Talk:Raid on Constanța

Article title

Manually moved from Bombardment of Constanța; see there for previous edit history. Alcherin (talk) 19:33, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Removal of proposed deletion

I realized I was a little unclear in my edit summary in citing WP:G5; what I meant was that the article did not satisfy any of the WP:CSD criteria (of which G5 is one), and therefore would not come under WP:DEL1, aside from WP:EVADE giving some leeway for constructive edits made by blocked users. Alcherin (talk) 00:22, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Danube Delta assault

I added a section for the Soviet assault on the Danube Delta, executed at the same time as the bombardment. I also added a few more pictures, feel free to correct whatever you see fitting. 86.120.125.255 (talk) 20:33, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Split the page?

What about to split the Constanta action with the Danube action? Even if occurred on similar time, Danube campaign was more prolonged, and involved units on different time and place after all. --Lupodimare89 (talk) 08:52, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

It's definitely plausible given the level of detail currently present; There are some ongoing concerns about the (dynamic) IP adding this detail though, so some source verification would probably be necessary. Otherwise, the bulk of this is probably best covered as a new prelude section on Operation München. Alcherin (talk) 21:41, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

New source

Y'guys, I found a book published this year that refers to the sinker of Moskva as solely Regina Maria. It also places the damaging of Kharkov on air attacks. What do you think? https://books.google.ro/books?id=acjMDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA449&dq=regina+maria+destroyer&hl=ro&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqypWHl_PXAhXHLVAKHZxxCSsQ6AEIajAI#v=onepage&q=regina%20maria%20destroyer&f=false Brown Water Admiral (talk) 15:29, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

As is already being done with contradictory reliable sources, we can discuss it in the article as long as we give it due weight. We can't say for sure what the causes were so we can only represent what the sources say. Alcherin (talk) 17:48, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

True, one Romanian researcher wrote a whole book on this topic, presenting every possible cause for Moskva's sinking, with arguments and counterarguments for each. Such a headache for the loss of a single destroyer... Brown Water Admiral (talk) 18:26, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

If can be of some interest (considering it appears me clear to me Black Sea naval engagements keep to be entirely Romanian-POV described), I recall nothing of particularly different from the most common described series of events in russian sources (just blaming mines for Moskva loss, and with Soviet ships failure to identify the Romanian ships, probably assuming it was only reaction fire from shore). Only peculiar difference it's lack of description of the motor torpedo boats actions: actually author Miroslav Morozov personally told me he doubted the attack occurred at all for lack of documents proving it. Lupodimare89 (talk) 22:00, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

I do not understand your confidence in Soviet sources. It is common knowledge how altered the reports were, like when they tried to delete from historical records a land defeat in Romania. Yeaaaah - nope. Nice try Ruskies. They try to delete inconvenient events or, at most, pass the merit to the Germans because, as a pompous Great Power, the Soviets were pathologically unable to accept clear defeat to a "minor" country like Romania. That's why they purposely tried to muddy the waters. Thank God for so many distinguished Western authors whose works were published on Google Books, enabling the truth to be brought to surface. Torpilorul (talk) 19:21, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

It is quite clearly your comment is biased on a political point of view, and that is honestly a very bad thing for military historiography. I have no "confidence" in Soviet sources: Soviet books (all available online) are indeed quite bad in terms of overclaim of victories and lack of description of losses, however post-1989 documents concerning the losses has been available, and modern-day Russian (not Soviet) authors works on these and on German and British original sources making more neutral results. God matters little with data and documents, personally I worked on a number of pages concerning the Soviet Union naval warfare in WWII including covering defeats occurred in Baltic theatre . This doesn't prevent me for objecting over the monoply of pro-Romanian sources in terms of personal political biasis. On a NAVAL warfare, it is quite embarassing how there is a degree of over-claims attributed to the Romanian Navy when in conclusion it was indeed a minor part of the Axis naval strategy in Black Sea. OBVIOUSLY you will find western and romanian authors who will only praise the Romanian Navy performance in battle, but a good article merge sources of both sides and it's neutral: this is real good neutral historiography. Just for curiosity, in another page I posted a commentary of the full-list of alleged Romanian claims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_battles_of_the_Romanian_Navy One of the MOST classic examples of these mistakes it's the so-called "Battle of Jibrieni" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jibrieni One may report countless of western and romanian sources that claim the loss of submarine of M-59: the submarine went missing and western/romanian sources keep reporting the same "cool" identification deliberately ignoring the fact the subarine could NOT be still floating on 17 December 1941. But none of such sources bother to cross-reference with the "Evil rusky" and because it is cool to speak about a good naval victory (when in reality it was likely one of the countles ASW overclaim, committed by ALL the Navies in WWII, including the Soviet one). Lupodimare89 (talk) 11:02, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I did bother to read it all, but my answer will be rather short: If a version of an event is backed by, say, 5 sources, and an alternative source is backed by only one, I am obviously going to select and use the more backed-up source. I want to present people with facts, not create confusion. Different authors may make conflicting claims, but those which are quoted more are implicitly the ones recognized to be more likely. I may have my personal political biases - we all do - but I guarantee you that they do not affect my editing style. My style is simple: the version backed by the most sources wins. Torpilorul (talk) 20:13, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

