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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by SandyGeorgia 01:38, 22 January 2011 [1].

Battle of Sio

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Battle of Sio (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because... A small article on a minor battle, one of a series that I hope to one day assemble into a featured topic on the New Guinea campaign. If you wanted to understand that campaign, reading this article might be a good start. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Images File:Fortification_Point.PNG is quite large and may cause problems on slow internet connections, however WP:FA Criteria 3 met Fasach Nua (talk) 22:08, 12 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dab/EL check - no dabs or dead external links. --PresN 00:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sources comments:-

Otherwise, sources and citations look OK. As I couldn't reach the pdfs I have not carried out any spotchecks. Brianboulton (talk) 00:18, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments' I'm close to supporting, but have the following comments:
    • I thought that the New Guinea campaign began well before the operations at Lae and Nadzab in 1943.
      • Historians used to distinguish between the Papuan campaign in 1942-43, which included Kokoda, Milne Bay, Buna and Wau; and the 1943-44 New Guinea Campaign. The former was a Japanese offensive, the latter an Allied one, with the former was fought in Papua and the latter in New Guinea. However some sources in recent years do not distinguish between the two. Notably, the Wikipedia. So I changed the reference to the "New Guinea Campaign" to "Operation Cartwheel". Hope this is okay. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:18, 24 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • The events of the Battle of Wareo should be briefly summarised (particularly given that it's a red link at present)
    • I'd suggest merging the short tactics and logistics sections
    • The PDFs from the AWM work fine for me, but the references need page/scan numbers to be added

Nick-D (talk) 23:18, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Query interesting read and a useful subject, but:
  1. "Because of the extremely rough seas—the most difficult that the 532nd EBSR had ever encountered—most supply missions were by night" sounds odd to me. Why would people respond to rough seas with nighttime operations? Please would recheck your sources on that.
  2. I'm struggling a little with the geography, and thought there are maps I'm not greatly helped by them. Ideally I would like this to have a map that puts the battle zone into some context - as it is I'm not sure whether we are talking about the north east coat or the eastern end of Papua New Guinea.
  3. I'm assuming that we are somewhat lacking on articles about locations and even rivers in that part of the world as there are few links and I couldn't find one river I tried to link to. ϢereSpielChequers 00:12, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments - Not quite ready to support, there are some prose glitches and concerns about comprehensibility that need addressing.

  • Pretend I know nothing about military campaigns - what's a "breakout and pursuit" phase of a campaign? Do we have something we can link to to explain for novices?
  • Lead:
    • "Now the Japanese Army had to carry out an exhausting withdrawal." this sentence jars on me, can it be worded better to flow with the preceding and following sentence?
  • Background:
    • "…the commander of II Corps…" Can we get an "Australian" somewhere in here to make it clear we're no longer talking about the Japanese?
    • "Nonetheless, Berryman's coastal advance jumped off as planned." What advance??? First mention of it that I can see… it's rather jarring, we need more information here to make it clear what is going on.
      • It says earlier in the paragraph that Berryman pushed for a coastal advance, whikle Wootten wanted to mop up the Jpanese forces in the hills. Re-word to "Meanwhile, Berryman's coastal advance had commenced as planned on 5 December." Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:07, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Offensive:
    • "Had it included an officer with experience in maintaining a large force over a native carrier line, it might have more quickly reached the conclusion that the Japanese force could not be maintained over an inland track." I have no idea what bearing this has on the surrounding text - what difference does this make and why is it relevant? For that matter, it is only vaguely clear what is meant by this sentence, I get the idea that the planners didn't include folks with experience in naval logistics, and it impeded their planning … somehow, but that somehow isn't made clear, at least to me.
    • Who concluded that "the Japanese logistic system was in the final stages of breakdown"? Is it Coates? or someone else on the scene?
  • Tactics:
    • "Amphibian scouts from the US 532nd Engineer…" I think you mean "Amphibious" here, as I'm pretty sure even the U. S. Army has never employed frog troops. Even us Yanks aren't that desperate.
      • But true. The Engineer Special Brigades were known as "amphibian engineers" and the scouts were indeed called the "amphibian scouts".
        • That indeed may be what they were called, but it's really jarring here in this context. Would it not be better to go with the word that your readers will understand better rather than a very odd usage of another word that will confuse the reader? Ealdgyth - Talk 01:12, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • That same sentence is very awkward and would be better off simplified or split into two sentences.
    • Why do you link "carriers" here, instead of up above where you first mention native carriers?
    • LCVPs? LCMs? DUKWs? Please expand these acronyms on first usage.
  • Fortification point:
  • I ran the article through Coren's tool and Earwig's tool and turned up no issues with plagiarism. The sourcing looks good to me. Ealdgyth - Talk 00:28, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Comments –

Giants2008 (27 and counting) 16:43, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Support

Support Comments -- Looks very good but a few minor queries/comments:

  • Offensive against the Japanese supply system
    • Had it included an officer with experience in maintaining a large force over a native carrier line, it might have more quickly reached the conclusion that the Japanese force could not be maintained over an inland track, as was first assumed. -- This sentence is phrased more like a critique than an encyclopedic article, not sure of the best way around it but I don't think it should remain as is.
    • Collecting centres for native foodstuffs and tracks leading from the coast were bombed by the US Fifth Air Force. This not only reduced food stocks available to the Japanese, but also drove away the native carriers. -- Was driving away the native carriers considered a good or a bad by-product of the exercise (according to the cited source, of course)? If it was one thing or the other, I think this could be rephrased to imply that.
    • Again, sorry to appear to be pressing for more staid prose but "he made a point of telling him what great work his PT boats were doing" also doesn't sound too encyclopedic, unless "great work" were the exact words (in which case they should be quoted) -- how about "he made a point of congratulating him on the excellent (or "fine") work of his PT boats" or some such?
  • Operations
  • Images
    • I've marked the AWM images that are in WP space as Commons candidates so you might want to move them sometime, though I don't think it's a reqirement for FAC.
      • There's no requirement for images to be in commons.
    • The only anomalous one is the PT Boat shot, which claims to be a US Navy work and therefore PD (which would be correct) but also has an Australian PD tag -- one of the tags must be wrong and should be removed.
      • No, they can both be correct. Taken in Australia means falls under Australian law, and the copyright has expired. Taken by US Navy means US Navy is the copyright holder, and therefore public domain in the United States. Hawkeye7 (talk) 10:34, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Well we may have to defer to an image licensing expert but I doubt that you need the PD-Australia tag if the sourcing info in the image file is correct and the US Navy took it, wherever it was. I think the US Navy tag is all that's required and the Australian one confuses matters. (If it was an Australian image then the Australian PD tag would be correct and the one needed to additionally claim PD in the US would be PD-1996.) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Summary -- Structure, prose, coverage, referencing, and supporting materials (with minor caveat re. PT Boat image noted above) all look good -- happy to support, well done. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 08:32, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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