Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/SM U-2 (Austria-Hungary)


 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article promoted by Peacemaker67 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 06:20, 17 November 2018 (UTC) &laquo; Return to A-Class review list

SM U-2 (Austria-Hungary)
Instructions for nominators and reviewers
 * Nominator(s): 

Continuing with submarines. As with the class article which is currently over at FAC, and her sister ship which just passed an ACR, I've taken an old gem that wrote several years ago, brought it up to the standards of 2018 in terms of article quality, added every exhaustible source I own and could possibly have come across, and more than tripled the size of the article in the process. The process of getting this article up to speed with ACR standards was helped immeasurably by the recent ACR I worked on for her sister ship, U-1. You'll notice this article is very similar to that, as the two ships shared nearly their entire careers serving alongside one another.

As for the submarine herself, U-2 was very much like her sister ship, U-1. In fact, she was identical to her sister hip. As Austria-Hungary's second submarine, she was built by Simon Lake, an American naval architect, and had several interesting design mechanics that you don't often see on many other submarines, such as a diving chamber to enter and exit the submarine while it was underwater. Perhaps most bizarrely, she was also equipped with wheels to "travel" along the seafloor. As an experimental design, U-2 had several flaws (the wheels proved to be entirely useless and the engines routinely poisoned the submarine), but she was commissioned into the navy nonetheless as part of a design competition with two other foreign firms.

U-2 was used mostly for training purposes, though she was briefly mobilized alongside her sister ship during the First Balkan War, and she was assigned recon missions out of Trieste during World War I, but never sank or damaged any enemy vessels during the conflict. She was declared obsolete in January 1918, and again relegated to training missions before being put up at Pola right before the end of the war. After a brief period of chaos regarding who owned the submarine following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (as was the case with literally every single ship in the Austro-Hungarian fleet at the end of the war), U-2 was seized by, and later granted to, Italy in 1920. The Italians decided to immediately scrap the submarine in Pola that same year. Her career was largely unremarkable, but she holds the distinction of being a member of the first ever class of submarines built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy.-- White Shadows Let’s Talk 00:45, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

Comments Support by Kges1901
Image review Source review Lead
 * Adequate fair use rationales and satisfactory licensing on all images.
 * All sources are of appropriate quality for the topic. No missing ISBNs or OCLCs.
 * The second paragraph contains three consecutive sentences that begin with "she", perhaps vary the structure of the sentences?
 * Repetitive uses of the same word in a short span of reading is one of my pet peeves. Fixed.

Background Construction and Commissioning
 * Constructor General (German: Generalschiffbauingenieur) of the Austro-Hungarian Navy Siegfried Popper, omit unnecessary comma at end of sentence
 * navy yard (German: Seearsenal) at Pola This is partially related to the presence of the redlink for Pola Navy Yard in the lead, either create a referenced stub or unlink. (former is preferable).
 * Removed.
 * I will unlink the redlink. Creating an article for the Pola Navy Yard is on my to-do list, but I'm not comfortable creating a largely junk 2-3 sentence stub at the moment which won't serve readers well.


 * A general comment I have is that substantial portions of the article are copied nearly verbatim from SM U-1, suggest you carefully read over your text to make sure everything that you've written about U-2 actually applies to her.
 * This was done simply because the two ships had almost identical careers. If you read closely however, you'll see there are a few differences. U-2 had a new conning tower installed, and she was stationed out of Trieste for much of the war rather than alternating back and forth between Trieste and Pola. All-in-all however, the two ships probably spent a good 80-90% of their careers doing identical work alongside one another. The two ships were built as twins for experimental purposes and both had almost identical service careers...even to the point that they both were in drydock together at the start of the war to correct the exact same mechanical issue. As a result, I would assume it's only natural that their articles would be very (but not exactly) similar.
 * I was just making sure you did, because of the text I mentioned below. Thanks, Kges1901 (talk) 00:21, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Service history
 * While conducting one of these training cruises on 13 January 1914 near Fasana, she was rammed by the Austro-Hungarian cruiser Sankt Georg. The damage caused by this collision destroyed the submarine's periscope. Did Sankt Georg ram both U-1 and U-2 on the same day and shear off both boats' periscopes or is this only one of them? Kges1901 (talk) 23:06, 31 August 2018 (UTC)
 * That was accidentally copied over from U-1. While I had thought that during my edits I had removed all the info which only had applied to U-1, I missed this. Removed.-- White Shadows Let’s Talk 03:59, 1 September 2018 (UTC)

