones. See also Wikipedia_talk:External_links#plainlinks NE Ent 13:48, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

On the one hand, "External links should not normally be used in the body of an article." and "No one, no matter how skilled, or of how high standing in the community, has the right to act as though he or she is the owner of a particular article." On the other, "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it" and "Style and formatting should be consistent within an article, though not necessarily throughout Wikipedia."

The citation style used in this article is nonstandard (inasmuch as the general references are not bulleted, some ref tags combine two short citations instead of each short citation having its own tag, and the source links are missing their icons), but this is not an issue so long as the information is presented clearly and succinctly—so long as the reader can find what they need to find. I also note that this article at one time followed a more standard style, and it was probably unnecessary to change it, but that's not in itself a reason to change it back, two years later.

That said...

• The external link in the infobox caption is inconsistent with this article's now-established citation style. It is also a dead link, which would be easier to repair if there were a full citation instead of a naked external link.
• The use of the plainlinks css class is highly unusual. As far as I know, this class was created to correctly render internal wikilinks that, for technical reasons, have to be input as external links. The external link icon is a minimalistic way to tell the reader, at a glance, which links will take them away from Wikipedia and which will lead to other articles. If a consensus of editors has concluded that hiding this information from the user is preferred, I'm curious to read that discussion.

There's little reason to make dramatic changes to this article simply for the sake of conforming to the Manual of Style. The MoS should support articles, not hinder their growth. If a future editor makes major contributions to this article and finds that the nonstandard citation style is hampering their efforts, it will be worth revisiting, but as it stands now this isn't a battle worth fighting. At the same time, it may be useful for the creator of the nonstandard style to reexamine that work and evaluate which elements are true improvements on the Wikipedia MoS and which are mere expressions of one editor's personal taste. Ibadibam (talk) 07:49, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

There are nine usages of "plainlinks", including one which includes everything in the References section. That is wildly excessive, and while we are grateful to have use of the images, they are presumably suitably licensed so "courtesy of" should not be needed—such credits are highly unusual. However, I agree with Ibadibam—there are far worse problems on Wikipedia, and it is not worth pursuing the matter. If it is a real problem, it will eventually be resolved. Johnuniq (talk) 08:12, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

It should not be necessary to put "Photograph by x, courtesy of y" in the image captions. That information should be on the file description pages, per WP:CREDITS. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:11, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Pennsylvania-class battleship for TFA on December 7

I added Pennsylvania-class battleship to Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests for December 7, the 75th anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor.

I think more should be added about Arizona in the "Service histories" section. All that is said is that she was sunk. Pennsylvania continues to be explained quite thoroughly. I will add something if its agreed upon. Also, why is there a picture in the "Reference" section? I don't recall a lot of other articles that do this.Pennsy22 (talk) 06:08, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree that adding more to the "Service histories” about the Arizona and the USS Arizona Memorial would be useful. The references are for other sections of the talk page. (Halgin (talk) 23:20, 26 October 2016 (UTC))

I respectfully disagree. This article is supposed to be about the class, not the service histories of the ships in the class. Each ship has its own article. It would be better to radically reduce the ship-specific stuff in this article, and add any appropriate generalizations. An interested reader will link to the ships in any event. -Arch dude (talk) 03:59, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi Pennsy22, Halgin, and Arch dude, thanks for commenting here. Earlier today, I added a bit about the Arizona memorial, as that's a crucial part of the ship's connection to the present day. However, I agree with Arch dude that the level of detail here is sufficient. The article is able to stand on its own with 3.6k words, and those needing more detail can click through to the individual ships or the attack on Pearl Harbor article. To address Pennsy's specific point, bringing in details and nuance about the attack itself seemed like a bit of a distraction to what I wanted to be a short summary.

On the image placement, there's also nothing that says an image can't go in the bibliography, and I wanted to use some of the available space for another NARA image. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:46, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I agree with Arch dude, I guess I wasn't asking for the whole section to be greatly expanded, I just felt it odd that Arizona got an "it sank" while Pennsy was greatly expanded on. I do realize, that she did go on to see service throughout the war, so she would have more. Anyway, I think its a great article. And you are absolutely right Ed, there is nothing that says you can't. Keep up the good work.Pennsy22 (talk) 06:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Detailed Explanation of Edit

The edit summary for the edit I just made didn't give quite enough space, so I'm adding to it here. Checked the Battle of Surigao Straits and the Battle of Jutland (WW1), and the Battle of Jutland was bigger, by an order of magnitude. Therefore, the Battle of Surigao Straits could not have been the largest engagement of battleships in history. However, it is worth noting that the Battle of Jutland did not feature the US Navy, but was between Imperial Germany and Great Britain. As difference to the original author of this article, extending the benefit of the doubt, I am therefore editing the part about the Battle of Surigao Straits to say "largest AMERICAN battle of battleships in history". Ahfretheim (talk) 16:06, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

OK, but the edit you made didn't say anything about the size of the battle. It said the battle was the LAST BB vs. BB engagement, not largest. I reverted. BTW I am neither agreeing nor disagreeing with your assessment of Jutland vs. Leyte Gulf. Regards, DMorpheus2 (talk) 16:53, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

You may also want to review Largest naval battle in history just FYI and food for thought. DMorpheus2 (talk) 17:03, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

All or none armor

It turned out that damage from the primary armament of enemy battle ships was only a minor cause of damage to battle ships, so this approach to armor was based on exaggerated confidence in predicting future wars. I don't know how to work this into the article, but editors should keep this inconsistency in mind. Being imitated is not evidence that one right, succeeding is.

I'm not sure how to respond to that in what way are you talking about the subject? I've no idea how to respond. Care to explain a bit further on that?Tirronan (talk) 04:46, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Fire control system

What kind of fire control did the ships have did they have rangefinders and analog computers like the British ? Mr.Lovecraft (talk) 12:12, 31 January 2023 (UTC)