Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/HMS Royal Oak (08)

HMS Royal Oak (1914)

I've worked on this article for a little while. While I'm generally satisfied with its contents, I feel that a peer review would serve it well. There's still a little more to add—on the ship's construction and modernisation during the 1920's and 30's, for example—and any perspective you can add on this would be welcome. More images would improve the article, but so far I have not been successful in obtaining any more under a free licence. Suggestions welcome. Thanks for any comments you can make. — BillC ^talk 02:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

This is a great set of comments below and very helpful. I'll respond in a general manner here at the top, and then will address individuals' points below later tonight. I fully agree the lead needs lengthening; I'll leave this change for a little while to see if the main body of the article gets built upon.

To answer the question about 'straddling fire', warships of the era would need to find the range of target ships. They were equipped with range-finding systems, but these could be supplemented by individually varying the elevation of the main guns. The aim was to get the shells falling in a 'bracket' around the target—i.e. straddling it. Once this was achieved, the range was found, and all guns could be set to this same elevation. Royal Oak thus had a lucky escape during Jutland in that enemy shells landed in the sea to her near and far sides, but missed her.

On a point that is nothing to do with this peer review, if anyone here did not look at the ADUS sonograms linked in the last few references, I would urge you to do so: they're surprisingly detailed and quite haunting. Here, for example. — BillC ^talk 18:44, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

cla68

The only issue I see is that the introduction should be a closer summary of the article, i.e. following the basic outline of the main article, so that is acts as a condensed version of the article itself. A great article. Cla68 03:57, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshin

As Cla68 said, a great article; it should be ready for FAC shortly. The lead should indeed be lengthened, I think; it needs to be a brief summary of the entire article, not just the sinking.

Aside from that, a few minor things to fix:

• Month/day dates should be linked to allow date preference settings to work.
• The see-also link to Unterseeboot 47 seems pointless; why not just link it directly in the text?
• The table in the "Rescue efforts" section needs to have wider left and bottom margins, or the text runs into it. I'd suggest using class="wikitable" as well.

Kirill Lokshin 04:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

PocklingtonDan

• "despite being straddled by fire on one occasion" I'm not sure what this means. Does it mean she was targeted? Or that shells hit her? Or just landed close?
• "she was anchored at Rosyth" should probably be "she was anchored at Rosyth, Scotland"
• "Campania, was however holed" odd punctuation -> "Campania, however, was holed"
• "Dewar and Daniel accused...Collard accusing " mixed tenses
• "'writing subversive documents'" - since this is a quote sholdn't there be a cite?
• "within 3 cables of the starboard bow" -would it not be more usual to convert to a standard unit of measurement?
• "Scapa Flow presented formidable defences to the attacker" -> "Scapa Flow presented formidable defences to an attacker"
• Should envronmental concerns really be a sub-section of status as war grave??
• "Cartoon by David Low lampooning the "Mutiny", March 20, 1928 " and other external links to images - see the "external images" template used in eg Roman-Spartan War for a possibly better way of linking to these.

Other than those few niggles, a fine effort, easily ready for FAC. - PocklingtonDan (talk) 07:50, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Rockfall

• First World War History: there is a gap in your narrative between the end of the Battle of Jutland and the end of the war - do you know what the ship did during this time? If she was anchored in Rosyth for the remainder, this perhaps should be made more clear.
• Between the Wars: Do you deliberately write the date of her attack by Spanish forces as "1937-02-02"? The rest of the article is in the more readable xth of x format.
• Style point: This may be irrelevant, but whenever I'm writing I tend to always place footnote marks after some form of punctuation. In the UK at least, this is the academic convention. It doesn't matter particularly, but I've always though it looks neater than breaking up the text of a sentence with a footnote mark.
• Otherwise a very well written article - with the above grammatical corrections noted by Pocklington. Certainly superior to a number of FAs I've seen floating about the place! Rockfall 10:08, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I have been trying to find the history of the Royal Oak outside the episodes described in the article. So far without success, but I've got a couple of trips to the British Library planned over the next weekend or two, and will see what this will produce. On solution would be to examine the ship's logs, available at the Public Record Office, but with 2.5 years just for the duration of the First World War would mean individually requesting 30 documents, so it would be a major task, not to mention coming close to OR. Hopefully something will turn up in the literature. Thanks for your comments, all very welcome. — BillC ^talk 19:48, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Harlsbottom

I had some issues which I've already sorted, to wit;

• In the introduction; 5 battleships and battlecruisers were sunk in World War II, not 5 battleships.
• You correctly stated that coal-firing the class wasn't so much reactionary but a reaction to the strategic situation - you failed to mention the tactical reason for coal-firing.
• Renaming and correcting the battle squadrons. While the pages don't yet exist, one day I or someone else will get round to it (see List of squadrons and flotillas of the Royal Navy.
• Pendant numbers. I inserted them (and cited them) but they don't fit in too well. Maybe you'll find a better way to merge them into the text.

I made a few other changes. Not many, as the article is well-researched and informative and certainly makes it one of the better British battleship articles on Wikipedia. --Harlsbottom 11:54, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

John Moore 309

What a good article! A real pleasure to read; congratulations to all concerned. Just a few comments to add to those above:

• As BillC rightly points out, there should be more information on the ship's refits, reconstructions and changes in armament. The fitting of bulges should be stressed, since in this class it was perceived as a corrective to the low metacentric height of the original design. It might also be worth touching on the reasons why they were passed over for reconstruction in the 1930s in favour of the older Queen Elizabeths. Of course, these issues are common to the whole of the Revenge class.
• It would be good to have a fuller account of her inter-war service.
• The account of the "Royal Oak Mutiny" gives no indication of what the dispute was actually about.
• The article should refere to the Vanguard disaster: the Vanguard was destroyed at Scapa Flow in 1917, with huge loss of life, due the the spontaneous explosion of her magazines. This explains the order to check the magazine temperatures, as well as the uncertainty immediately after the disaster as to whether it was actually due to enemy action.
• My understanding is that "portholes" are scuttles in naval usage.
• The following are useful sources
  • DK Brown The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922. Caxton Editions 2003. ISBN 1-84067-531-4
  • DK Brown (Ed.), The Design and Construction of British Warships, 1939-35. Official Record Vol. 1: Major Surface Ships. Conway Maritime Press, 1995. ISBN 0-85177-673-6 (my source for the above statement re bulges. Unfortunately this book is now very hard to obtain).
  • Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1906-1921 Conway Maritime Press, 1985. ISBN 0-85177-245-5 (this is used, but not acknowledged, in the Revenge class battleship article).
  • Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships, 1922-1946 Conway Maritime Press, 1980. ISBN 0-85177-146-7 (has a useful section on rebuilds & refits).

Regards to all, John Moore 309 23:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)