Support as all of my comments have been addressed. Kges1901 (talk) 00:21, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Comments Support from Indy beetle

 * Both ships would prove to be a disappointment, however. Generally "however" is placed at the beginning of sentences and not the end.
 * Fixed


 * Wikilink double-hull to double hull.
 * Done


 * This diving chamber ultimately proved its usefulness during the sea trials of U-2 and her sister ship when the crew of one submarine forgot to bring their lunches on-board before conducting an underwater endurance test. Is it known which submarine that was?
 * Unfortunately it's not known which one it was, likely because the two ships were identical in design and their only distinguishing features were the numbers painted on each submarine's conning tower. I've included the story in this article because there's a 50% chance it was U-2, and it also illustrates that there were some aspects of the vessel which were not so negatively received.


 * The citations from Dickson, O'Hara & Worth are all used appropriately.
 * Thank you!


 * I have some problems how Lake is cited in this text:
 * Our company had built the first two boats for the Austrian Government, U-1 and U-2...One day, when this submarine was running along with her periscope above the surface, which gave her commander no vision back of him, some officers approached in a speedy little launch and left their cards tied to the periscope without the knowledge of the commander of the submerged vessel. This demonstrated perfectly that it is essential, both in war and peace times, for the commander of the submarine to know what is going on in his vicinity on the surface. This is the quote in the article. The ellipses stands in place of this sentence: Another type of boat had been built later which had only a fixed periscope of the type described. As the quote in the article stands I think it misrepresents the source. Lake is obviously not talking about U-2 or even U-1. I think it would be better to just remove it.
 * I think there's definitely value in keeping the quote in the article, if anything because it's the only direct quote about the submarines from their designer I could find in all of my research on this article. Perhaps it's possible to word the coverage of this quote to make it clear he's referring to a submarine different from U-1 and U-2?
 * But then what's the point of the quote anyway? I believe that Lake says so little of substance concerning the U-1 class that we should just forgo the quote. It doesn't add to the understanding of the reader. -Indy beetle (talk) 00:40, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * You are right that he's hardly a neutral observer, but I think the reader can understand that quite well. The point of including the quote was to demonstrate that there were at least a few details of the submarine's design which were actually good things that could easily be overlooked when constructing such a vessel. I'd like to keep it in place personally, but if you insist, I can remove it.
 * I wasn't getting at Lake's neutrality on the issue, I'm arguing that the quote is simply unenlightening. I'm afraid I must insist on its removal. The only relevant statement in my opinion that Lake makes is "Our company had built the first two boats for the Austrian Government, U-1 and U-2" which very plain and tells the reader nothing new. -Indy beetle (talk) 02:22, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I've removed the quotation at your suggestion.
 * Lake himself praised both ships, particularly their periscopes. This is something of an assumption. Lake only says that the single-fixed periscope models of other subs was a disadvantage, and juxtaposes that with the solitary mention of the U-1 class (in the extract above), but it's not obvious praise.
 * Rephrased this to say "Lake himself praised the periscopes of both submarines"
 * That's better, but can it really be said that he "praised" them if he doesn't directly mention their periscopes? -Indy beetle (talk) 00:40, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Lake does actually talk about the periscopes in his book I believe. I didn't include that bit in there because of length constraints related to the quote itself. U-2 was equipped with a rotating periscope which is one of the things that today, we take for granted on a submarine, but back in the early 1900s, it was something that wasn't guaranteed to be placed on every submarine constructed.
 * I read the para where he gives examples on all the mishaps due to subs only having single and/or fixed periscopes, like A-1 getting rammed. It's just very indirect the way he suggests that the U-1s were an improvement. If I hadn't read this Wikipedia article, I wouldn't have known that he meant to convey that he developed a better periscope scheme for the class. I won't push the issue, but I still think the statement "Lake himself praised the periscopes of both submarines" is only weakly supported. -Indy beetle (talk) 02:22, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Very well. I've cut the line and moved his book to the "Further reading" section.
 * Thank you for the comments thus far! I very much appreciate them.--White Shadows Let’s Talk 01:21, 22 September 2018 (UTC)
 * All my comments have been addressed, and the article is as comprehensive as it can be, it seems, so I support its promotion. -Indy beetle (talk) 04:44, 23 September 2018 (UTC)

