Talk:USS South Dakota (BB-57)

message: Is it just me or does this article appear to have been directly lifted from this site:
http://www.navy.mil/palib/ships/battleships/sdakota/bb57-sd.html
:That page is gone in Web site reorg, but probably it's similar to: http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/ships/battleships/sdakota/bb57-sd.html, in turn taken from a text from the Naval Historical Center. I didn't see any copyright notices, and given the source, it's probably in the public domain. I.e., copying is ok. 24.130.129.35 (talk) 02:59, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It also closely (but not completely) matches the narration in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1mX_K9lFbA - the city of Sioux Falls could hold the copyright on this material. OTOH, if it's a Navy video it might be OK. Probably worth a check before someone takes umbrage. :-)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.166.105.247 (talk) 16:41, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Copyright question

message: During the early years of WW2 the USS South Dakota was known in press reports as Battleship X.  It wasn't until October 2, 1943 that the name of the vessel was finally revealed to the public.
 I'm adding this to the articale FortheCats (talk) 13:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  No mention of Battleship X 

message: This article does not seem to give a complete picture of the South Dakota's role in the battles of Santa Cruz and Guadalcanal, especially the planes shot down in defense of Enterprise and the power failure during the engagement with Kirishima.
-The article doesn't mention the power outage at the beginning of the Guadalcanal engagement November 15. Also not mentioned is the accepted theory that the South Dakota silhouetted herself as she passed in front of a burning destroyer, attracted most of the Japanese fire, and became a soft kill. Is there a reason for this?Hughespj 15:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a sentence about the power outage (darn, I came here hoping to read more about it, not to add to the article!) The battle is a little complicated for my non-nautical background, so I'll leave integration of some other promising material from "Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle" to another. 24.130.129.35 (talk) 02:54, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  I will agree with the statements. To get a fuller thought of those battles, go to the Wikipedia pages for those battles. I will give my own really short synopsis- For the Battle of Santa Cruz SD was positioned close to the USS Enterprise (CV-6) and provided extremely intense and effective anti-aircraft to protect Enterprise. For the page on the battle one of the few surviving Japanese pilots was quite shaken by the experience of such intense anti-aircraft fire. I think this was also first occurrence in the was when a battleship was in support of a aircraft carrier for anti-aircraft during an attack. - And broken apart - at bottom of page -significant enough that a mural of the battle is present at the United States Naval  Academy (in ceiling in rotanda of Bancroft Hall I think) Then in the second event, engagement with the Kirishima, a second US battleship was present, USS Washington. This is a night engagement, which previously Japan was very effective, and bad results for the United States. But in this case 2 relatively new battleships, and equipped with Radar. South Dakota was seen and identified by the Japanese, and took a fair amount of punishment. The power outage was also quite detrimental (now added in the article) Some where I read that what occurred was the electrician had tied the breaker closed, created a worse issue when the breaker attempted to open as designed. had this not been done, the breaker would have opened, loss of power, then briefly later the electrician could manually re-close it, restore power and radar back up in a few minutes. During this time with radar USS Washington came under almost NO return fire, and she is credited with sinking the Kirishima a Japanese battleship.   Also- give some more perspective battles in October and November 1942 (less than a year after  Pearl Harbor)        11:53, 30 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Santa Cruz and Guadalcanal 

message: This section does not appear to belong.  Cannibalism mistake? Hue White 15:20, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  World War II Service in Europe 

message: I'm sure that the section tagged for expansion could be expanded, the info is out there, someone just needs to find it. I will after I get done with inline citations. mynameinc (t|c|p) 19:45, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've expanded the lead a little to make it beefier. Please fix/revert whatever is inappropriate.  Roger Davies talk 21:35, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expansion 

message: This could use a mild copyedit. The date formatting is inconsistent, sometimes Day Month, and sometimes Month Day. Best to pick one and stick to it. Day Month is apparently the usual US military format. Times are a bit consistent too: sometimes 10:49AM, sometimes 1028. Here the 24:00 clock might be best: 10:49, 18:50 etc. All the best,  Roger Davies talk 21:34, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Copy edit

message: Wasn't the book Old Nameless by Sidney Shalett about USS South Dakota?  Worth mentioning?  -- Mufka (u) (t) (c) 15:08, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Old Nameless

message: Other accounts list human error as the cause of the electrical failure. Can anyone verify and add it?
"On South Dakota, crews were patching minor holes from 5-inch hits by Ayanami when at 11:33 the chief engineer tied down her circuit breakers, violating safety procedures. The system instantly went into series, and the big ship lost electrical power."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.154.161.209 (talk) 02:20, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Apparently these ships were initially equipped with faulty circuit breakers, and USS Massachusetts also suffered similar power failures during the Naval Battle of Casablanca. This website has a except on the complexities of the 440v AC power system in the South Dakota class battleships: Battleship Turret ArrangementDamwiki1 (talk) 02:20, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Human Error 

message: It mentions an "escalator clause" in the opening sentences of the article, but doesn't give any definition of what this means. Is the average reader expected to know what this term means? I find an article about Escalation clause on Wikipedia, but it's not immediately clear how it allows a battleship to have 16" guns, unless there is something missing from the definition as given on that page.
I personally can get a pretty good sense of the meaning from the context, but that might not be true for all readers, and I always feel like a reader shouldn't have to try to decipher a wikipedia article. Obviously sometimes you just need to know the meaning of technical words to understand a certain article, but in cases where it can be easily stated in plain English, I feel that is preferable. I know a fair about about warships and guns, but I've never heard of an "escalator clause" before. Couldn't this same information be included in words that will be more familiar to the average reader?
I assume in this case it means that once a vessel is above a certain tonnage, it is allowed to increase gun size above a certain arbitrary amount. That's the only thing that seems to match the definition as given.
Idumea47b (talk) 02:50, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Hey, ! Let me know what you think of the lead now. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:21, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Escalator clause"?