Talk:German destroyer Z39

CE
Did a cheeky little ce, revert as desired.Keith-264 (talk) 23:59, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Some comments
I response to a request on my talk page, I'd like to offer the following comments and suggestions for this article:
 * "Her anti-aircraft armament was modified extensively under Project Barbara" - for the lead, just say that the AA armament was increased or whatever. No need to name the bureaucratic project.
 * "such as "Dorothea A", "Seeigel 6b", "Seeigel 3b", "Seeigel 7b/3", and "Seeigel 8b"" - delete. None were notable in their own right
 * "In the last year of the war" - the article says that the ship only did this from early 1945, not May 1944
 * " which were evacuating German soldiers and civilians to Denmark" - say from where to Denmark
 * What the ship was used for during its US and French service should be noted in the lead - especially as these periods of service were roughly as long as those it spent with the German navy
 * I think that the 'background' section is not well focused on the article, and feels 'padded'. This was one of about 20 such ships operated by Germany, so there's no need to go back to the basics so much. A reader unfamiliar with the history of this ship class might conclude that this was Germany's only destroyer, or similar. It would be much better for this section to just describe the role and key features of the ship class.
 * " As a result of the treaty, Germany could not possibly hope to compete with the ships of the Allied navies. Germany therefore began to ignore the treaties" - Implies that Germany was somehow forced to breach its legal obligations.
 * I was trying to show their thinking on the situation, which with Nazis is quite hard to do with NPOV.
 * "Another problem that resulted was that, although the German heavy destroyers matched British light cruisers in armament" - I don't think that they did (the contemporary Town-class cruiser (1936) had something like twice the gun armament, for instance)
 * That bothered me too, but the book said it and I saw nothing to the contrary. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  18:48, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The description of why it took so long to build the ship also feels padded - just focus on this destroyer, rather than issues in the broader war economy
 * Leading with "At some point between her launching and commissioning, she was modified under Project Barbara" and then a description of what the project - is confusing. Readers won't know and probably won't care what the name of the project was, and be confused about why modifications to other ships are being described. I'd suggest stating instead that here armament was increased, and name the project later, and move most of the first para here into a separate article on the project. Pretty much all warship classes of World War II received heavier AA armaments as the war went on.
 * I don't think that it's necessary to name all the ships Z39 operated with in each operation. This makes the prose very heavy going (it reads like Rohwer, whose book is extremely useful as a reference work, but not a great read!). I'd suggest saying instead that the destroyer did stuff with X other destroyers and X other ships, etc.
 * (These ships also seem a bit underlinked)
 * "This was due to several reasons..." - I'd suggest cutting this: you don't need to describe Germany's war economy in an article on a destroyer ;)
 * "This often involved shelling land targets, something the German ship crews had no training in. " - but the article has noted that the ship had shelled land targets on multiple occasions previously
 * I was paraphrasing from source; I believe source means that they were not given training on it, although they might gain experience from their past times doing it. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  19:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * " From the spring of 1945 to near the end of the war, the Kriegsmarine became almost entirely focused upon resupplying and supporting garrisons along the Baltic Coast" - bit of an overstatement. Large scale submarine operations in the North Sea (especially British coastal waters) and North Atlantic also continued. Nick-D (talk) 09:41, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ Changed to "the surface forces of the Kriegsmarine". Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  19:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think that it's necessary to name all the ships Z39 operated with in each operation. This makes the prose very heavy going (it reads like Rohwer, whose book is extremely useful as a reference work, but not a great read!). I'd suggest saying instead that the destroyer did stuff with X other destroyers and X other ships, etc.
 * (These ships also seem a bit underlinked)
 * "This was due to several reasons..." - I'd suggest cutting this: you don't need to describe Germany's war economy in an article on a destroyer ;)
 * "This often involved shelling land targets, something the German ship crews had no training in. " - but the article has noted that the ship had shelled land targets on multiple occasions previously
 * I was paraphrasing from source; I believe source means that they were not given training on it, although they might gain experience from their past times doing it. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  19:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * " From the spring of 1945 to near the end of the war, the Kriegsmarine became almost entirely focused upon resupplying and supporting garrisons along the Baltic Coast" - bit of an overstatement. Large scale submarine operations in the North Sea (especially British coastal waters) and North Atlantic also continued. Nick-D (talk) 09:41, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ Changed to "the surface forces of the Kriegsmarine". Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  19:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * "This often involved shelling land targets, something the German ship crews had no training in. " - but the article has noted that the ship had shelled land targets on multiple occasions previously
 * I was paraphrasing from source; I believe source means that they were not given training on it, although they might gain experience from their past times doing it. Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  19:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * " From the spring of 1945 to near the end of the war, the Kriegsmarine became almost entirely focused upon resupplying and supporting garrisons along the Baltic Coast" - bit of an overstatement. Large scale submarine operations in the North Sea (especially British coastal waters) and North Atlantic also continued. Nick-D (talk) 09:41, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ Changed to "the surface forces of the Kriegsmarine". Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  19:02, 3 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I believe I have done everything, do you have any further suggestions/believe it is ready for FAC? Iazyges   Consermonor   Opus meum  19:12, 3 February 2018 (UTC)