Talk:Black Friday (1945)

Change

Changed "battle ships" into "warships". There definitely weren't any German battleships around. Gneisenau was the last still afloat, and she was under repair at Kiel --Bogfjellmo 10:35, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Funky title

The accompanying article is one of either

7 that have as title "Black Friday" ...

2 that have as title "Black Saturday" ... or

1 that have as title "Black Monday" ...

... (in each case) disambiguated by a parenthesized year. Since this is in contrast to all the other days of the week, that style probably is unneeded and reflects either ignorance of the acceptability of Dab-page entries like

Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001 attacks

or something like a lack of persistence in weighing possible titles. I have not investigated them individually; instead, i suggest review, of each article, by one or more editors with prior interest in its corresponding topic, with an eye to finding a title that either avoids the "Black ...day" or disambiguates it with something more evocative than a year. Years are good tools for helping users who happen to have seen a brief reference to "Black Friday" and have at least rough idea of the year involved, but giving priority to that case in titling the article, rather than letting the Dab page handle that job, is almost always an impediment to most users seeking the article. Almost certainly, most of the 10 should be renamed.
--Jerzy•t 06:52, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Changes to infobox

In this edit I effectively undid some of Dapi89's changes to the infobox. To explain, I think that it's missleading to use the units field in this instances as no complete units seem to have been involved in the battle - the Allied units seem to have been only parts of each squadron (and only 3 aircraft of No. 489 Squadron RNZAF took part in the operation) and the German forces probably weren't all all of III./JG5's aircraft. As such, it seems more meaningful to just list the numbers of aircraft involved. I've also changed the number of Fw 190s lost back to 4 or 5 as different reliable sources give different figures - this is explained in note II at the end of the article (I suspect that 5 is correct, but the sources which say 4 can't be dismissed). Nick-D (talk) 07:57, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it is a good idea to have units in listed in the infobox, that way the article does not need to expend space on orbats. Personally I think it should include each squadron regardless of numbers involved. Inclusion of info such as the numbers of each aircraft could go in the main space - gives the opportunity to flesh out what it already going to be a small article. I may be able to hunt down the identity of the Staffel involved. It maybe sensible to include one specific unit in the infobox. 12 Fw 190s suggests a full Staffel. Dapi89 (talk) 12:24, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

The Ninth and Twelfth Staffel of JG5 appear to have been the units involved in the battle. Nick-D (talk) 07:40, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Comments

Looks good, Nick -- just a few comments:

• The current lead summarises the article quite nicely IMO but ACR might demand something longer, say two paras in total.
• You generally use single quotes for 'Black Friday' but not in the lead para, where you just have it bolded -- the quotes should probably be applied consistently. BTW, in "Morotai Mutiny" we used double quotes for the name, I wonder if that's more applicable for this as well -- what do the sources tend to?
• Given there's only one image at the moment, it wouldn't hurt to include pics of the main aircraft types involved (Beau, Mustang, 190) for context.
• Further to the above, do we know what model Beaus, Mustangs and 190s were involved? This becomes more important if you do include images of them as some models -- particularly of the single-engined fighters -- are visibly quite distinctive, but I'd be interested in knowing anyway.

Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for those comments Ian. The AWM has some other photos of the raid which I'm planning to add, but I also hope to add a map showing the locations of the ship and route of the attack force before the ACR. I'll try to follow up on the other points. Nick-D (talk) 10:27, 3 November 2010 (UTC)