If by chance I find 10 different Russian sources quoting a clearly pro-Russian version of the event then this would be correct to edit the article and ignore the 5 pro-Romanian sources? Because given the huge Russian literature I could provide a fairly larger amount of sources. But personally would make a biased and a one-side article: i have worked from some time in the Naval warfare of the Eastern front, and for neutrality purpose i restrained to directly quote Russian sources (despite the large amount of sources) and provide the (english-speakers, because this is the English Wiki). The best solution (proved by other works too) is giving a full-spectrum view of single battle/operation, providing the readers the whole scenario to make a balanced work. If we move on SPECIFIC event, you may found a whole bookshop of the Romanian military history claiming something happened on 17 December 1941: nothing will change that by ARCHIVIAL data there was likely no submarine that day (and direct sources, including not-Russian), for respect toward the work done so far, I never changed or disputed the bulk of the article (or the existance of the article itself, even if that historically speaking would be a rightful thing to do), however I would ask to restrain making a "censorship" work deleting a paragraph that provide different key different and important information or interpretation of events quoting reliable sources. Lupodimare89 (talk) 16:37, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Raid on Constanța/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Zawed (talk · contribs) 06:40, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

I will take this one on, comments to follow in due course. Zawed (talk) 06:40, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

Infobox

• Only 1 minelayer mentioned, I assume on the basis that it claimed two aircraft shot down. Do the sources indicate if the other two minelayers mentioned in the background were present and using AA guns?
  • No, my sources only cover the minelaying before the war began for Regele Carol I and Aurora.
• Horia Macellariu is stated here as Romanian commander but not mentioned in body of article
  • Macellariu was the Chief of Staff for the Royal Romanian Navy when the battle happened and I'm not sure that he actually had any role in it at all, so I'm going to delete him from the infobox.

Lead

• No issues identified

Background

• I know it is mentioned in the lead, but I think it needs to be stated that Operation Barbarossa is the codename for the invasion to prep the reader for the first usage of the codename. Eg. "the scheduled date for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, on 22 June 1941"

Bombardment

• "and surviving Soviet bombers also joined in the attack." The usage of "surviving" strikes me as being unclear here. Those surviving the Axis attacks on Bessarabia of 22 June, or those surviving the Russian counterattack that afternoon? Later there is reference to bombers taking off from airfields in the Crimea. It is probably best to just delete the term.

Bibliography

• Put the two Yakubov refs in date order (oldest first)

Other stuff

• No DAB links
• No dupe links
• External links check out OK
• Images look to have appropriate tags (although I was surprised to discover a) Somalia has no copyright laws and b) that the Somali Post Office would slap a picture of a Romanian minelayer on a stamp!)

Overall, this looks in good shape for promotion, just a few minor niggles (and reading about Romanian war efforts makes for a change!). Cheers, Zawed (talk) 07:51, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

• I gather that a lot of smaller countries will do this sort of thing to entice collectors to buy their stamps, though I'm astonished that anyone would bother to do a Romanian warship. Talk about obscure! Thanks for reviewing this and see if my changes are acceptable.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:07, 22 February 2019 (UTC)

• I have looked at the changes made to the article and they look good. I am satisfied that it meets the GA criteria: it is stable, well written, covers the topic well and is appropriately illustrated and referenced. Passing as GA now. Cheers, Zawed (talk) 08:19, 26 February 2019 (UTC)