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


 * HMS Levant (1758) : This article describes the busy career of a sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy that saw active service in both the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. Essentially a privateer hunter, Levant secured a creditable 24 victories in 21 years at sea. The frigate undertook several other tasks during her career, which began in 1758 and ended in 1780. Euryalus put the article through GAN and ACR prior to its successful FA candidature.


 * Clare Stevenson : This is a biography of the first commander of an Australian women's military service, the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force. According to Ian's nomination statement, it was MilHist's first A-class article about a woman, and is now the first FA on a woman in the military biography category.


 * Operation Bernhard : This article covers a remarkable German World War II scheme to counterfeit British banknotes. While the plan could have been highly successful, it failed due to confused and conflicting bureaucratic infighting in the German high command. Happily, the scheme saved the lives of the 150 concentration camp prisoners forced to develop the counterfeit British currency though they came perilously close to execution in the final days of the war. The article passed an ACR before FAC.


 * INS Vikrant (R11) : The INS Vikrant was India's first aircraft carrier. Built in the United Kingdom, she was commissioned in 1961 and participated in the 1971 India-Pakistan war. The aircraft carrier was decommissioned in 1997 after 35 years of service. Following a short stint as a museum ship, Vikrant was finally scrapped in 2014. The article passed GAN and ACR before attaining FA status.


 * Yugoslav torpedo boat T3 : In common with many other Yugoslav warships of World War II, this modest steam-powered torpedo boat had a complex history. T3 saw combat in both world wars, was operated by either four or five navies, and ended her career by being sunk by Allied aircraft in the last months of World War II. Peacemaker took the article through GAN and ACR before nominating at FAC.


 * Operation Grandslam : Operation Grandslam was a decisive military action undertaken by troops of the United Nations Operation in the Congo during late 1962 and early 1963 that successfully quelled the Katangese secession during the Congo Crisis of the 1960s. This is Indy beetle's first successful FA-class nomination, and probably also the first article on a UN peacekeeping operation to be developed to this standard. It passed GAN and ACR prior to FAC.


 * X-10 Graphite Reactor : Continuing Hawkeye's long-running series on the development of nuclear weapons, this article covers the world's second nuclear reactor. Developed to produce plutonium, it served as a pilot for what became the Hanford Site, which turned out the plutonium used in the first-ever nuclear explosion as well as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki later in World War II. Hawkeye took the article through GAN and ACR before FAC.


 * St Vincent-class battleship : These three British battleships were ordered at a time when the government was interested in reduced expenditures on the Royal Navy, and showed only minor improvements over their predecessors. They spent their entire careers based in home waters and only saw combat during the Battle of Jutland. One of them was destroyed by magazine explosions while at anchor in 1917. The two remaining ships were obsolete by the end of the war and were sold for scrap in the early 1920s. The article passed GAN and ACR, the latter the same month as its successful FAC nomination.


 * Battle of Goodenough Island ( and ) : Hawkeye's second entry in the FA list this issue, a co-nomination with AustralianRupert, this article focuses on a short but sharp engagement between Japanese and Australian forces during the Pacific campaign of World War II. In common with almost all the other successful MilHist FAC nominations last month, it was first put through GAN and ACR.


 * St Vincent-class battleship (Sturmvogel 66) : A group of three deadnought battleships built for the Royal Navy prior to World War I, the St Vincent-class had a limited wartime career, participating in the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 and another inconclusive action the following August. The class' namesake, St Vincent, was destroyed in 1917 by a magazine explosion that killed 842 men, while the other two ships were placed in reserve or used as training ships after World War I and eventually sold for scrap.


 * Norwich War Memorial (HJ Mitchell) : The latest in HJ Mitchell's series on war memorials designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens covers a memorial in the English city of Norwich. It was constructed during 1927 after several previous attempts to develop a local memorial failed. The war memorial has been moved several times and was allowed to decay into a poor state in the early 2000s, but was restored about a decade ago and occupies a prominent position.


 * Tube Alloys (Hawkeye7) : Tube Alloys was a codename of the clandestine research and development programme, authorised by the United Kingdom, with participation from Canada, to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. It commenced before the Manhattan Project, but was ultimately subsumed into the American-led program. The British re-started an independent nuclear weapons programme following the war.


 * Curtis P. Iaukea (KAVEBEAR) : The latest in KAVEBEAR's efforts on 19th century Hawaiians covers an important court official and military officer during the monarchy, provisional government and republic of Hawaii. Among his many roles, Iaukea served as Hawaii's ambassador to Europe and Asia, attending the coronation of Tsar Alexander III of Russia and the Golden and Diamond Jubilees of Queen Victoria.


 * HMS Neptune (1909) (Sturmvogel 66) : HMS Neptune was one of the first generation of British dreadnought battleships, and the the first of many to be built with superfiring guns. Before the First World War, she served as the flagship of the Home Fleet and as a testbed for an experimental gunnery director. Like the rest of the British dreadnoughts, she had an uneventful war, only firing her guns during the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Considered obsolescent, she was scrapped after the war.


 * Battle of Hochkirch (Auntieruth55) : The Battle of Hochkirch was an engagement of the Seven Years' War. Historians usually consider the battle as among Frederick the Great's worst blunders as he allowed his army of 30,000-36,000 men to be attacked by an Austrian force more than twice its size. While the battle was a success for the Austrians, their failure to follow up on it nullified the Prussian loss.


 * Kragujevac massacre (23 editor) : The Kragujevac massacre was one of the worst German reprisal killings carried out in the German-occupied territory of Serbia during World War II. Like others of its type, it involved the killing of 100 hostages for every German soldier killed by insurgents, and 50 hostages for every wounded German. The 2,800 victims were rounded up in Kragujevac and the surrounding districts, and included 144 high-school students and their teachers. Some of the senior German officers who ordered the reprisals were tried at the end of the war, with one committing suicide while in custody.


 * Al-Mu'tasim (Cplakidas) : One of the Abbasid "warrior-caliphs", al-Mu'tasim may have not had the intellectual calibre of his predecessor al-Ma'mun, but as the founder of a new capital, and of a new, militarized regime that formed the prototype of Islamic governance for centuries, he had a disproportionate impact on history. His reign between 833 and 842 was marked by continuous warfare, with generals leading campaigns against internal revolts and al-Mu'tasim personally commanding a successful campaign against the Byzantine Empire. Cplakidas has been working on this article since 2014, and has expanded it since its successful GA nomination in 2015.


 * S-50 (Manhattan Project) (Hawkeye7) : Hawkeye7's latest A-class article on the Manhattan Project covers its effort to produce enriched uranium by liquid thermal diffusion. While the technology it used was passed over in favour of more practical methods, it eventually played an important part by supporting two other uranium enrichment plants which used different methods.


 * List of protected cruisers of Italy (Parsecboy) : This list comprises all of the twenty protected cruisers built for the Italian Navy, from the early 1880s to the 1910s. Several of these cruisers included ground-breaking technologies. The ships served in many roles across the globe, including in Italy's colonies and with the country's main battle fleet, and many saw combat.