Comments by AustralianRupert
Support: G'day, White Shadows, I have a few comments/suggestions: AustralianRupert (talk) 06:42, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * delayed further --> "further delayed"
 * Fixed!


 * "draught" or "draft"?
 * Draft. Changed.


 * Citation # 1 should have endashes instead of hyphens
 * This sounds like a stupid question, but I've never understood the difference?
 * An endash is longer than a hyphen. I now see that the citation uses a custom template, which will make it difficult to make this change, anyway. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 10:26, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


 * in the References, move the link for Annapolis to the first mention
 * Done


 * same as above for the link for Naval Institute Press
 * Done


 * in the References, compare "Annapolis, MD" v. "Annapolis, Maryland"
 * I've made things consistent


 * same query as at FAC for SM U-1 about Mushroom Model as a publisher?
 * They were simply translators for this book, which was originally published in Czech in 2001. The author is most certainly a RS. His work routinely cites other well-established authors on the subject, and he even gives credit to Greger for some of the technical drawings the book includes. I can go into more detail about this if you'd like, but the FAC for the class article passed because I was able to give a much more thorough explanation on the question. I'd be happy to reference that to you as well if you'd like!
 * No worries, I have had a look at the FAC: happy to take that as read. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 10:26, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


 * regarding the Marine—Gestern, Heute journal, can you provide any details about this so that it can be evaluated as a reliable source?
 * I can't speak to the journal itself as I don't know what sort of reputation it holds in Europe, but I can most certainly speak to the reliability of the author who wrote the referenced article in said journal. Erwin Sieche is probably the single greatest authority on the subject of Austrian naval history in the world. He is referenced in nearly every single article about Austria-Hungary and Germany's navies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was the author for Austria-Hungary's section of both editions of Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, and his article shave routinely been published in major naval journals in the United States, such as Warship International. If I found an article on an Austrian ship at FAC or ACR to be lacking any citations from Sieche, I would probably oppose on that alone per the comprehensiveness criteria of FAC and ACR.
 * No worries, that sounds fine to me. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 10:26, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


 * flooding to be done by pumps: seems a little awkwardly worded - is there a smoother way of saying this?
 * ...also necessitated pumps to submerge the vessel? I'm not sure what else could work in this situation to be honest.
 * Would this work: The location of the diving tanks also necessitated the use of pumps to flood the vessel.? AustralianRupert (talk) 10:26, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Implemented this myself to hopefully finalise the review. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 04:32, 17 November 2018 (UTC)


 * set her maximum dive depth at 40 meters (130 ft): is there a way to avoid repetition of the depth?
 * Made a slight change for this. Let me know if that works!
 * Yes, that looks fine. Regards, AustralianRupert (talk) 10:26, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Maschinenfabrik Leobersdorf: why is the first part in italics, but not the last part?
 * This was a typo which has been fixed.


 * Due to the training and reconnaissance missions she engaged in... --> "Due to the training and reconnaissance role the submarine undertook throughout..."
 * Done!


 * Thanks for the comments! I'll be sure to get to them this weekend.--White Shadows Let’s Talk 20:03, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Replies above!--White Shadows Let’s Talk 00:34, 12 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.