# Talk:USS Tennessee (BB-43)

Good lord! This isn't an encyclopedia article it is a small book. Any chance of breaking this up in a more natural way? Basing the division only on length is a bad idea because there is no logical organization to the split-up and this makes it difficult for people to contribute to any one part of this ship's history (for example, what happens when somebody adds a bunch of text to the second page - do we carry that over to page three, then cut-off the end of that page and add it to page four...). --mav

For some reason the DANFS writer for this one was very enthusiastic and put in lots of extra material that could be pruned or moved elsewhere.  It's fairly well written, so not always obvious how to cut down without mangling the good stuff - sectionizing is a reasonable band-aid until someone gets the energy to finish encylopedizing this one. Stan 04:31 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)
Fair enough. --mav
I object to the assertion that I based the division only (mav's emphasis) on length. I went to some small trouble to find logical breakpoints. Maybe I should have just left it as a 90-odd kilobyte lump!  If you don't like it, well, you can edit this page right now. Go on, I double-dog dare ya! --the Epopt 05:41 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

As I said, fair enough. --mav
Once they learn this article's got 5 parts, I doubt many people will read it anyway... :-\. ugen64 00:10, Dec 23, 2003 (UTC)

Hee hee, that's the best reason to prune. Does an article exist in the forest if no one ever reads it? :-) Stan 03:27, 23 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Is there really any point in splitting it up? Wiki is not paper, after all. I don't see how having five pages is any better than one very long page, given that there's no technical limit on how long an article can be. If it can be split into logically named sections that's one thing, but "Part X" seems rather pointless. DopefishJustin 03:53, May 8, 2004 (UTC)

There is a technical limit on how long a page can be to be editable on some browsers. Hence the warning on long pages. Rmhermen 04:06, May 8, 2004 (UTC)
This might have little to do with Wikipedia and might not be useful in any way, but I still have to comment that strangely the USS Tennessee article is longer than, say Democracy. But then again, World_of_Warcraft is longer than Sex, so it's not that weird...

May I suggest that this article gets reworked with Wikipedia:Summary style in mind? Break out the detailed history into one of more seperate articles and just leave a summary here. At the same time, more references and inline citations (WP:CITE would probaly be a good thing. WegianWarrior 09:18, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd take that suggestion even further.  This is an excellent narrative, and I think it belongs as a free (short) book in Wikimedia, rather than an overly-long article on Wikipedia.  We could replace it with a summary, and include a pointer to the full narrative in its appropriate place.  The argument that Wikipedia isn't paper really applies only to the number of articles — what limits their length is the function of an encyclopedia (and people's attention spans), which is supposed to summarize rather than narrate. David 15:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Per our manual of style, the subarticles should be merged. If there is excessive material, it should be split to subarticles about specific topics. The current division into part is very strange for Wikipedia - as much as I appreciate the interesting 'buttons', it should be retired along with many other ideas from the early days of Wikipedia. This might have been long in 2003. Today, with FAs like USS Wisconsin (BB-64) and USS Missouri (BB-63) it is just a confusing curiosity.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  20:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree, I've had a mental note sitting in the back of my head to fix this for quite some time but haven't got around to it yet. Once upon a time Isaac Newton had a biographical article that had been split up like this and I fixed it by renaming each part to cover a specific part of his life or achieviements, perhaps we could do something similar here. Bryan Derksen 05:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The buttons are kind of cool and it is an interesting divide but I guess you guys are right.  I'll start to split it up.  I'm going to make subarticles for the years of battle.  Fanra 22:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
In my eyes, the subarticles should not only be merged, the entire text needs drastic shortening. It is way too detailed. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a book. It is a shame since the text seems to be well written but it is simply way too long and detailed. A *short* summary of her actions should only be included. If this extended information is available on the web somewhere, it can be linked to in the External links but it should not be integrated.--Fogeltje 13:47, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
This discussion is two years old, but I believe a record should be made of my intentions. There are FAs like USS Wisconsin (BB-64) and USS Missouri (BB-63) that are this long. It's well-written. I believe the article could be cleaned up at its current length or something close to it, and achieve FA status. Breaking up those huge sections into sub-sections would be a good starting point. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 21:48, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Until this article gets citations it won't qualify for B-class, much less GA, regardless of the amount of information presented.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 12:31, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:USS Tennessee (BB-43)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Peacemaker67 (talk · contribs) 11:41, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

This article is in good shape. A few comments from me:

