Talk:Timeline for aircraft carrier service

Other Ships
I had made several historical entries on sea control ships and amphibs being used for short periods in their secondary(tertiary) role as strike carriers or SCS's not sure why they were rolled back... you will have to ask MBK004 these ships were not added to the totals. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.182.110.109 (talk) 06:29, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * My suggestion is that we wait until the current entries have been fully referenced and then we might want to discuss what else we might want to include in the timeline. The thing to remember is that this is not intended to be a complete "history" of aircraft carriers, rather to give an overall idea of their development and when they served (or indeed, still are serving).  I think it appropriate to leaven the timeline with key events, such as the dates of Taranto and Pearl Harbour, as well as a few well chosen and pertinent incidental facts, such as the dates of first ship board landings etc, but let us not get carried away too much with the minutiae of each ship's service.  After all, each ship is wikilinked on its first entry and anyone interested in the details of how what and when for a particular ship can easily look it up.  The timeline is big enough already and by the time it is fully referenced it is going to be a bit of a monster.  Frankly I am not sure that we might not have to divide it, but that's a question for later on.  For now, I just want to get the article properly referenced. Nick Thorne  talk  07:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I will leave this article alone for now although there are several well ref'ed corrections you might want to save in MBK004's uber-rollback. Just so others are aware that the rollback was not for drive by vandalism, you can see that my IP block is responsible for turning most of the less known postwar carriers from stubs into articles and I even recomended the creation of this article, thanks Nick Thorne for the hard work so far, it looks great. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.182.110.109 (talk) 10:28, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Please forgive my inability to log in and have a user name but my security system does not allow cookies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.182.110.109 (talk) 10:35, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I suggest that someone look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Timeline_for_aircraft_carrier_service&diff=241729276&oldid=241707784 for the many spelling and html fixes which were rolled back, since there has been a lull in referencing it might be a good time to consider the sea control vessels in an appended form. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.183.141.27 (talk) 06:36, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks mate, I'll check that info out when I finish off the referencing, been rather busy of late with work, hope to get back to it next week. I must say that it has been bigger than Ben Hur, not sure I would have started if I'd realised just how much work was involved!  LOL   Nick Thorne  talk  06:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Next steps

 * Check the list for orphan ship entries (unreferenced) ✅
 * Pre-Carrier History ✅
 * World War I ✅
 * Between the wars ✅
 * World War II ✅
 * Post war 1940s ✅
 * 1950s ✅
 * 1960s ✅
 * 1970s ✅
 * 1980s ✅
 * 1990s ✅
 * 2000 to today ✅


 * Re-calculate force strength figures ✅ - Nick Thorne  talk  12:53, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Check the list for unreferenced entries not part of ship histories.

Article size
Pre-empting any discussion about article size that may arise in a FL review: The article is currently around 103 kb and would therefore normally be considered a candidate for slitting. However, much of this size is not visible, that is, it is the "hidden" code behind the in-line references. The main body of the article as seen by the user is about 50 kb, 60 kb if you include the footnotes/references section. In this case and considering that this list really only makes sense as a whole, I propose leaving it as one article. If anyone has other ideas, please feel free to add them below. Nick Thorne talk  23:36, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

USS Kitty Hawk
I have commented out the entry for 31 Jan 2009 for USS Kitty Hawk because I have been unable to find any reliable source to back up this entry. The ceremony on 31 Jan 09 appears to have been a "heritage" ceremony and the articles that talk about that specificaly state that the ship will be decommissioned "in the spring" or some other unspecified future date. The USN official web site contains nothing that I can find about this ship having been decommissioned, including on its news service - I would have thought the decommissioning of this historic ship would rate at least some mention there! - Nick Thorne  talk  23:40, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Kitty Hawk has now been decommissioned, I have made the appropriate entry in the list. - Nick Thorne  talk  22:32, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Merchant Aircraft Carriers and CAM ships
The list makes no mention of merchant aircraft carriers such as MV Empire MacAlpine and CAM ships such as Empire Darwin. Mjroots (talk) 11:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * This timeline is big enough aleady, just looking at regular Navy carriers. I have amended the definition of carrier in the in the article to clarify things. - Nick Thorne  talk  06:40, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Seaplane tenders
This list is missing a whole class of aircraft carriers, the seaplane tenders. 76.66.202.139 (talk) 13:11, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Force levels revisited
I have found that compiling the force level figures is a great deal of work and is very difficult to maintain plus I am not sure at all about the accuracy. Additionally, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that these figures fall foul of the sanction of WP:OR as synthesis. Consequently I am going to remove the force level figures when I have a suitable block of time. Of course, if someone else wants to do it please feel free to save me the effort! - Nick Thorne  talk  02:03, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

