Talk:No. 4 Squadron RAAF

Proposed merger

Upon revisiting this subject, I find that the history of No. 4 Squadron RAAF seems to be scattered into three articles: No. 4 Squadron RAAF, No. 4 Forward Air Control Flight RAAF, and Forward Air Control Development Unit RAAF. Elsewhere in Wikipedia, the history of military units tends to be contained in a single article covering all iterations of the unit. This would be a much stronger single article than the present situation, which has two stubs and a B-Class article. The two stubs could be neatly merged into this article, ending the partial duplication and eliminating two obscure stubs unlikely to be read.

Georgejdorner (talk) 16:29, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

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The RAAF's FAC capacity was also in No. 76 Squadron RAAF for a few years, and is covered there as well. I don't think that there's a neat merge on the cards here; the lineage of the RAAF's FAC capacity seems to have been No. 4 Flight -> No. 76 Sqn -> FACDU -> No. 4 Sqn. My suggestion is to leave No. 4 Flight and No. 76 Sqn as is (with links as appropriate) and merge FACDU into No. 4 Squadron (which is on my 'to do' list to bring up to B class) as the squadron was formed by expanding FACDU. What do you think? Nick-D (talk) 06:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah... This squadron must have one of the most convoluted freakin' histories of any unit in the RAAF. Let's see if I've got this straight:

• Formed as 4Sqn AFC 1916 (disbanded 1919)
• Re-formed as 4(GR)Sqn RAAF 1937
• Re-numbered 6(GR)Sqn 1939
• Re-formed as 4(AC)Sqn 1940
• Re-numbered 3(F)Sqn 1948
• 4FACFlt formed 1970 (subsumed by 76Sqn 1989, re-formed as FACDU 2002)
• 4Sqn re-formed from FACDU and Special Tactics Project 2009

I agree with George that some merging is desirable, and with Nick that FACDU is the logical article to be subsumed, however I have a slightly different take on how. My feeling is that it's probably fair to keep a separate 4FACFlt article and merge the FACDU article into that, leaving its mentions in the 4Sqn and 76Sqn articles as is. My reasoning is that:

1. 4FACFlt seems to have sprung up as a self-contained unit, rather than developing from the old 4Sqn
2. 4FACFlt had a reasonably long history in its initial incarnation, lasting from 1970 till 1989
3. Even when subsumed by the newly re-established 76Sqn, it continued its original FAC function, and did so again after separating as FACDU in 2002
4. Merging FACDU into 4FACFlt rather than into 4Sqn gives the 4FACFlt article a bit more meat

I don't claim the above rationale is unassailable, and am more than open to further discussion, but it works for me... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:19, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

On a bit of a roll now, have a look at the lead for my latest article, No. 1 Flying Training School RAAF, for how I dealt with a similarly convoluted unit history (then come back and read my next paragraph below, so it makes sense)...!

1FTS obviously deserved its own article, but rather than create a separate one for 1SFTS, which was a continuation of 1FTS (though more specialised), I told the latter's story in the 1FTS article and just created a 1SFTS redirect page simultaneously. Also rather than create a separate 1AFTS article, because it evolved from 1FTS and later evolved into 2FTS, I'm telling its story in the 1FTS article and again somewhat in an expanded 2FTS article I'm working on. On the other hand, even though 1BFTS eventually became a reformed 1FTS, it sprang up on its own before that, so I'll probably give it a separate article in the near future -- similar to how I'm proposing we treat 4FACFlt in relation to 4Sqn. Hope that makes sense... ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

That also works for me (I generally take the view that the exact way articles are merged is fairly unimportant as long as there are appropriate redirects). It does seem that 4 Flt was merged into 79 Sqn more for administrative convenience than anything else as it continued to operate different aircraft in a different role as C Flight 79 Sqn. Nick-D (talk) 09:45, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

The article does not refer to 4 Flt at all - it would seem appropriate that there is at least some reference, given the FAC role in Williamtown was a (very much broken) line straight from 4 Flt to 76 Sqn to 4 Sqn. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.226.78.175 (talk) 23:01, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

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