Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Five navies, ten warships

Warships of five navies in parade formation

Original

Reason

A bit blurry, but an extraordinary depiction of a variety of naval vessels (including, among other things, aircraft carriers of four different classes from three different navies)

Proposed caption

A rare occurence of a 5-country multinational fleet, photographed in April 2002 during Operation Enduring Freedom in the Oman Sea. In four descending columns, from left to right: ITS Maestrale (F 570) of the Italian navy, FS De Grasse (D 612) of the French navy; USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) of the U.S. Navy, FS Charles de Gaulle (R 91) of the French navy; FS Surcouf (F 711) of the French navy; USS Port Royal (CG-73) of the U.S. Navy; HMS Ocean (L 12) of the Royal Navy; USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67) of the U.S. Navy; HNLMS Van Amstel (F 831) of the Royal Netherlands Navy; and ITS Luigi Durand de la Penne (D 560) of the Italian navy.

Articles this image appears in

Most of the individual ship articles mentioned in the caption; plus Aircraft carrier, Navy, Operation Enduring Freedom, Naval fleet, Surface warfare, Modern naval tactics, and a few others.

Creator

PH3 ALTA I. CUTLER (U.S. Navy)

• Support as nominator Spikebrennan 21:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
• Support A good picture. The sea looks a bit funny though--Phoenix 15 21:56, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
• support--Mbz1 22:43, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - I have seen this picture many times and it is very cool and striking. Futhermore, I have also thought about nominating this many times but each time i have thought better of it. Obviously it is a big event and a bit rare but nevertheless it is not FP material. I think if this was passed then we are merely giving something FP status for the sake of it, whether or not it is an FP the image is still good and useful so why pass it. It goes against a few requirements and it is technically poor, inexcusably so in my opinion. So what you need to ask yourselves when voting is, why? Why does should this be considered one of our best photos? And i hope like me you realise a picture does not have to Featured to prove its worth because this picture undoubtedly has that worth but it isn't our best work and it would be wrong to promote this --Childzy ¤ Talk 22:56, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I understand the technical objections; in my view they are offset by the usefulness of the image. This image superbly illustrates the relative sizes of the different classes of warships-- for example; would you have guessed without seeing this image that the French Charles de Gaulle carrier is nearly the size of a U.S. Navy Nimitz-class carrier, while the RN's Ocean is dwarfed in comparison? Sure, a table of figures would also present that information, but this image does so in such a dramatic and intuitive way. Spikebrennan 02:24, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

(Of course, the Ocean is a helicopter air assault craft; the HMS Ark Royal (R07) is a more direct comparison. Smaller yes, but not as small.) --Dhartung | Talk 11:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose the picture is very noisy & unsharp at full res, but I guess it looks fine at the small resolution Atomsgive 00:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. I was going to support this till I opened it at full size. Quality is pretty terrible, and it could do with downsampling because there's very little detail in the ships anyway (not that that would bring it up to standard), and there's something really weird going on with that sea. --jjron 16:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose lack of detail is unfortunate. Relative scale of the ships could be shown with a diagram. Debivort 19:35, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. I like it, but it's not unique enough to overcome quality issues. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhartung (talk • contribs)

Not promoted -- Chris B • talk 08:55, 13 October 2007 (UTC)