Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Supermarine Spitfire

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

No consensus to promote at this time - Peacemaker67 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 19:29, 23 December 2017 (UTC) « Return to A-Class review list[reply]

Supermarine Spitfire[edit]

Nominator(s): FriyMan (talk)

I am nominating this article for A-Class review because this page is in a very good shape and I have been editing it over a course of four months or more and it is in a very good shape right now. Supermarine Spitfire is an important fighter for WW2 and I intend to bring it to Featured class. Cheers, FriyMan ^{Per aspera ad astra} 13:35, 4 December 2017 (UTC) Comments from FactotEm (talk) 17:30, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

General

Quite a lot of overlinking throughout. For example, Rolls-Royce Goshawk, Rolls-Royce Merlin (piped as PV-XII), Duralumin, Longerons (piped as longitudinal stringers), and so on. User:Evad37/duplinks-alt is your friend here. - Done

Criteria A1

Many cases throughout of uncited paragraphs and sentences at the end of paragraphs, for example, the 1st para in section "Manufacturing at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham" and the last sentence in the 3rd para of the same section. - Done with the examples.

Criteria A4 I've made a few copy-edits myself, which you are of course free to challenge, but I suspect the article will need a better copy-editor than I before you take it to FAC. Some points here...

In the lead, ...about 54 remain airworthy, while many more.... "While" is generally deprecated as an additive link. Better to use "and".
Section "Origins", 1st sentence, beginning R. J. Mitchell's 1931 design to meet Air Ministry specification F7/30... has a number of problems resulting in awkward and ambiguous prose. We get half-way through before we find out the subject - the Type 224 - and ...large fixed, spatted undercarriage powered by the 600 horsepower (450 kW) evaporatively cooled Rolls-Royce Goshawk engine is not conveying what I suspect you intended due to some missing commas. I would suggest something along the lines of "The Supermarine Type 224 was designed in 1931 by R. J. Mitchell in response to the Air Ministry specification F7/30 for a new and modern fighter capable of 250 mph (400 km/h). It was an open-cockpit monoplane with bulky gull-wings, a large, spatted, fixed undercarriage and a 600 horsepower (450 kW), evaporatively cooled Rolls-Royce Goshawk engine."
Same section, 3rd para, ...construction of Mitchell's improved F7/30 design F7/30 was the Air Ministry specification, not Mitchell's design. Don't you mean Type 300 design here?
Section "Initial Production", ...did not roll off the Woolston, Southampton assembly line... needs a comma after Southampton, though as Woolston is linked I'm not sure you need to specify Southampton at all.
Same section, 2nd para, repeats a lot of information already presented in the 1st para.
Same section, 3rd para, Production aircraft cost about £9,500. Think you need "each" at the end.
Section "Manufacturing at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham", 1st para, Austin was given the task of building nine new factories, and to supplement the existing British car manufacturing industry... The first comma leads the reader to expect a different sentence construction than actually appears. Maybe better written along the lines of "Austin was tasked with building nine new factories and supplementing the existing..."?
Same section, 2nd para, ...the Air Ministry bought a site consisting of farm fields and a sewage works... Do we need to know the site's original usage? In fact, there's all sorts of problems with this para. I'll copy edit it and when done note it immediately below. You can then see what you think, and revert if you don't agree.
I've rewritten it now. How does it look to you? I took a bit of a punt on the beginning of construction of the CBAF - the original said only that the site was purchased - so maybe you need to check the sources to confirm that construction did actually begin in 1938. FactotEm (talk) 21:14, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In section "Production Dispersal", the list is introduced with the statement Four towns... but has 5 bullet points. The last two items end with a full-stop, the first three don't. I believe the correct syntax is to end each line with a semi-colon, except for the last which should end with a full-stop.I think it would be clearer if you wrote the list as <airport(s)> at town. Saying, for example, "Southampton and Eastleigh Airport" reads like there are two airports, one at Southampton and another at Eastleigh, and using "with" as an additive link is also a stylistic no-no, apparently.
Section "Airframe", 1st para, The French Dewoitine D.520[49] and Germany's Messerschmitt Bf 109... mixes the adjective "French" and the possessive "Germany's", which my nitpicky eye finds slightly inelegant. Equally nitpicky are the lack of comma between "new" and "high-powered" and the use of "and" instead of the more correct comma between "low drag" and "all-metal" - in fact, that clause should really end with "fully enclosed cockpits and low-drag, all-metal wings..."
Same section, 2nd para, bomber interceptor and fighter aircraft... is confusing. I think you mean an aircraft that intercepts bombers, and a fighter aircraft, but is there a need to distinguish? Wouldn't "fighter aircraft" be enough?
Same section, 3rd para, ...fuselage featured a large number of compound curves built up from a skeleton of 19 formers, also known as frames... but later The U-shaped frame 20 was the last frame of the fuselage proper...???
Same section, 5th para. With the exception of the wing forward of the main spar, was standard dome-headed riveting used throughout, or were there three types of riveting used? It's not clear from the way the sentence is written.
Section "Elliptical wing design", 5th para, The trailing edge of the wing twisted slightly..., but in the 1st para An elliptical planform is the most efficient aerodynamic shape for an untwisted wing...??? Also, washout is a redirect. The correct page is Washout (aeronautics).
Same section, 7th para. More of a heads-up than anything else, but the {{convert}} template isn't used for the wing measurements. The syntax {{convert|36|ft|10|in|m|abbr=on}} will get you 36 ft 10 in (11.23 m)

That's all for now, I'll be back with more later/tomorrow/some time this week FactotEm (talk) 17:30, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Final comments (Sorry it's taken a little longer than planned to get back to this).

