Talk:Bristol Beaufighter

What is the wiki guideline ref when an aircraft changes from is to was?
eg In this article "The Bristol Beaufighter is a fighter derivative..." Thanks.Pieter1963 (talk) 03:29, 4 March 2020 (UTC)


 * MOS:TENSE. The key words are 'meaningfully exist'. One group of editors believe that if one example is in a museum then it exists and should be present tense, another group of editors believe that it does not 'meaningfully exist' because in the case of a military aircraft it is not flying and not using weapons etc (the purpose it was designed for). It has caused problems since I have been here (14 years), I believe an important nuance of the English language is being missed when obsolete subjects are discussed, it might be WP:ENGVAR related. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)  08:30, 5 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't know if it's an ENGVAR issue or not. My own sense of tense is a mix between American and Commonwealth, and I don't know if one variant is more strict on tense in relation to obsolete objects than the other. The interpretation I've been using for Wikipedia, based on my understanding of MOS:TENSE, is if a whole individual aircraft is documented to exist somewhere, except for under wrecks or under the ocean, then we use present tense. Personally, I lean more toward flying examples, or even still in service, but whatever. The MOS is king and we must obey. :) - BilCat (talk) 10:09, 5 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I often check to see what other wikis are doing, German is a very logical language, the Beaufighter entry is past tense, the French Beaufighter article uses Passé simple which is a special past tense that appears to have no English equivalent. Any attempt to highlight this grey area at the MOS talk pages get steamrollered, the problem will rumble on. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)  16:57, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Six Browning guns?
I was just making a list of Fleet air arm aircraft and trying to add an image of Beaufighter X when I saw it had holes in its wing which were probably for machine guns. However machine guns are not stated to be present on the Beaufighter X in this article. I was looking around and most other sources saying the Beaufighter X had 6 Browning machine guns which is not stated in this article. This is quite an oversight so I will amend the article to mention the 6 Browning machine guns on Beaufighter X Anonymous contributor 1707 (talk) 10:37, 7 December 2020 (UTC).
 * The source (Jane's) explains that they can be fitted with long range fuel tanks removed, I have updated the article. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)  11:36, 7 December 2020 (UTC)