Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/March 2017/Articles


 * Æthelflæd (Dudley Miles) : Æthelflæd was the daughter of Alfred the Great and the chief - perhaps only - female military leader in Anglo-Saxon England. She ruled Mercia in the English Midlands from 911 until her death in 918, during which time she improved the kingdom's defences and led several successful campaigns against Viking forces. She has attracted a lot of coverage by historians, and is regarded as a great ruler who played an important part in the reconquest of the Danelaw. The article passed ACR before achieving FA status.


 * Japanese aircraft carrier Jun'yō : Originally a passenger liner, Jun'yō was converted into an aircraft carrier and participated in the Aleutian Islands, Guadalcanal, New Guinea and Solomon Islands campaigns before being torpedoed in November 1943. Repaired, she was damaged by bombs during the Battle of the Philippine Sea in mid-1944. The ship returned to service as a transport but was torpedoed in December 1944, hulked, and broken up in 1946–47. The article went through GAN and ACR before FAC.


 * Nelson Mandela : This article on one of the major political figures of the second half of the 20th century is one of Wikipedia's Vital Articles. Nominator Midnightblueowl worked on the article for many years, and in his nomination statement acknowledged the now-retired for earlier helping get the article to GA status.


 * Nike-X : The Nike-X was a US Army Cold War-era anti-ballistic missile system. Although technologically sophisticated, it was unable to stop Soviet missile attacks and US defense officials were concerned about its very high costs. The article passed ACR before achieving FA status.


 * No. 37 Squadron RAAF : A follow-up to Ian's FAC nominations over the past few years for other RAAF transport squadrons, this article covers the role and history of a Royal Australian Air Force unit that flew a wide range of transport aircraft during World War II, and has operated two different variants of the C-130 Hercules since being re-established in 1966. Ian took the article through GAN and ACR before FAC.


 * Prince Romerson : Another in KAVEBEAR's series of articles on American Civil War soldiers of Hawaiʻian descent, this article looks at a man who served in both the Union Navy and Army. After the war, he fought in the frontier army as a Buffalo Soldier. KAVEBEAR successfully nominated the article for GA and A-Class before taking it to FA.


 * Zenobia : This article is about a third-century queen of the Palmyrene Empire in Syria. According to nominator Attar-Aram syria, "her story is distorted by romanticism and myths, which ignore the fact that she was a historic monarch whose actions were not really based on romantic motives. I re-wrote the article with the aim of giving a clear picture of the historic queen..."




 * Operation Inmate (Nick-D) : Operation Inmate was an unusual operation conducted by the British Pacific Fleet in June 1945. It involved attacks by a British aircraft carrier and four cruisers against an isolated Japanese base in the central Pacific, with the main goal being to provide the ships involved with combat experience. This proved successful, though the cruiser bombardment was farcical and the Allied losses which were considered acceptable by 1945 standards would be a scandal today.


 * HMS St Vincent (1908) (Sturmvogel 66) : HMS St Vincent had a typical career for a WWI-era British dreadnought. A few shells fired at the Battle of Jutland mid-way through the war, during which she damaged a German battlecruiser, was all the combat she experienced. Aside from a few other unsuccessful attempts to intercept German ships, her war consisted of monotonous training in the North Sea. She was reduced to reserve after the war and was scrapped in the early 1920s.


 * List of Indian naval air squadrons (Krishna Chaitanya Velaga) : Krishna's first entry on this month's list is a summary of the history of the Indian Navy's 21 flying squadrons. Of these, ten currently operate fixed-wing aircraft, eight are helicopter squadrons and the remaining three are equipped with unmanned aerial vehicles. Unusually, the Indian Navy has never needed to disband any of its flying units.


 * York City War Memorial (HJ Mitchell) : The latest in HJ Mitchell's series on HJ Mitchell's series on First World War memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens is also his second A-class article on a memorial in York. The York City War Memorial was designed at the same time as the North Eastern Railway War Memorial, with the designs and locations of the memorials being controversial. The memorial was unveiled in 1925 and, along with the gates of its memorial garden, has been a listed building since 1970.


 * Alan Shepard (Hawkeye7) : As a bit of a change from Hawkeye's recent focus on the Manhattan Project, this article provides a biography of the first American astronaut to enter space. Alan Shepard saw combat on board a destroyer during World War II before undertaking flight training. He became part of the Mercury Seven group of astronauts in 1959, and on 5 May 1961 undertook the first United States human spaceflight during the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission. He next entered space in early 1971 when he landed on the Moon during the Apollo 14 mission, and was subsequently promoted to the rank of rear admiral in the Navy.


 * 18th Battalion (New Zealand) (Zawed) : Continuing his series on New Zealand Army battalions of World War II, this article covers an infantry unit which was converted to an armoured regiment. The 18th Battalion was raised in September 1939 and saw extensive combat, and casualties, during the campaigns in Greece, Crete and North Africa during 1941 and 1942. As part of a reorganisation of the 2nd New Zealand Division, the battalion became an armoured regiment in late 1942. In this capacity it fought in the Italian Campaign from mid-1943 until the end of the war.


 * Lion-class battlecruiser (Sturmvogel 66) : Nicknamed the "Splendid Cats", the two Lion-class ships were among the most powerful battlecruisers deployed by the British during World War I. They spent most of the war deployed in home waters and were very active as they were the first responders to any sorties by their German counterparts. Lion was badly damaged during the Battles of Dogger Bank in 1915 and Jutland in 1916 while her sister Princess Royal was only lightly damaged at worst. Both ships were retired shortly after the war as obsolete.


 * INS Vikrant (R11) (Krishna Chaitanya Velaga) : The INS Vikrant was India's first aircraft carrier. Built in the United Kingdom, she was commissioned in 1961 and participated in 1971 India-Pakistan war. The aircraft carrier was decommissioned in 1997, after 35 years of service. After a short stint as a museum ship, Vikrant was finally scrapped in 2014.


 * Ames Project (Hawkeye7) : It looks like Hawkeye's statement quoted last month that that he'd completed work on the Manhattan Project was premature... This article covers what Hawkeye described as "one of the Manhattan Project's more minor projects". The Ames Project involved the development of a process for preparing pure uranium metal and the production of 1,000 short tons of the substance. The project remains active as the Ames Laboratory.


 * Dayton Project (Hawkeye7) : Another of the minor elements of the Manhattan Project, the Dayton Project involved research which developed modulated neutron initiators which were used to begin the chain reactions in the atomic bombs. This research took place in several sites in and around Dayton, Ohio, some of which had to be thoroughly decontaminated after the war.


 * Beograd-class destroyer (Peacemaker67) : The latest in Peacemaker's series on the Royal Yugoslav Navy covers the force's only class of destroyers. The three vessels entered service just before World War II and had the complex service history which seems to have been common for Yugoslav warships of this era. One was scuttled during the April 1941 Axis invasion, and the other two saw service with the Italians as war prize ships, doing escort duty to North Africa. One survived to see service with the Germans after the Italian capitulation before it was lost in the final weeks of the war.