If the force levels were sourced from Janes Fighting Ships and referenced would that be acceptable? I would imagine a student at Annapolis, Royal Naval College, or even a descent university should have access to a complete collection from the 20th century, now if there were some easy way to contact one who was also a wikipedian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.126.41.225 (talk) 00:42, 5 August 2009 (UTC)


 * If someone had access to the best part of a hundred editions of Jane's then this could be done, however given that such information may be based upon a different definition of aircraft carrier to that used in the timeline (and the aircraft carrier article) I would suggest that such information may be better presented in a separate list (even Jane's has changed their definition over the years, so the data would not be consistent). A separate list will prevent internal inconsistancies in the information presented in the timeline as a result of the definition difference.  If someone wants to complie such a list, then of course we should link to it from the timeline.  It would still be a massive amount of work, as I found out with the work on the timeline - much more than I anticipated. -  Nick Thorne  talk  23:04, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Ship prefixes
This article follows the Wikipedia naming convention (ships) and and so does not use prefixes for ships that were/are not actually used by the navy in question. Thus "IJN" for Japanese navy ships is not used. Someone had inserted this incorrect prefix into the timeline, which I only just noticed and have now removed. - Nick Thorne  talk  07:54, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Re-referencing
I have completed the run through of all the references, and have replaced all the Haze Gray & Underway refs with more reliable ones, in the process I have acquired several books, such as the 2000 Jane's and Chesneau, which I have used wherever possible. There were only a few entries that I have not yet found reliable references for, mostly for Soviet/Russian ships and in each case I have replaced the reference with a citation needed tag. Mostly these are for things that are only vaguely referred to in the currently availabe refs. If anyone would like to help out find suitable references for these entries, it would be appreciated, otherwise I will see what I can find as time allows. - Nick Thorne  talk  08:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Unsourced entries
I will move entries here that, although I am reasonably certain are correct, I am unable to find sources for. Naturally if anyone is able to locate a suitable source for any of these, it would be appreciated, otherwise I will continue to search for them.


 * 17 September 1939 - HMS Courageous, first aircraft carrier sunk in combat
 * November 1945 — HMS Elephant renamed HMS Hermes (R12).

IJN?
I thought English-language writing conventions dictated that Japanese Naval vessels are designated by the prefix "IJN". Is that incorrect? Boneyard90 (talk) 12:08, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

No. That usage is specifically mentioned in the Naming conventions (ships) as one to avoid. IJN is not and never has been an official prefix for Japanese naval vessels and so should not be used here. - Nick Thorne  talk  02:07, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Milhist article assessment
Thank you for submitting this article to Requests for assessment. Following some discussion it has been decided the article should remain at Start-Class for now. The issues that are preventing its B-Class promotion are: I hope this helps with the article's further development. You've chosen a difficult (though very interesting) subject to cover, and regardless of the outcome of this assessment I think you're doing a fine job so far and would like to thank you for the hard work you've put in. Best, EyeSerene talk 17:33, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The lead is unsourced and contains a number of statements that should be directly supported by an in-line citation per "all major points have appropriate inline citations." Examples: "the aircraft carrier was to be the most important ship in the modern fleet"; "Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States built up significant carrier fleets so that by the beginning of World War II, they had 18 carriers between them"; "HMS Argus being the first to have such modification begun".
 * The lead also appears to contain editorial commentary. Examples: "Those first faltering steps gave little indication of just how important the aircraft carrier was to prove to be"; the entire second paragraph.
 * Three of the four footnotes are unsourced
 * Many of the citations are simply to DANFS. These need to be specific (ie cited to individual entries rather than the site)
 * The article appears to overuse external links. According to WP:ELNO, we should keep external links to a minimum of those that will enhance article content beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article. Generally if an external website is reliable its content should be used in developing the article and it can be cited accordingly. If it has no directly-relevant content, or isn't reliable, then it doesn't belong on the article anyway.


