Talk:Operation Barras

Comment
I have seen no evidence on the internet that an Mi-24 was used in this action? Can this actually be verified? --Wikipediatastic 13:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a South African mercenary pilot called Neall Ellis who was running around Sierra Leone under the employ of their government with a helicopter gunship (and it was an Mi-24 IIRC), according to the book 'War Dogs' by Al J. Venter. As such it's entirely possible it was him, and if they were hiring mercenaries, it's unlikely to be information disclosed to the press. 41.241.198.157 07:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm reading the book right now. Venter mentions Ellis' presence at the operation on page 132. --BrokenSphere 03:52, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Just watched an episode on Discovery Channel on this operation [Zero Hour]. It showed that Foday Kallay was killed and only one rescuer was wounded. Also during negotiations, Major Marshall was present and was able to pass camp disposition to the Army negotiators on the sly. How true are all these or is Discovery Channel sensationalising the whole thing (not the 1st time)

Bankrobber 07:28, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

What about the SBS, they were there too.
 * Exactly. Some unknown user keeps deleting the entries regarding the SBS. -- • Kurt Guirnela •  ‡ Talk  23:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Thats what the Discovery Channel also claimed - ie. the SBS was there too. But not going to use Discovery Channel as a source. Bankrobber 15:59, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

I modified the page after the reference to the SBS was deleted four days ago. SAS D squadron was augmented with SBS troopers, as mentioned in Damien Lewis' book "Operation Certain Death"

Rather than the words "Sally and Sarah send their regards and so does Dawn", what I actually wrote was "You're doing a Sterling job, Sally, Sarah and Dawn send their love and the Boys will see you soon". But then again, the passage of notes to and from Major Marshall were "rumours...almost certainly myths". So, it must be assumed, where the sketch maps that were received via the same agent!

New revelations
The article requires revision following the release of new details regarding West Side Boys casualties and the operation in general: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307151/SAS-vengeance-West-Side-Boys.html?ito=feeds-newsxml


 * STRONGLY DISAGREE!.... The Daily Mail and it's online variant MailOnline (dailymail.co.uk) is considered unreliable by consensus, and was deprecated by Wikipedia in 2017 (reaffirmed in 2019), and so its use as a source and/or reference is generally prohibited within Wikipedia. M R G WIKI999 (talk) 02:42, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:OpearationBarras.jpg
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BetacommandBot 23:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Copy edit confusion
The line, "The ground operation was conducted by D Squadron, 22 Regiment Special Air Service—who assaulted Gberi Bana in a bid to extract the Royal Irish—and elements of 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment (1 PARA), based around A Company, who launched a diversionary assault on Magbeni.", contained an ungrammatical use of "around". (Things can't be based "around" other things; as a concrete term, "base" requires "on" or "in".) However, the line is confusing as written; after several readings I couldn't figure out which unit and action was related to which. Therefore I've simply deleted "based around A Company"; if this information is necessary to the account, please restore it without reintroducing a "lazy around" to the article. Cheers. Laodah 21:28, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

References section
Since the References section was ordered this way ("General" first and "Specific" after it) in the FA version I want to propose changes here on Talk rather than just go ahead and implement them. There are two problems with regards to WP:FNNR:
 * Is there any compelling reason to do the exact opposite here? It's counter-intuitive at best.
 * This is not how the sources in the "General" subsection of this article are used. Can it be renamed "Works cited", "Sources", "Bibliography" or something else?

– Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 02:05, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Fair point. I can't remember where I picked up the "general/specific" titles from and I'm not attached to them; I've changed them to "bibliography" and "citations", which I've been going with for more recent articles. As for the order, it's mostly personal preference—I've always thought the list of works consulted is much more interesting than the page numbers relating to a particular fact. Maybe I'm mad, but it's the style I've used for most of my articles and it's survived multiple FACs. To be honest I'd want a better reason to change it than a sentence buried deep in a guideline that even starts with "usually", and I see the same guideline says, two paragraphs above, Editors may use any citation method they choose. link in original. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?  10:54, 25 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The current layout seems readable/nice; it's not like there are 300 books listed. --Errant (chat!) 13:54, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

This article is absolutely terrible in its current form
Currently, the article ignores *ALL* available evidence that is less than salutory to the British military, including evidence cited by the Daily Mail already mentioned by another contributor below. It is not encyclopedic, it is propagandistic, providing only the official reading despite the fact that plenty of supplementary material is available. As such, the entire article is certainly not NPOV, as it displays an outrageous bias towards the official reading of the British government - for instance, the extensive evidence of far higher casualty counts provided by Tim Butcher is not mentioned anywhere. Articles like this one are a stain on Wikipedia. In fact, even deletion of this entire article would be better than the propaganda that is currently displayed here. 82.176.221.176 (talk) 10:00, 26 June 2019 (UTC)
 * It's probably just a matter of perception, but your tone suggests you may not be approaching this from a NPOV yourself. Anyone can edit the article, just be encyclopaedic and use reliable citations. Obscurasky (talk) 15:33, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 23:23, 3 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Sierra Leone Civil War 1991 to 2002.jpg