Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Royal Navy

Royal Navy

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This is about the fifth or sixth monthly article most read of the national militaries task force. As a heavily read article, it would be very good to improve it, possibly to A-class status. All comments appreciated. Buckshot06 (talk) 02:35, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Nick-D
I agree that it would be great to get this article up to a high standard, though this will require quite a bit of work. My (brief) comments are:
 * The history section is massively over-long. This content should be in the history of the RN article, with just a brief summary here.
 * There's a fair amount of repetition
 * The article presents an uncritical view of the RN. Important issues like the limitations of the Type 45 design and the difficulty the British Government has been experiencing funding the navy aren't covered.
 * Much of the content isn't referenced (though there don't seem to be any glaring inaccuracies I can see) Nick-D (talk) 09:10, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

As some further comments
 * I was surprised by the brief coverage accorded to the RN's role in providing Britain's nuclear deterrent - this is the force's most controversial role, and arguably its most important.
 * It's a bit odd that there's a section on the SBS, but almost no coverage of the Royal Marines, of which the SBS are (at least on paper) part. Nick-D (talk) 23:46, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

W. B. Wilson
As a comparison, I looked at the United States Navy article to see how it was organized, and found its article structure preferable because it seems tighter and more focused. Concur with Nick-D's comment that the history section should be cut as there is already an article covering RN history (this complaint applies to the USN article as well, although the USN article does not appear to point to History of the United States Navy. Not sure if it would be practical, but an article section on fleet capabilities with some firm statistics would be welcome (typical ranges of air-launched- and surface-launched-strike weapons, types and ranges of missile defence weapons, typical steaming range for task forces before refuel is required (I assume not all vessels are nuclear-powered), maximum altitude of carrier-operated aircraft and maximum dive capability of attack submarines, etc. Cheers, W. B. Wilson (talk) 03:43, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Woody
As you can see from the past peer review I have previously had an attempt at cleaning this page up and I hope I can give you a few pointers as to the current state of the article. From a first run-through I came up with the following:
 * Major issues
 * History section still needs a major trimming, it still goes into far too much detail. My last cull of the history section came up with this version. I think that went a bit far and didn't make the distinction between England and UK Navy but even so, I think the article as it stands needs to find a happy medium.
 * Fleet breakdown table probably needs to move elsewhere, maybe the History of the RN article. It doesn't seem appropriate in a section marked the Royal Navy today to be discussing the 60s and then not elaborate on the other factors involved in the figures.
 * As Nick says above, it is quite surprising that the nuclear deterrence role of the navy is not elaborated. A little history about Polaris and then the complete move to submarines away from airborne nukes should probably go in the current role section.
 * Again following Nick, this article is particularly non-critical. Within the RN today there is no mention of the extreme pressure on the budgets, reduction in ship numbers, mothballing/removal of weapons from ships. The T45 budget over-runs, uncertainty over the carriers should also be included. There are regular pieces from the Times etc that should provide ample references for these. (I also have Lewis Page's book somewhere if you want refs from that)
 * The titles and naming section should be merged into other sections, of the royal navy can probably be merged into the command control etc and the of ships should fit into the customs and traditions pretty easily.
 * Is the popular culture section really neccessary? Could it not be wiped altogether. An organisation that has been around since the 900s will obviously have many references within popular culture; the question to ask is whether these have had an impact on the Navy itself or truly changed the public's perceptions of it. The answer for the vast majority of that section is no.
 * Obvious lack of citations.


 * More minor/stylistic issues
 * As a little stylistic thing, the article needs to trim the number of images and alternate them where they remain. There is far too much sandwiching of text between images and stacking images along the right-hand-side. This will only be relevant when the article settles down though after any trimming/rejigging of sections so best to tackle it later.
 * The command section is outdated is it not, Amjad Hussain is now Director (Precision Attack) and Controller of the Navy for example.

There you go for now, hope this helps a bit. Woody (talk) 16:05, 6 June 2010 (UTC)