Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Submarine ace


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Redirect to Ace (military) with much of the actual content suitable for merging into List of most successful U-boat commanders. Kim Dent-Brown  (Talk)  13:47, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Submarine ace

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The concept of a "submarine ace" does not appear to exist. The term is used in literature to describe successful submarine commanders, but I could not find a definition, or a discussion of the term: Google books preview. This source discusses a submarine ace in terms of ships sunk: link. Likewise here: link.

I was not able to confirm that a commander became an "ace" after having sunk 100,000 tons. In this example, the top U.S. "submarine aces" has sunk "only" 93,000 tons (link). Clay Blair uses "ace" in quotation marks: link. His Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939-1942 is likely to be one of the definitive English-language resources on the German U-boat warfare.

I was not able to access the sources used in the article, but the logic seems to be: German U-boat commanders received the Knight's Cross after 100,000 tons sunk, ergo they are "aces", ergo all submarine commanders who sunk 100,000 tons are "aces". Which seems dubious. Passage from the article reads:
 * In World War II, U-boat commanders upon sinking 100,000 tons and becoming U-boat aces, were awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (RK), under the points system instituted by Adolf Hitler. Those who exceeded 200,000 tons were eligible for the Knight's Cross to the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves

In summary, it's not apparent that U-boat or submarine "ace" is a concept, or that 100,000 tons sunk = ace, and I recommend deleting this article. I also nominated the related category for discussion: CfD: Category:Aces of the Deep.

