Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/HMS Lion (1910)/archive1

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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 not promoted by SandyGeorgia 19:32, 28 February 2010 [1].

HMS Lion (1910)[edit]

HMS Lion (1910) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Nominator(s): Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:25, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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I am nominating this for featured article because... it recently passed a MILHIST ACR and I believe it meets all of the FA criteria.Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:25, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My first impressions are:
  • A little info on the hows and whys of the ship's class would be good... why they were designed, what they were based on, how they compared to their predecessors (which I see is in the lead section...I'm not sure it should be there)
  • That's really more appropriate for the class article, IMO.
  • The "Pre-war" and "Post-Jutland" sections are quite light compared to the rest
  • Hard to avoid, she commissioned only two years before the start of WWI and didn't do anything of real interest like a foreign voyage before the war.
  • The info on the ship's fate is very light (one sentance, one and a half if you include the "put into reserve" fact in the previous sentance): Is there any info on why she was decommissioned and scrapped (i.e. although the lead mentions that the ship was scrapped because of the Washington Naval Treaty, this is never mentioned again)? Other suggested info to include would be where and/or by which company she was broken up by, and if there are any surviving relics/artifacts.
  • Good point about the Washington Treaty, lemme dig up a cite. Lion, and most of the other pre-war capital ships, took up too much of the limited tonnage available under the Treaty. I don't have a name of who she was sold to or if any artifacts survive.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 06:55, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
More when/if I think of anything. -- saberwyn 05:41, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree that shoulds at least be a brief statement as to the origins of the Lion class in this article. The subject is raised because under design it says that Lion was stubstantially bigger than the battlecruisers before her.
    • OK, it's probably a function of the extra speed demanded, but lemme check.
      • It's actually a reaction to Moltke's design. The requirement to out-class Moltke drove the 70% increase in displacement over the Indefatigables. Section addressing this added.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:59, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The extra armour added post Jutland - is that 100 tons total?
    • Yes, and clarified.
  • Scrapping - apart from meeting the tonnage limits, any particular reason why Lion was selected instead of other ships.

GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • Probably just age. Tiger was the oldest BC retained and even she was scrapped in '32. Everything before the Iron Duke-class BBs was scrapped as well.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • There weren't many differences between Lion and Tiger, but Tiger had a better design (incorporating features of Japan's Kongo class), was newer, and was two knots faster. Plus, I'll bet that the Lions didn't have a good name around the Admiralty after Queen Mary blew up at Jutland. —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 04:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments. No dab links, no dead external links; alt text present and appears good. Ucucha 15:42, 10 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Image check: 4 images, all public domain from Commons, due to age. All images have good captions. --PresN 17:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • Err, the lead image isn't quite up to snuff copyright-wise. The statement by the source website that it believes the image to be in the public domain isn't good enough for us. We have no date of publication, so we can't establish that it meets the 1 Jan. 1923 deadline. We also don't know who took the photo; we're only assuming it was taken by a British sailor. There is a definite possibility it was taken by a private individual, in which case the image is probably still in copyright. Until we can dig up the author and/or publication date, it has to go. Parsecboy (talk) 23:46, 11 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Surely more than a single paragraph can be written about the flagship of the Battlecruiser Fleet's service after the Battle of Jutland - is there a biography of Admiral Pakenham you can draw on, for instance? (the ship would have gone wherever he went at sea) The claim that "Lion had an uneventful time for the rest of the war conducting patrols of the North Sea as the High Seas Fleet was forbidden to risk any more losses" doesn't take into account the anxiety caused by the danger of submarine attacks which affected the Grand Fleet's operations in the later years of the war and I imagine that a bit more can be written on her role in the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight - according the the article on the battle she was part of a force which tried to intercept several German battle cruisers. Nick-D (talk) 07:04, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, no biography of Pakenham listed on OCLC, although apparently he was a major collector of silver as it lists the sale catalog from his collection. I added a sentence about her escort of the High Seas Fleet to Scapa. I've requested Marder's history of the RN during the war to see if there's anything of significance although I'm not hopeful. I'm not sure that there's really much to 2nd Heligoland as I don't think that any of the BCs other than Repulse actually fired their guns. And I'm not really sure that fear of submarines materially affected the operations of the RN's heavies in 1917-18 other than to necessitate lots of escorting destroyers. That's certainly not the impression I got from Massie.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 08:30, 13 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've looked for material on this ship's post-Jutland activities myself (including searches of the Imperial War Museum and British Library's online catalogues for books specifically on this ship) but haven't been able to find anything. The British official history has material on the actions of the Grant Fleet (particularly in 1918) which may be useful (this book also discusses the restrictions imposed on the Grand Fleet by the threat of submarines). That said, however, I'm not comfortable with an article which covers almost half the active service period of a major warship (including two years of wartime service in which she served as a flagship) in a single paragraph and don't think that criterion 1(b) is met at this stage. Nick-D (talk) 23:11, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One thing you might want to consider is that the bulk of the career section is devoted to four single days in the ship's life with nothing, other than repairs, describing her activities between those battles. And I go on for many paragraphs describing exactly what happened. And the section describing her post-Jutland career covers 2nd Heligoland Bight, two sorties in 1918 (if Simon can kindly provide a cite for one of them) and her escort of the German ships in November 1918. Again four single days, but only a single sentence was devoted to each because Lion never fired her guns. The exact same period of time is covered, but a heck of a lot more occurred on four of the eight days and so they get a disproportionate amount of the text. Now I can expand the account of 2nd Heligoland Bight to a paragraph or so if that will help to reduce the disparity in your eyes, but I chose not to do so originally because Pakenham deliberately kept the bulk of the 1st BCS out of the action.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:12, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And I don't understand how the destroyer shortage is really relevant to the history of an individual ship. It's of great import when discussing the British naval strategy and plans for the employment for the Grand Fleet post-Jutland, but not so much so at this level. I can add something along the lines that shortages of light cruisers and destroyers caused the British to decide only to commit the Grand Fleet when the situation was in the British favor, but I'm not sure how relevant that was to Lion.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:12, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:49, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm still waiting on a couple of books to arrive to address Nick-D's oppose, please do not close until I've had a chance to incorporate their material into the article regardless of lack of activity in the meantime.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 23:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Status? Four days, and the FAC is approachig three weeks: how is this coming? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:54, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Still waiting on more books. Some have arrived and I've added some info on the ship's late-war activities though I don't know if Nick-D thinks that that's enough. I'm likely to need the full 28 days as ILL isn't especially speedy.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 18:11, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm unclear to what "full 28 days" you're referring? If you mean a time limit at FAC, there is none; if the article is incomplete, it should be withdrawn, and returned to FAC once all sources are incorporated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I can see one omission, and that's that Lion sortied with the Grand Fleet on 18 August, 1918 to try and meet the German fleet in battle on the 19th. Enough sources state six British battle cruisers participated, which means Lion was present (Indomitable being under refit). Whether she was Battle Cruiser Fleet flagship is difficult to state offhand (haven't got my copy of the Beatty Papers volume I handy, but likely. There's a possibility that Lion sortied on 24 April, 1918 in response to a German High Sea Fleet sortie, but none of my sources state which British battle cruisers went to sea on that occasion, only stating the number - four. Since there were nine British battle cruisers in commission at the time, and no sources I know of specifically mention Lion, one can't state she was there without doing some OR. So, with the exception of the August, 1916 sortie, the last paragraph looks pretty complete to me. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 19:38, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Simon, if you've got a source for the August 1918 sortie and can add it I'd be grateful; it's not mentioned in Marder, just a little bit about how the RN thought that things might heat up there after Scheer's promotion.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:19, 27 February 2010 (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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