Talk:SMS Wespe (1876)/GA1

GA Review

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Nominator: Parsecboy (talk · contribs) 20:46, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk · contribs) 10:12, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Happy to see more ships in the queue! I will review this shortly. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 10:12, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Careful what you wish for - I have a couple dozen more ready (or close to it) but I didn't want to flood the queue ;) Parsecboy (talk) 10:59, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Prelim

• Article is stable
• No duplicated links
• Images are correctly licensed
• Earwig reports copyvio unlikely

Lede and infobox

• To avoid two sentences starting with "The ship", suggest "Wespe saw little active service"
  • Works for me
• Link commissioned
  • Good catch
• Is 14 September definitively the last time she was in service/decommissioned? Considering the possibility that she would be "in commission", or at least "in service", during her period in the Reserve Division?
  • Yes, that's the last period in active commission. The years in the Reserve Division were a formal allocation only.

Design

• "Through the 1860s, the Federal Convention examined various proposals, with numbers of vessels ranging from eight to eighteen." Slightly confused by the context here - does this refer to how many ironclads the FC wanted to build, how many Wespes they wanted, or how many proposals there were in total?
  • Reworded - see if this is clearer
• "These were to be supported by larger numbers of small, armored gunboats." Assuming this is where the Wespe class comes in, would be good to have a word or two to confirm that this in particular was their purpose
  • Good idea

• "4-bladed screw propellers"
  • Good catch
• What kind of limit are we talking for the traverse?
  • Lyon isn't clear, and Groner only gives the range of elevation. Given that Lyon says that the guns were "aimed by pointing the boat in the direction of the enemy", I'd think not much.
• Should it be "An armored deck"?
  • I think both usages are acceptable - see for instance this quick search

Service history

• Link bow
  • Done
• Conway's says that the torpedo tubes were submerged?
  • Groner says above-water, and I generally defer to him, since he's the more specialist source (and was working from original records in the 1930s, much of which were lost during WWII
• "an additional 8.7 cm (3.4 in) L/24 built-up guns" Is this meant to be plural?
  • Nope, fixed
• Does the literature discuss at all why Wespe was at most an occasional training ship for her entire career? Was she considered obsolete, not very good, etc?
  • Nothing specifically I can point to - there were technical problems that affected all of the Wespes (severe rolling, slow speed, etc.), but the more significant reasons were simply their intended use (which did not lend itself to the fleet maneuvers the larger ironclads conducted during the period) and the fact that the German navy was still quite small and underfunded in this period.

References

• References look good. AGF for print sources.
• An interesting point that I would think good to include from Conway's is the intent to ground them on sandbanks
  • Added a bit on this
• There's a diagram of Wespe here which you may prefer to the blurry image currently used
  • Good find - I'll upload a copy.

@Parsecboy: Hi, that's all I have for now! Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 11:23, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your thorough review! Parsecboy (talk) 13:00, 5 October 2024 (UTC)