K.e.coffman (talk) 22:30, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. K.e.coffman (talk) 22:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. K.e.coffman (talk) 22:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Popular culture-related deletion discussions. K.e.coffman (talk) 22:31, 10 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Unsure  The article's pretty fuzzy as it stands. Perhaps this counts as WP:NOTDIC and the term should be in Wiktionary rather than here? A quick search of Google books shows the term being used a fair amount but no standard definition appears to stand out. Indeed, flying ace points out that no standard definition of that—far more common—term exists, either. (Not using this for WP:OSE, BTW, just for pointers for anyone cleaning up the article.) Perhaps if the article were tightened up and referenced from works I could access as well as those already there I might vote keep; otherwise, I tend towards delete — Iadmc  ♫ talk 23:40, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Add: The article only mentions German "aces" while the books I accessed via Google mentions US, Japanese and other nationals. That's (partly) what I meant by saying the article needs to be "tightened up" — Iadmc  ♫ talk 23:49, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Add: Though the article was started in the user space of a highly respected admin with only a stub template, the bulk of the work was done by an IP  over two days in 2009—being moved by Martin half way through to main space. No idea if this is significant in any way, just seems odd —  Iadmc  ♫ talk 03:53, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep Looking at other comments, I see that the concept is well attested. The article just needs to be updated to include all nationalities and explain the concept better, and also needs to be better sourced. — Iadmc  ♫ talk 02:27, 13 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep. Without seeing the sources cited, how can you suggest the claims are OR? Google Books gives me:
 * "A Knight's Cross was awarded to Kommandants who had sunk approximately 100,000 tons." (Teddy Suhren, Ace of Aces: Memoirs of a U-Boat Rebel, orig. pub. by Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft)
 * "Traditionally, a submarine captain was given the Knight's Cross after he had sunk 100,000 tons of enemy shipping, the Oak Leaves after 200,000 tons. This standard was often relaxed,and there were exceptions." (Jordan Vause, U-Boat Ace: The Story of Wolfgang Luth, Naval Institute Press)
 * "The Germans had a fixed scale of awards for successful raiding operations. Ace U-boat commanders who sank over 100,000 tons of Allied ships, got the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross from Hitler. . . We had submarine aces in our own [US] Navy [that] got the Congressional Medal of Honor." (Daniel Vincent Gallery, Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea, Naval Institute Press)
 * The idea may be a bit hokey, but the term is common and after some cursory searches there is no grounds to delete. The Germans, at least, had a system for identifying aces. Srnec (talk) 01:40, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The first two quotes only show that the Germans had a system for deciding when to give out medals. They don't mention "aces" except in the titles of the books, therefore there is not necessarily a connection between getting a medal and being hailed an ace. The third quote seems to suggest they were already hailed as aces before they got a medal: "Ace U-boat commanders who sank... got the Knight's Cross..." Be careful of creating your own interpretation from the sources. Also, the second half of the third quote talks about US aces receiving medals (again notice the order) and they aren't even mentioned in the article — Iadmc  ♫ talk 03:39, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The following are from Clay Blair, Hitler's U-Boat War: The Hunters, 1939–1942. He clearly has a precise definition he is using, because throughout he refers to specific numbers of aces ("...all eight 'aces' who still commanded U-boats..." on p. 233). Sometimes he puts ace in quotes, sometimes not.
 * "Berlin propagandists gleefully pronounced [Kretschmer] the new king of the U-boat aces" (p. 214)
 * "British propagandists hastend to boast of capturing a U-boat 'ace' (or Ritterkreuz holder)." (p. 205)
 * "Schepke's return to Germany ... left only one of the eighteen 'aces' (or Ritterkreuz holders) in the Atlantic." (p. 224)
 * I take quote #1 to indicate that German propaganda made use of the "ace" concept. There is extensive mention of U-boat aces in Michael L. Hadley, Count Not the Dead: The Popular Image of the German Submarine. In short, this is a valid topic, even if it is not covered well right now. The lack of a precise definition does not invalidate it. It is not restricted, apparently, either to Germany or to World War II. Srnec (talk) 04:24, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I have tracked down all but one of the sources cited in the article and updated the reflist accordingly. Perhaps you could expand the article using these and your sources? That way we may have a better idea of what this article is actually trying to convey. You seem to know what you're talking about which why I ask you. I just stumbled in here and have no idea about this topic. Don't feel obliged, though. Thanks — Iadmc  ♫ talk 04:52, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I've consulted Hadley's index prior to nominating this article to deletion, and I did not see "Ace, U-boat" or "U-boat ace" included. Could you point me to the pages where the concept is discussed? K.e.coffman (talk) 17:14, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I have institutional access to an online edition. I get over 30 hits for "ace" and "aces". I have not found a discussion of the term, but its casual use throughout such a work tells me I need to see better grounds to delete. For example, "the grand three aces (Prien, Schepke, and Kretschmer) whose exploits had exhilarated Germany in the opening months of the war" on p. 134 suggests that he is not employing the term willy-nilly. You will find "aces" mentioned in the index under "media" and "novelists". Srnec (talk) 00:58, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Comment: (In response to 's note above.) I facilitated the creation of this article after a discussion at Articles for creation/Redirects/2009-04. I had some of the same concerns as expressed on this page but was ultimately satisfied by the explanation given. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:11, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep The nomination tells us that the concept doesn't exist. It then contradicts itself by saying that there are many sources which use it.  And it's easy to confirm this, e.g. "The Royal Navy's top submarine ace of World War II was Lt. Comdr. Malcolm David Wanklyn, commanding the Upholder."  The fact that there's no exact definition is unimportant.  There's no exact definition of concepts like mountain or river but that doesn't stop us having articles about them.  Andrew D. (talk) 20:14, 11 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep The concept definitely exists. Looking at Google ngrams we can see that it appeared during the war, which means that it was not of German origin at all, and has been in use since. It appears to be used in many books by noted naval historians like Norman Polmar. I also note that the are no Germans in the first page of books, just Brits and Americans. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:10, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep Sources support the concept. Agathoclea (talk) 14:53, 13 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Delete The term exists, but there is nothing like a concept. In military contexts the term ace gained currency in the English speaking countries, particularly in the US during WW I, when it was used by propaganda to describe successfull fighter pilots. (See Linda R. Robertson: The Dream of Civilized Warfare: World War I Flying Aces and the American Imagination. University of Minneapolis Press, Minneapolis 2003, esp. pp. 87-113.) But Allied war propaganda should not be mistaken to suggest that there was something like a "concept" in Germany during WW I. During WW II German U-boat commanders received the Knight's Cross, when they had sunk a certain number of enemy ships, and they figured greatly in German propaganda, but they were not referred to as "U-Boot Asse". For his English speaking audience Clay Blair may refer to Otto Kretschmer as the "king of the U-boat aces". In Germany he was called "Tonnagekönig". The German title of Reinhard "Teddy" Suhren's memoir, which was also mentioned here as an example, is Nasses Eichenlaub (= Wet Oak Leaves). It is true that the terminology was picked up by some German authors of popular militaria literature and pulp (like Karl Alman, i.e. Franz Kurowski), but that was way after WW II.