Still some uncited statements, e.g. 3rd para in section "Armament" and 5th para in section "Service operations"
In section "Service operations", 4th para, is it normal to refer to tallies as "e/a"? I'm used to seeing them referred to as "kills".
Same section, 6th para, abbreviation "PRU" is used without prior explanation. I assume it means Photo Reconnaissance Unit?
The bibliography includes publications that are not used in any references, e.g. Flack, 3 of the 4 books by Green (only the 2007 publication is used), Gueli, and maybe more (haven't checked them all). Also, in some cases different publications by Price are dated to the same year, but the refs do not make it clear which is being used, e.g. 11, 44, 46, 129, 152
Given that the elliptical wing is one of the things that make the aircraft iconic, is the any information in the sources about why the clipped wing was adopted in some versions?
Is there any information about how the Spitfire performed against the Me109 in the Battle of Britain? I seem to recall they were quite closely matched, and as the war progressed the two leap-frogged each other in capability as each new variant came on-line. Also, I think it's only a matter of time before someone tries to insert the mis-understood statement about Galland requesting a squadron of Spitfires during the BoB, so maybe worth covering that pre-emptively. FactotEm (talk) 11:38, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments: G'day, thanks for working on this very important article. I have the following suggestions (I mainly just looked at the referencing): AustralianRupert (talk) 09:50, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

this needs a citation: the paragraph ending "...potential for reorganisation to produce aircraft and their engines."
this needs a citation: "CBAF went on to become the largest and most successful plant of its type during the 1939–45 conflict. As the largest Spitfire factory in the UK, by producing a maximum of 320 aircraft per month, it built over half of the approximately 20,000 aircraft of this type."
this needs a citation: "To this end, the British government requisitioned the likes of Vincent's Garage in Station Square Reading, which later specialised in manufacturing Spitfire fuselages, and Anna Valley Motors, Salisbury, which was to become the sole producer of the wing leading-edge fuel tanks for photo-reconnaissance Spitfires, as well as producing other components."
this needs a citation: "If one cannon seized, the recoil of the other threw the aircraft off aim. Nevertheless, 30 more cannon-armed Spitfires were ordered for operational trials, and they were soon known as the Mk IB, to distinguish them from the Browning-armed Mk IA, and were delivered to No. 19 Squadron beginning in June 1940."
this needs a citation: the paragraph ending "...provide an almost continual flow of valuable intelligence information throughout the war."
this needs a citation: "To counter the Zero, Spitfire pilots had to adopt a "slash and run" policy and use their superior speed and diving superiority to fight while avoiding classic dogfights."
this needs a citation: the paragaph ending "...fully feathering Rotol propeller was fitted to prevent overspeeding."
this needs a citation: "After hostilities ceased in Asia in 1945, a number of Spitfire Mk.XIVs were reportedly buried, after being greased, tarred and prepared for long-term storage, in crates in Burma."
there is some inconsistency in whether emdashes or endashes are used for parenthetical statements, e.g. compare "included "Johnnie" Johnson—34 enemy aircraft (e/a) shot down[101]—who flew" with "...tanks of various sizes[64] – a feature patented by Vickers-Supermarine in 1938"
a number of the entries in the Memorials section are also uncited
same as above for the Notable appearances in media section
this needs a citation: "Several small manufacturers have produced replica Spitfires, either as complete aircraft, or as kits for self-building. These range in scale from ¾ full scale to full-size, although most use wooden construction, rather than the original all-metal monocoque design."
this needs a citation: "The Isaacs Spitfire is a homebuilt 60% scale replica."
in Note 2, suggest turning "See Spitfire: A Complete Fighting History, 1991, p. 165-166" into an inline citation in the same way as Note 1
watch out for double full stops in your citations (for instance Citation 24, 41, 70, 87, 152, 153, 155
Citation 126 (Ted Powles) should have more bibliographic details such as author, publisher, accessdate etc
some of the citations use clickable refs and some don't (e.g. Citation 149 "Green 2007, p. 91" v. Citation 150 "McKinstry 2007, pp. 379–80". Either style is fine, but for A-class the style should be consistent

Comments:

The last para in Origins needs to be broken up somehow. I didn't try because it had too many cites and I was sure I would screw it up.
Initial production has significant amounts of duplicated text about the Walrus and Wellington. I assume this is editing cruft but again I didn't know how to fix it. The second duplication seems more detailed and seems like the one too keep.
"for a price of £1,395,000" - I think that means "for all 310"?
"In 1935, the Air Ministry approached" - no cite.
"original estimated cost of £2,000,000 " - what orginal estimate? the only estimate mentioned to date is the 1.7
"Although Morris Motors," ... "it was funded by government money. " - why "although"?
"their Cowley plant could" - this didn't seem to actually happen, but it's not clear
"by the Luftwaffe to destroy the main manufacturing plants at Woolston and Itchen" - wasn't Castle Bromwich the main one? It just said so a few lines earlier. It seems there is a bit missing in the earlier section about the setting up of the initial production outside Woolston. Generally, in the spring of 1940, was it just those three plants producing spits?
"would avoid possible aileron reversal, stopping pilots throwing the aircraft around and pulling the wings off" - these are two separate statements. Either there is an "and" missing where the comma is, or they are not related. I personally find it difficult to believe they were worried about aileron reversal at this point, given that it didn't show up for some time.
"Flight tests showed the fabric covering" - this bothers me too, it seems to be suggesting that they had planned for the ballooning to occur to make the controls stiff, but that is definitely not the case.
"The airflow through the main radiator" - move up under other part about the radiator.
"developed by National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics" - the Spiteful article states these were developed by "A D Young of the R.A.E". Which is it?
There's also a number of overlong paragraphs, but we'll look at them later.

Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:20, 5 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.