Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/British Commandos

British Commandos

I have just reworked the article getting rid of the un-cited content. I believe it is now B Class and I am looking to advance the article up the scale. One concern I have will be the eventual size. I believe there could be two articles here British Commandos the present article up to the operations section and then another article British Commando operations of the Second World War or a similar title. My reasoning is that some of the smaller Commando operations have never been comprehensively covered or published at all in reliable publications so the article in its present form will always be lacking something. Any suggestions or thoughts on this or any other suggestions to improve the article always welcome. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 19:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AustralianRupert

Its looking pretty good at the moment. I made a few tweaks, but I'd suggest seeing if someone would like to give it a bit of a copy edit before taking it to ACR, though as I might have missed something. These are my comments/suggestions:

I agree that there is a need to deal with the Second World War separately as you mention above;
On my screen there is a massive (about an A4 size) amount of whitespace in the Commando units section;
The last part of the second paragraph of the Commando training section needs a citation (after RTU);
In the Commando training section, I suggest putting a {{convert}} on "eight mile";
Citations # 52 and 53 appear to be to the same source;
In regards to those Messenger citations, I think they actually relate to a different book than the one you have listed. In the bibliography you only have one Messenger book (the ME Commandos), however, the citations to Messenger relate to the Commando Order and a raid in Norway, which I think was actually covered in Messenger, Charles (1991). The Last Prussian: A Biography of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, 1875–1953. Brassey's. ISBN 9780080367071.
The Featured article tools shows a number of dab links that need fixing: [1];
Are you planning to talk about operations in 1944 and 1945?
I'd suggest not including the text of the Commando Order in this article and moving it to the article on the subject itself. You could then briefly mention it and its affects in this article. — AustralianRupert (talk) 08:41, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reply - Good spot on Messenger had me wondering how on earth you spotted that, then I remembered where I had got it from.

I don't have the large white space but there was an image there which I have moved. Has that helped?

RTU'd ref added

8 mile converted

ref name added for 52/53

I had started 44 and 45 but was also working on a more comprehensive operations section which was getting huge byte size. That's what mde me ask the question about splitting the article. Will see what the majority thinks about it.

Will work on dabs

Thanks once again for the review. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 18:29, 11 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Whitespace gone. Cheers. Looks good. — AustralianRupert (talk) 00:27, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nick-D

Hi Jim, I've been meaning to comment on this article for the last few weeks but have been a bit busy. I think that the article is in pretty good shape, and have the following suggestions:

The article seems to only cover British Commandos of World War II, and not the post-war RM commandos

Yes I added a top note to that effect, my reasoning was it could then have a natural ending in 1946. The post war commandos are I believe well enough covered by the Royal Marines and 3 Commando Brigade articles.

The number of battle honours in the infobox is excessive as it makes the infobox too big - I'd suggest spliting this out into a separate article

They are now a separate section.

How did the commandos differ from the independent companies? Were they really a 'new' concept?

The independent companies were formed from volunteers from the TA in April 1940, five companies served in the Norwegian campaign. They were then used as the basis for the Special Service Battalions/Commandos

The choice of photos is excellent

Thank you

The article should discuss the influence the Commandos had on other militaries - the US Army Rangers and USMC Raiders were heavily influenced by the commandos and Australia converted its independent companies into commando regiments (though their role differed somewhat from the that of the British units').

New Legacy section covers their influence on other military formations.

It would be interesting for the article to discuss why the Army disbanded all its commando battalions at the end of the war - was it thought that the paras and RM commandos could fill this role adequetly? Nick-D (talk) 11:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I looked for this and it seems that as they were created for hostilities only and not formed as a Corps or regiment in their own right and still remained on the regimental roll for pay etc, they were deemed surplus to requirements like the Special Air Service and the RM was a big enough peace time force to fill the role.--Jim Sweeney (talk) 12:43, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]