 * Claims like In World War I, U-boat commanders upon sinking 100,000 tons became U-boat aces, confuse terminology and historical reality. What did it mean to become an "U-boat ace"? Was there a special status attached to it? The sinking of a certain amount of tons meant that the commander would receive medals and orders, but those were not "Ace"-medals. Apparently the terminlogy is freely used in publications like Sea Classics, which, according to the publisher himself, bring you the drama and adventure of [...] naval history like no other publications available. Those are not WP:RS. It would make sense to put together an article Ace (military), based upon secondary literature that discusses the use of the term "ace" in military contexts (scholarly literature on that subject does indeed exist). But it is WP:OR to conclude just from the liberal use of the term in certain literature, that there is also a concept. For that you would have to have RS which explictly analyze it as a concept. So far such RS have not been provided. Therefore WP:NAD applies.
 * References and sources of the article even do not support the claims they are supposed to, but appear to be the outcome of a google search for the words "submarine" and "ace" plus an indiscriminate collection of works on German U-boat warfare. The University of Michigan, for example, provided a copy for the digitalization of Terraine's book, but is not affiliated with this publication. Bodo Herzog does not speak of "Asse" whatsoever. And so forth. Thus there is no material here which could be used elsewhere.--Assayer (talk) 03:06, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Every single work I cited is an RS and not one is militaria. It does not matter if the concept is foreign to Germans. It doesn't even matter if it is only a term, so long as the term is notable enough. It's the same as flying ace, defined as "a military aviator credited with shooting down several enemy aircraft during aerial combat". Nothing needs be official to be notable. Nor does the concept need to be contemporary. Frankly, I was a bit surprised how widely the term is used by reliable sources. The concept is clearly "a submarine commander credited with sinking a large tonnage". The actual cited scholars have clear criteria in mind. Srnec (talk) 05:13, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You continue to confuse term and concept. Any term has a meaning, but not any term entails a concept. The use of the term "ace" in military contexts has become subject of historiographical analysis.  As Peter Fritzsche wrote about the "flying ace": "The ace in combat is an immediately recognizable image. In control of his fate, handling his airplane with great courage and skill but also with an envied recklessness, the aviator appeared to be a genuine war hero, comparable to cavalrymen in Napoleon's era or chivalrous knights in the Middle Ages. [...] To this day, myths opposing the individual, distinctive combat of the aces to the industrial mass war on the ground remain deeply embedded in Western folklore." (A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 1992, p. 64.) Thus WP:WORDISSUBJECT would apply to the Ace (military), but not to the "submarine ace", because the latter term has not been the subject of verifiable coverage. As you yourself found with Hadley's Count not the Dead, there is no discussion of the term. You put a definition into quotation marks: "a submarine commander credited with sinking a large tonnage" - but is there a source that explicitly states this conclusion? Otherwise it is WP:SYNTH. --Assayer (talk) 20:42, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Hezlet discusses and analyses the concept in his British and Allied Submarine Operations in World War II. Q.E.D. Andrew D. (talk) 22:17, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Hadley, p. 59: "Admiral S. S. Hall, commander of the Royal Navy's submarine forces for most of the Great War, highlighted the character of the German U-boat ace. The character of the commanding officer, he argued, was far more crucial in submarines than in surface ships; the submarine skipper himself was the very nerve centre of his vessel. 'Germany had some four hundred submarine captains during the war but over sixty percent of the damage they did was accomplished by but twenty two. The inference is obvious... Fortunately, not every nation can produce such men, and if they cannot we can safely let them have as many and as large submarines as they like'." Hall supplies the concept, Hadley the term. Srnec (talk) 22:27, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I may quote from WP:WORDISSUBJECT: articles on words must contain encyclopedic information. That is, such articles must go beyond what would be found in a dictionary entry (definition, pronunciation, etymology, use information, etc.), and include information on the social or historical significance of the term. No coverage of the social and historical significance of the term "submarine ace" has been provided, but merely definitions and use informations.
 * I will try to llustrate the difference once more: There is a stack of literature which traces the origins of the term "ace" and how it was applied to fighter pilots. Historians like Peter Fritzsche and Linda Roberston have provided analyses of the image of the "ace" and thereby of the social and historical significance of the term. I am speaking of chapters, not of mere sentences. That's the kind of RS that is needed here, not a listing where and by whom the term has been used.
 * Hezlet's assumption that the "submarine Ace" was a title coined by the Germans, contradicts what historiography has said about the use of the term "ace" in military contexts, and I might add, that the latter view can easily be supported by primary sources. Hezlet supports his statement with a reference to the Oxford English Dictionary, which, as he has to admit, does not mention German U-boat Captains. Which is not really surprising, because it has been acknowledged by historians, e.g. by Peter Fritzsche cited above (p. 74), that the term originated with the French and was not used in Germany until after the war. According to the latest ABC-CLIO encyclopedia Germany at War (2014), by WW II the term was being used by all countries besides Germany and Japan. You may also take notice, that Hezlet refers to a dictionary, while there is an entry on the "Aces, German (1914–1945)" in an encyclopedic work that does not mention "submarine aces".
 * If Michael Hadley quotes a British admiral from 1930, that does not mean that he considers this characterization, which he also describes as "fulsome praise to the Germans", as anything like a "concept". He speaks of "concepts" here and there. But then he refers to terms like "Lebensraum", which has indeed social and historical significance.--Assayer (talk) 21:05, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Who says this is an article about a word? WORDISSUBJECT does not apply, because this article is about submarine aces, not the term "submarine ace".
 * "That's the kind of RS that is needed here." That's setting the bar too high. Nobody would say that the concept of the submarine ace is equally important or influential or well-known as that of the flying ace. Why should it be as well studied? I think when you add all that has been presented just in this discussion, you have enough for an article without any OR or SYNTH. Add, e.g., Jordan Vause, U-Boat Ace: The Story of Wolfgang Luth (Naval Institute Press): "Weddigen was also the first U-boat ace. The U-boat ace would be as celebrated in his own circles as the air ace was in his—not as flashy perhaps, and certainly more hated, but celebrated nonetheless. As the war went on Weddigen was followed by a stream of other names. . . as dozens of new aces were created." Srnec (talk) 01:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Keep - The term may not have been precisely defined but it is used, as in this example about US submarine aces. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:15, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment -- I have been opposing the retention of a category, because inclusion involves POV issues. A list of the most successful commanders with their achievements (such as tonnage sunk) does not give rise to the same difficulty.  Peterkingiron (talk) 17:48, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Nom's comments / responses (putting this here in chrono order). I looked up the Hadley mentions offered by Srnec, and they are extremely passing, if at all. In Hadley, "media, and the popularization of aces" (p. 176) refers to:
 * Literature of WWII heightened the features that earlier cults of the hero had promoted. This was the era of the "grey wolves" and "steel sharks", when wolf packs, officially designated by such predatory names "robber baron" and "bludgeon", attacked the Allies' convoys. Widespread popularization of the U-boat aces, of their images and deeds propagated the cult of the personality which even today finds resonance in the popular market.
 * "Novelists, recycle old aces" (p. 101) does not mention "ace" at all, and has only this:
 * The press responded inventively [to the setbacks of 1943] by recycling the old heroic names and by publishing outdated or massaged statistics.
 * Separately, I take the quotes used by Blair to mean that he uses the term pejoratively, i.e. this concept only existed in propaganda. I also note that Hezlet uses "Ace" in quotes here: "Wanklyn stands out with the highest tonnage, two U-boats sunk, a cruiser damaged and a destroyer sunk, as incomparably the leading British submarine 'Ace' of the war."