in the lead, West Coats→West Coast
What, you mean to tell me you're not familiar with Oregon's premier coat outlet?
the displacement conversions don't match between the body and infobox, rounding issue?
Fixed
same with the TT conversions
Fixed
"and destroyed the turbine,and wounding two men."
Done
South Dakota links to a dab page
Fixed
"The quays to which Tennessee had to be demolished" is missing something
Fixed
"she got underway for Puget Sound" but we have just learned that she was already at Puget Sound? Perhaps some re-organisation of these couple of sentences would be of benefit?
Reworded for clarity
during the post-Pearl Harbour refit, do we know how many of the smaller calibre guns were added?
Ah, Cracknell has the details on this
doubled the crew? How did they accommodate that?
Friedman doesn't say - but the rebuilt ships (and the SoDaks) were notoriously cramped. I assume it was a combination of cramming berths into every available space and a healthy dose of "suck it up"
"On 31 May, Tennessee'"
Fixed
when were the aircraft added to the ship? They just appear during the Aleutian Islands Campaign...
Added a line on this - it seems it generally requires a specialized source like Cracknell to get details on aircraft
the heading levels are a bit of an issue, as The Gilbert and Marshall Islands appears the same size as the Battle of Tarawa. Not sure what the solution is to this, but it jars.
Yeah, it's not elegant, but I don't know how to fix it, short of dropping the campaign headers altogether. That's the problem when you're Tennessee and you were involved in basically every major action in the Pacific from mid-1943 onward.
suggest linking USMC for "as the marines"
Done
More to come. Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 11:41, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for taking on this monster of an article - it's probably only marginally less fun to review than it was to write it all ;) Parsecboy (talk) 13:32, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
"marines went ashore ionto five smaller islands"
Done
"the Eniwetok campaign" seems a little overstated. They were battles, rather than campaigns, surely?
I dunno, the scale of WWII was so large that things are called battles that otherwise would have been campaigns (Stalingrad comes most obviously to mind) - if we wanted to get technical, a campaign is an operation composed of multiple battles strung together, and there were three islands invaded during the operation (Engebi, Eniwetok, and Parry Island). I don't feel all that strongly about it, so I'll defer to you if you think something like "operation" would be better
"as part of a task group that included two escort carriers and fifteen destroyers" did this task group have a designation?
I'm sure it did, but DANFS doesn't say (and the entries for the New Mexicos don't reveal it either)
"The squadron's target" isn't this a task group?
I was using "squadron" in the informal sense, but "group" is probably better to reduce the possibility of confusion
should amtracs be Amtracs as they are a proper noun?
The amtrac article gives both versions as acceptable - their actual proper name was Landing Vehicle Tracked
suggest conducting enfilading fire→applying enfilading fire
Yeah, I wasn't really happy with that when I wrote it
"opened fire on Tennesse" needs an extra e
You don't know how many times I did that while writing this article - apparently I didn't catch it three times
"Tennesse returned to the invasion beach" same
Fixed
"and 800  shells" has a spare space
Good catch
just for completeness, I suggest "One of these US destroyers"
Good idea
"before joining the bombardment force" did this TF have a numerical identifier?
DANFS doesn't tell us, unfortunately
"opened up with slow and deliberate fire"
Fixed
"This route had been dictated by her 1943 rebuild"
Whoops!
there are a couple of publication locations that could do with states, such as Windsor and Annapolis, Hornfischer needs a location.
I don't add states for a couple of reasons - first, you rarely if ever see them in books or sites like worldcat, and second, they don't convey any useful bibliographical information so they just end up cluttering the citation. Added the location for Horfischer.
all the images look ok to me on first look.
That's me done, placing on hold for the above to be addressed. Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 14:18, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks PM! Parsecboy (talk) 14:47, 18 April 2019 (UTC)
No prob. This article is well-written, verifiable using reliable sources, covers the subject well, is neutral and stable, contains no plagiarism, and is illustrated by appropriately licensed images with appropriate captions. Passing. Nice work! Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 01:36, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Parsecboy: -- Thanks for looking out.  Regarding the image, File:USS Tennessee, 1937.jpg, it seemed like there was plenty of room for it, however, if it can be placed elsewhere that would be fine. I figured I'd get some feed back on that  beforehand. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 16:02, 8 May 2024 (UTC).

It's probably a display issue - on my screen, it's pushed way down into the Pearl Harbor section. There are a few sub-sections in the WWII section that would fit, but it wouldn't be all that relevant to the text, which the MoS discourages. Maybe in the footnotes section? Parsecboy (talk) 16:31, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
Parsecboy — Thanks for your prompt reply. The letter is dated May 10, 1937, which is why it was placed in the Construction – 1941 section. The footnotes section is meant for citations and source listings, so it would seem sort of odd stuck there and no doubt would be moved somewhere along the line. The Postwar fate section might serve well, bearing in mind that, aside from a few artifacts from the Tennessee, it's mail, processed aboard the ship, is  among the only few things remaining from the ship, and sort of serves as a tangible testimony to the ship and its history. Historians often refer to ships mail, which often provide first hand historical information, as it bears names of crew members, ranks, sometimes signatures, along with ship's postmarks and dates, which often serve to further verify ship's locations and names of crew members at a given time. In any case, and as you may know, postal history collectors and naval history buffs are often one in the same, and imo, such items sort of add a personal touch to a given ship's history.  That's just me I guess. If there are no objections, we can place the image in the suggested section. I was about to add some other information for the caption, touching on some of the ideas mentioned here, but needed reliable sources, which I now have at hand. Also, we might want to change the section name from Postwar fate to Postwar fate and legacy, with these things in mind. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 17:24, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
Parsecboy — Located a better cover, mailed from the Tennessee while on its final assignment in Japan in 1945, placed in an appropriate section. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 23:25, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
Sorry, my internet went out yesterday afternoon and they didn't get it fixed until after I had gone to bed. That works for me. Parsecboy (talk) 11:54, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

The article for sister ship California notes that a collision took place between the two vessels on August 23, 1944, damaging both enough to return for repairs.
Yet there is no mention of this event in Tennessee’s service history on this page. Is this an omission, or was the entry on California’s service history an error? 76.30.160.33 (talk) 16:16, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I'd assume the former; the DANFS entry for Tennessee jumps from July to September. The details in California's DANFS entry are fairly specific, so it's very unlikely to be an error. Parsecboy (talk) 21:47, 30 September 2024 (UTC)