 * Thank you for your comments. I will work on the issues with the lead as time allows.  I am not sure that the three footnotes you mention as being unreferenced need referencing, since they are not presenting information but are rather explanatory as to aspects of how the time line is organised, what is included and so on - how can these be referenced to an outside source?  I take your point about DANFS, the reason I referenced it the way I did was the effect it would have had on the citations/references sections, which are quite big already.  However, if you think it necesasary, I can expand it, but it will make the article quite a bit larger.  I am not sure I understand your comments about external links - there are only 2 - could you explain what you mean?  Once again, thank you for taking the time to look at this. -  Nick Thorne  talk  22:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I see your point re the footnotes. I guess this relates to my comment about editorial commentary; it's difficult to source explanatory notes when they're the result of an editorial decision. Something must have led to you taking those decisions though (maybe the organisation of a source book?), so perhaps that could be cited as justification? (eg "This timeline broadly follows the chronology given in X...").
 * Re the external links, please accept my apologies. I'd misread the weblinks in the references section as an external links section. I've struck that comment. Best, EyeSerene talk 15:57, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

1806 entry
The following entry has been repeatedly entered by an anonymous editor.

1806


 * 1806 was the first ever airborne launch from a ship when, the Royal Navy's Lord Thomas Cochrane 10 th Earl of Dundonald launched Kites from the 32-gun Frigate HMS Pallas to distribute propaganda leaflets over French territory.

I have removed the entry because it has nothing to do with aircraft carriers and consequently does not belong in this timeline. - Nick Thorne  talk  23:40, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Obvious Error
1917 February — Incomplete large light cruiser HMS Furious has its forward gun replaced with a flying-off deck.[10] 19 July — Tondern raid, the first attack by aircraft launched from a carrier flight deck. 2 August — First aircraft landing aboard a moving ship, HMS Furious; this ship was subsequently modified with a stern-mounted landing deck in late 1917.[10] 21 August — First air to air kill from a ship launched aircraft, Zeppelin L23 shot down by a Sopwith Pup from cruiser HMS Yarmouth.[8] 2 December — HMS Argus launched.[9]

1918 15 January — HMS Hermes laid down;[11] Hermes was the first ship specifically designed to be built as an aircraft carrier and the first carrier to feature an island superstructure.[4][12] 28 February — Incomplete Chilean battleship Almirante Cochrane purchased by the Royal Navy to be completed as the carrier HMS Eagle.[13] 8 June — HMS Eagle launched.[13] 9 July — First strike by aircraft launched from a carrier, the Tondern raid.[8] 14 September — HMS Argus commissioned.[4] 11 November — Armistice signed, signalling the end of WWI. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.78.149.13 (talk) 18:27, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

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DYK for August 2: Century of carriers?
Do we want to make a dyk about this? L3X1 (distant write)  01:59, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

Status at 12 Dec 2019
My fellow Wikiopedians, I reviewed this article after an update appeared on my watchlist and I note several things that need attention. There have been quite a few additions made without references, a number of ships have been added that do not meet the definition of aircraft carrier (as defined in the footnotes), and many times the ships have been Wikilinked after the first mention in the list. I will attempt to resolve these issues as I get time, but especially with the referencing, collaboration would be appreciated. - <b style="color: darkblue">Nick Thorne</b> <sup style="color: darkblue">talk 22:57, 11 December 2019 (UTC)