 * Redirect proposal: I still don't think we have enough sources that address the topic "directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content". With that in mind, I propose that the article be redirected to Ace (military), which I just started. This will preserve the incoming links, and content specific to Submarine aces can be added if / when sources are located. Feedback? K.e.coffman (talk) 05:56, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Redirect to a section or anchored term within Ace (military). I am particularly drawn by 's rationale and wonderfully strong rebuttals.--John Cline (talk) 20:08, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * That article does not yet have a source to back up its claim of the general definition of "ace". Srnec (talk) 01:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment. Edwyn A. Gray in The U-Boat War, 1914–1918 (London: Leo Cooper, 1994) has an appendix on p. 268 titled "German Submarine Aces". It is a list of World War I German aces. See here. This article could at the least be converted into a list of those regarded as aces by RS. As has already been shown, this would appear to be a well-defined list at least for Germany, since several authors refer to precise numbers of aces. We already have List of most successful U-boat commanders. —Srnec (talk) 01:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment. If the term submarine ace and its historical significance are not well studied, why should it be featured in a stand-alone article? That speaks against its notability.
 * So far this discussion was almost exclusively devoted to the question: Is the term submarine ace a common one and is there an "ace" concept? The idea that the article should instead be a list of submarine commanders has only just been brought up. In that case WP:POVNAMING does apply. By any means it should have become clear by now, that "ace" is not a neutral term, but passes a (positive) judgment. At the same time submarine ace is not common usage. During November and December 2016, e.g., the page has been viewed about 9 times a day and that's although Wikipedia also features Subsea ace and Undersea ace redirecting to submarine ace and Ace of the Deep redirecting to the aforementioned List of most successful U-boat commanders. There is also List of aces of aces. That seems to be a case of WP:REDUNDANT already, so I don't see the need to create yet another list of German U-Boat commanders. In sum, the article submarine ace should become a redirect, either to the Ace (military) or to one of those lists.--Assayer (talk) 13:17, 18 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Merge to Ace (military), J04n(talk page) 18:04, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Merge info with cites into List of most successful U-boat commanders as it appears to be about German commanders only. Kierzek (talk) 19:47, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
 * What could be merged though? I consider this statement to be OR:
 * U-boat commanders upon sinking 100,000 tons and becoming U-boat aces, were awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (RK), under the points system instituted by Adolf Hitler.
 * It seems that they were awarded the KC first, and then elevated to the status of national heroes through the press, thus becoming "aces" in the popular culture and propaganda machinery. At least that's my understanding. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:13, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't agree that aces in the context of submarine commanders is simply a popular culture term; they were recognized for obtaining a military goal and awarded a medal for same; now were they made national heroes in the press, ofcourse they were, it was a time of war; but that is not the only defining point to focus on I believe. As long as it is RS cited, as well. The term has a longer tradition in relation to pilots as we all know and frankly when it has been used for tank commanders, it does not carry the same validity. Kierzek (talk) 13:05, 19 January 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.