Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/July 2015/Review essay
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Books about bombing a battleship - some reflections on writing and sourcing a series of closely related articles |
- By Nick-D
Over the last two years I've developed three FA-class articles about the British Fleet Air Arm (FAA) attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz which took place during 1944: Operation Tungsten, Operation Mascot and Operation Goodwood. This is the first time I've written a series of articles on closely related events, and I'd like to share my experiences in doing so.
Inspirations
So, how did an Australian end up investing so much time writing about events which took place in the far north of Norway and involved very few Australians? Ironically, my main inspiration for writing about this topic came from a museum located even further from Tirpitz's anchorage, in Kaafjord. When visiting the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland, New Zealand, during 2012 I was surprised to learn that Kiwis made up a large proportion of the FAA's aircrew during World War II (about 17% of the airmen involved in Operation Tungsten were from NZ) and was very interested in the museum's dramatic diorama depicting British Fairey Barracuda aircraft dive-bombing Tirpitz in a fjord. I'd written articles on other little-known carrier aircraft attacks on important naval bases (for instance, Attack on Yokosuka) and World War II in Norway (Black Friday (1945) and Action of 28 January 1945), and recently read (and reviewed) a book about the British attacks on Tirpitz and thought that this could also be good area to work on.
My initial research confirmed that this was an interesting topic. The series of British raids were major efforts which involved the bulk of the Home Fleet and exposed the airmen to extreme danger from the formidable German defences and hostile climate. Moreover, each operation was an interesting snapshot of both how aircraft operations of this era worked and the strengths and shortcomings of the FAA. Deeper research turned up some fascinating facts - for instance, the US Navy transferred an aircraft carrier from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean to allow Operation Tungsten to go ahead, and one of the RN's carriers was so old it was withdrawn from service to be retired halfway through Operation Goodwood!
My kingdom for a (comprehensive) source!
My main challenge in writing these articles is that there isn't a single source which covers all of the attacks in detail. While there are several histories which cover all the Allied attacks on Tirpitz, unfortunately the level of detail they provide on each of the operations varies considerably. For instance, Mark Bishop's recent book Target Tirpitz only goes into detail on Operation Tungsten and skims over the other attacks, and John Sweetman's Tirpitz: Hunting the Beast is very useful for Operations Tungsten and (to a lesser extent) Goodwood, but only briefly mentions Operation Mascot.
As a result, developing these articles to FA standard was only possible by consulting many specialised sources. I'm fortunate enough to live in a city boasting several libraries with excellent military history collections, and I trawled their shelves on weekends. This really paid off - for instance, the Operation Mascot article probably couldn't have made it past GA standard without V.E. Tarrant's rather obscure The Last Year of the Kriegsmarine, which provided the only detailed account of this attack I could find. Similarly, specialised works on battleships, naval aviation, and the naval war in the Arctic allowed me to fill in important details. Given the importance of these obscure works, I suspect that there are only a smallish number cities in the world - and possibly no other city in Australia - where it might have been possible for an amateur historian to develop articles on this topic without resorting to inter-library loans and/or expensive purchases.
Something which surprised me was the value of the British official history British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations in developing the articles. By assessing British wartime intelligence reports against what actually occurred, this work provided an important reality check at several points, and was particularly valuable when using sources which pre-dated the disclosure of the Allied codebreaking effort in the late 1970s. As a bonus, its authors had a good eye for interesting snippets about the military operations against Tirpitz, which allowed me to inject some extra "colour" into the articles. This experience illustrated the value of reading widely around the topic, and I'd strongly recommend consulting this work when writing articles on World War II in Europe.
Despite these positive experiences, I wasn't able to fill in some significant details in the articles. Most importantly, no source went into detail on the German experiences of the operations, with coverage generally focusing on Tirpitz and her crew. I couldn't pin down the strength of the German anti-aircraft and air force units deployed to protect Tirpitz, or the casualties they sustained (which appear to have been heavy in several of the attacks). While this part of Norway is sparsely populated, it would also have been good to have described the experiences of local civilians. Finally, while various unreliable or semi-reliable sources discussed commemorations of the raids, it was very difficult to source material on them to FA standard.
Writing the articles, and some reflections
I developed the three articles in their chronological order, starting with Operation Tungsten and ending with Operation Goodwood. This worked well, as I was able to re-use text and references in each successive article (while adjusting the level of detail on the background and aftermath of the operations as appropriate - Operation Tungsten has detailed coverage of the background of these attacks, and Operation Goodwood goes into greater detail on the operations which followed their failure). I'd also like to acknowledge the valuable contribution Manxruler made to the articles by taking photos of the graves of Allied airmen killed in the attacks at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Tromsø and adding some additional details to the text.
The process of submitting each of the articles to GA, A-class and featured reviews also helped guide their development. The feedback from reviewers highlighted areas I needed to pay close attention to which were common to all articles, such as the need to ensure that the terminology used was suitable for readers who don't have prior knowledge of the broad topic areas the articles cover. I also found that I needed to revisit the older articles a bit as I went along and found new sources or useful facts I'd missed, with the happy result that the Tungsten and Mascot articles are - hopefully - in better shape than when they passed their FACs!
Overall, I'd recommend the experience of writing a string of articles on related topics, and now understand why some editors tend to use this as their main editing style. It's an efficient way to produce high-quality articles, and provides a great opportunity to write about a topic in detail. While I was worried about getting bored with the topic or burnt out, the small number of articles, fairly self-contained nature of the individual battles and the sheer novelty of the topic (aircraft carriers attacking a battleship in a fjord!) kept me interested, and I was pleased with the positive response from reviewers, which suggests that other editors also found the topic worthwhile. I was also very pleased that Operation Tungsten appeared on Wikipedia's front page on the 70th anniversary of the raid, which went a long way to making the whole project worthwhile.
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