Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/USS Kentucky (BB-66)


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

USS Kentucky (BB-66)
In my ongoing quest to improve the Iowa class battleship articles here I have recently expanded the article USS Kentucky (BB-66), and although there is little chance it will clear FAC I would like to see the article improved to A-class. To that end, I have decided to make use of our A-class review as well as the WP:SHIPS review to get additional input as to how the article may be improved upon. Note that I am in school at the moment, so if I appear slow to respond here have patients [patience]; its likely school work has me tied up. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:44, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Support Oppose for now this is a very promising article, but it's not yet A-class. I spotted spelling mistakes throughout the article and the half-paragraph speculating on what she would have been armed with if she'd been completed and had survived until the 1980s seems to be crystal ball gazing given that she was cancelled over 20 years before any such upgrade would have occurred (do the citations here support the claim that more than 4 Iowas would have been reactivated and upgraded had they existed?). Also, is it possible to expand the discussion of the proposal to complete her as a BBG? - this looks really interesting but the current text doesn't say what kind of missiles it was proposed fitting her with or how serious this proposal was. A discussion of why the Navy remained at least semi-committed to completing the ship after 1944 given that it was clear that BBs were obsolete might also be interesting. --Nick Dowling 11:10, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * On a first come, first adressed basis: My spelling errors are legendary; it wouldn;t be the same if I updated an article and did leave 3200 mispelled words and phrases in (incidentally, thats why I have my own spelling award :) I base the updating on the rhetoric of the 600-ship navy; Reagan wanted as many capital ships as he could get in the field into the field to bring back the power of the Navy. This factored into the recommissioning of older aircraft carriers to form CVBGs, it stands to reason that the USN would have reactivated the other to Iowas to gain an additional pair of BBBGs. I will conceded your point though that this is speculation, although I prefer to think of it more along the lines of an educated guess. My own research into the BBG idea has turned up artwork showing Kentucky with two forward mounted turrets and a pair of what look like Mk 26 twin ar missile launchers in the back; I am working to track down the weapon systems. The missiles would likely have been terriers (based on post WWII testing with the converted battleship USS Mississippi), and as before I am looking into tracking that down. On the last note: I have no idea; it remains a mystery, but the sense I get from reading the material is that the Navy was trying to get a 3/4 complete battleship completed becuase it was 3/4 of the way complete (illinois was only 22% complete when scrapped). I intend to look into it more; this is just a for starters kind of thing (mostly to cheer me up; I feel like I been out of the loop lately) :/ TomStar81 (Talk) 11:21, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment I'll change my vote to support if you take out the material about what Kentucky would have been armed with if she had been built then reactivated in the 1980s. This appears to be your speculation as it doesn't address the possibility that even if she had been built she could have been retired and scrapped, reactivated but not not rearmed or simply not reactivated. For the material to be included I think that you need to find a reference which confirms that more than 4 Iowas would have been reactivated if they had been available and that the ships would have all been re-armed with that armament. --Nick Dowling 07:57, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Alright, you win. I have (reluctantly) removed the information about the hypothosised reactivation of the 600-ship Navy. Is this better? TomStar81 (Talk) 08:41, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yep - I've changed my vote to support the nomination. --Nick Dowling 08:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose for now I've cleaned up a fair amount of spelling errors and made some minor grammar improvements this morning, but this still needs some work. I made two content-related changes that you should review to make sure I'm not off my rocker: (1) I've reworded the bit about considering Montana-like design to avoid the awkward "protection system...for protection"; and (2) I changed "President Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary John Lehman's 600-ship Navy plan" to "President Ronald Reagan's 600-ship Navy plan" for brevity. A few questions I had:
 * I wasn't clear on why half of the specs box was filled out, but the armament, armor, etc was not.
 * "Kentucky was the second to last battleship constructed by the US Navy" This would benefit from rewording to make it clear; 'constructed' reads as though she was finished.
 * "holds the unique honor of being the highest numbered battleship hull to have been under construction but not completed" Sure this is unique, but how on earth is it an honor?
 * This is an interesting article; I'd be happy to give it another go-over once it's had a few more eyes on it. Maralia 15:06, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you for correcting my god-awful spelling. I wish I could say I was a great speller, but I ain't, and thats all there be to it. In answer to you comments/questions: Your content related changes are fine, they don't change the meaning any. On the issue of the spec box: It would be easier for logistical reasons to think of this article as the third in a series of three articles: the armament article and class article disucss in length the particlaurs of there respective fields; hence the reason why this articles seems short. I will reword the other two lines you tagged for calrity as you suggested.
 * Comments - glad to see another Iowa article from TomStar, are you going to get around to Battleships in World War II any time? ;)
 * I have removed the Neon Genesis Cruft.
 * I am not sure www.voodoo.cz is a reliable source; nor www.navysite.de; nor hazegray.org. They all seem to be basically self-published.
 * Structure: Much of the material in 'history' overlaps that in 'construction' - unsurprising perhaps since her history is the history of her construction. Is it worth merging these sections?

Regards, The Land 17:50, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm getting there (eventually :-) I forgot to remove the evagellion part, thanks for doing that. navysite.de is an unofficial US navy site but does have information on incidents that US ships have been involed in that DANFS tends to omit. Hazygrey.org, navysite.de and voodoo.cz are used to verify the DANFS and NVR material, if everyone agrees with everyone else then I know that the sources are reliable, and thats why they are present. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:36, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * And you caught a huge error I made; all instances of "voodoo" were supposed to have been cited to an essay by a retired US Navy officer, these have since been corrected. Thank you! TomStar81 (Talk) 23:51, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Oppose - The article is definetely too short and it certainly doesn't look like an A-class in my opinion. --Eurocopter tigre 17:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I don't think we've ever insisted on a particular length as a requirement for A-Class status, provided that all the other requirements were met. We do have some quite short articles that have passed the review successfully, in any case. Kirill 18:16, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * As I noted above, it would be easier to think of this article as the third article in a series of three, with the class page discussion the general history and characteristics of these six battleships and the armement page discussing the weapon systems used by these battleships/ When viewed like this Kentucky is actually very well sourced, with rougly 100 citations across three seperate pages. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:31, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Support. Comment. I think the article is almost there.  I believe if you added some background text about the development of the Iowa class battleship you would then have enough material (two paragraphs) to add a "Background" section to the article.  Then, you could follow that with "Construction" and rename the "History" section as "Fate" or "Scrapping" or something like that and the article would be complete.  Length doesn't matter as long as the subject is covered. Cla68 21:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)  I moved a couple of things around.  I may have screwed up a couple of the citations and I can't figure out how to fix them.  Sorry about that. Cla68 21:15, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I took a stab at implamenting your suggested changes, I may play the wording in the sections now since it does sound wierd. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:46, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.