Talk:HNLMS Gelderland (1898)

Commission date
German Wiki states she was commissioned on 15, not 16, July 1900. Which date is correct? Drutt (talk) 02:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Title of the page
The ship was called Hr.Ms. Gelderland (in English HNLMS Gelderland) and not HNLMS De Gelderland. The latter is a faulty compound born from use of ship's names without the H(NL)MS part, like in English one can refer to HMS Hood and the Hood in an article. I suggest that the title of the page be corrected to HNLMS Gelderland as has already been done in the article text. (Paaskynen (talk) 06:58, 2 July 2009 (UTC))


 * That makes sense, and is backed up e.g. here, where "HNLMS Gelderland" is listed, and "de" occurs only rarely in HNLMS ships' names; and Dutch WP has "Hr. Ms. Gelderland". "HNLMS de Gelderland" seems to occur only in WP mirrors, e.g. here and here. I shall move the page in a few days, if no objections. Nortonius (talk) 09:40, 9 August 2010 (UTC) (later:) What am I saying - this aspect hasn't received attention in over a year, I'll probably move it by the end of the day, unless someone intervenes, or beats me to it!


 * ✅ Nortonius (talk) 17:42, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused
"The Niobe was raised and scrapped in 1953." This sentence appears at the end of the article and yet the picture is captioned "The wreck of Niobe in Kotka". I can only assume the photograph was taken before 1953. Would a sunken ship be raised only to be scrapped, (perhaps as part of the post-war clear-up)? I think a bit of knowledgable revision is required to make things a bit clearer. RASAM (talk) 20:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've dug around a bit, including looking at the Russian EL, as a result of which I'd point you to the phrase "shallow grave" in the existing text, and say your assumptions are correct. However, I've adjusted the text slightly, to indicate why you can see a photo of the "wreck", though apparently it was only "raised" in 1953 - hopefully that's a bit clearer now. To be honest, though, and particularly given that the ship didn't need raising far, the idea that it was raised and then scrapped doesn't seem an issue to me - many tons of useful scrap, would cost a fortune to repair, obsolete in WWII anyway, major hazard to shipping inside a harbour, etc... And, compare what happened to the Tirpitz. So, I have left that part of the text unchanged. BTW, prior to this, I have had no connection with the article. Nortonius (talk) 18:17, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Bouncing bombs?!
Sources please! Nortonius (talk) 18:18, 8 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Water was too shallow in harbour to use torpedos so bouncing bombs were choosen.

http://www.bellabs.ru/51/Analysis/Niobe-Vainamoinen.html Dronrus (talk) 23:43, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, yes, I'd found that page myself before, but I'm afraid I don't read Russian! Can you translate? I have used Google Translate to try reading this, but Google Translate is not very good. All I can see is that the ship was attacked by dive bombers, and other attacks used normal bombing from high altitude. So, how were these "bouncing bombs"? The issue is that bombs don't normally bounce, they simply impact and detonate as designed - were these special bombs which were designed to bounce, or were they ordinary bombs which were made to bounce by how the pilots dropped them, perhaps? Encyclopedic information in English is needed for "bouncing bombs" to stay in this article, and the Russian web page you pointed to doesn't seem to mention them. Thanks. Nortonius (talk) 00:59, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've done a partial re-write of the article for encyclopedic style, in which I've removed mention of "bouncing bombs": this had been marked as "citation needed" since August 2010, and the only source offered doesn't seem to mention them (per above). Nortonius (talk) 10:50, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi! The A-20 were used for mast-level attack (топмачтовики) - that is something complately different from bouncing bombs and as you can check it is mentioned in the source : "Вторая ударная группа имела 4 топмачтовика А-20G [ 51 МТАП ]" --Sceadugenga (talk) 21:54, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

two vessels so named in 1943
after 8 september 1943 Germany recovered the former SMS Niobe (ex-italian Cattaroi, ex-jug Dalmacja) who regained the original name, so had two cruisers with this name (see the page of SMS Niobe)151.29.177.129 (talk) 13:16, 28 January 2019 (UTC). pietro