Talk:Battle of Sedan (1940)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: AustralianRupert (talk) 05:39, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Initial comments

• there are a number of disambig links that should be fixed: [1];
• in the infobox, I don't think the "Royal Air Force" should be listed as a Belligerent. I think it should be the "United Kingdom";
• in the first sentence of the lead, "...during the Battle of France during..." (could this be reworded to remove the repeated word "during"?)
• in the first paragraph of the lead the date that the battle occurred should probably be specifically mentioned;
• in the lead "Allied Armies" - should this be capitalised like this? In this case I believe it is an improper noun, thus it should be "Allied armies";
• in the lead "Allied Air Forces" - same as above, should be "Allied air forces";
• in the lead "channel coast" - should be "Channel coast" because in this case "channel" is a proper noun referring to the English Channel;
• in the lead "the breakout enable the Germans to break..." (could this be reworded to remove repitition of "break"?
• in the lead "The breakout enabled..." it is not clear here what breakout this was. This is because the previous paragraph ends by talking about heavy aircraft losses by the Allies and doesn't provide a linking clause to the next paragraph;
• in the French defences at Sedan section, this needs a citation: "The French defences at Sedan were poor. The French had long believed that the German Army would not attack through the Sedan sector as part of their concentrated effort, and only Brigadier General Pierre Lafontaine's French 55th Infantry Division, a category B division, was allocated to this sector."
• the image caption in the Battle of Bulson section I think should be tweaked. "Useless" seems a bit informal, perhaps "ineffective" might sound better?
• the image captions of the two tanks in the Battle of Stonne section need to be a little be more descriptive, IMO;
• in the Citations section some times brackets are used for years (e.g. "Healy (2007), p. 62"), but at other times they are not (e.g. "Frieser 2005, p. 199". These should be consistent;
• in the Citations, endashes should be used for page ranges per WP:DASH;
• in the Citations, some of them end with full stops, but others don't. These should be consistent;
• in the Citations there is "Evans", but in the Bibliography there is "Evens" - these should be consistent;
• in the Bibliography, the presentation style is inconsistent (e.g. "Dear, Ian (2001)"... is different to "Bond, Brian.") - these should be consistent;
• in the Bibliography, the presentation of the locations and publishers is inconsistent, sometimes location appears first and then publisher (e.g. Ward), but then sometimes publisher and then location (e.g. Evens). This would be resolved if all the works were formatted with the {{cite book}} template;
• the Bibliography is not quite in alphabetical order. E.g. Dear should be before Ellis and Mansoor should be before Mitcham;
• in the Bibliography, the Ellis, Jackson and Terraine works should have endashes for the year ranges in the titles (e.g. "1939-1945" should be "1939–1945") per WP:DASH;

Progression

• Version of the article when originally reviewed: [2]
• Version of the article when review was closed: [3]

Technical review

• a (Disambiguations): b Linkrot c Alt text

• a few dabs as per in the initial comments
• ext links work;
• images lack alt text, but it is not a requirement for GA.

Criteria

• It is reasonably well written.

  a (prose): b (MoS):

• Although its not bad, I found the prose awkward in places and would recommend maybe getting someone from the Guild of Copy Editors to take a run through the article. I've listed below a few of the issues I saw in the first half of the article:

• in the Background section, there is an issue with this sentence: "In response the Allied First Army Group under the command of Gaston Billotte, which included the French Seventh Army, French Ninth Army, French First Army and the British Expeditionary Force advanced to meet the invading German forces on the Allied defensive line on the Dyle." (The issue is with the "which included" part. Currently the way it is written, the word which seems to refer to Gaston Billotte, rather than the Allied First Army Group. If it were reworded like this it might solve the issue: "Under the command of Gaston Billet, the Allied First Army Group, which included...";
• in the German plans subsection, I suggest wikilinking "Ardennes";
• in the German plans subsection, "...The last fortified and entrenched positions along the Allied First Army Group's southern flank were located at Sedan. Its capture would..." (the issue here is the "Its" in the second sentence doesn't agree with "positions" in the first sentence. "Its" is singular, while "positions" is plural. Perhaps reword like this: "At the last fortified and entrenched positions along the Allied First Army Group's southern flank were located at Sedan and their capture would allow the Germans to advance to the English Channel. This would place the German forces in the rear of the Allied forces that were advancing into Belgium, from where they could affect encirclement."
• in the German plans subsection, "... revealed their diversionary role" - to whom? This sounds like it is implying that the diversionary role was revealed to the French, but I don't believe that that is what you are trying to say here;
• in the Impenetrable Ardennes section, "... an assault with seven divisions..." (what type of divisions were these? You have said "four motorised infantry and two tank brigades", but do not clarify what the other divisions were);
• in the French defences at Sedan section, "Most French Generals insisted..." (might need to be specific here, or provide some examples);
• regarding ranks, according to WP:MILMOS, ranks should only be capitalised where by used as a title, e.g. General Smith, or Smith was a general. Thus it should be "Most French generals...";
• in the French defences at Sedan section, "...along the Franco-Belgian border". There should be an endash between "Franco" and "Belgian";
• "Charles Huntziger" is overlinked and only needs to be mentioned once on first mention in the prose;
• "52 thousand cubic metres" should be presented as "52,000..." per WP:MOSNUM;
• in the French defences at Sedan section, I think there is a word missing in this sentence: "Forty-two bunkers protected on the outbreak of war in September 1939..." (protected what?);
• in the French defences at Sedan section, "Most bunkers were incomplete, lacked gun port shutters for the artillery casemates and some lacked doors..." This sentence is missing a linking phrase or word. It is related to the previous sentence, but it is indicating a juxtaposition, thus "however" should be added to this sentence, e.g. "Most of the bunkers were incomplete, however, lacking gun port shutters...";
• in the French defences at Sedan section, "...good road routes through the Fleigneux-Saint Menges-Glaire axis". The hyphens should be endashes here;
• in the German forces subsection, "...Most of the air support over Sedan was to be provided by Luftflotte 3 (Air Fleet 3) which was initially planned to be limited..." (due to the placement of modifying clause it appears that you are saying that Luftflotte 3 was initially planed to be limited, but I think you actually mean that the air support over Sedan was initially planned to be limited;
• in the French forces subsection, "The 55th Infantry Division unit...". I don't think "unit" is required here, it would be fine just to say "The 55th Infanry Division..."
• in the French forces subsection, "...guarding the Sedan" or "guarding Sedan?"
• in the French forces subsection, "....147th Fortress Infantry regiment". I think it should be "147th Fortress Infantry Regiment" - the "regiment" part would be part of its proper name, I believe, thus as a proper noun it should be capitalised. Same with "...French 55th Infantry division was chaotic..." (should be "French 55th Infantry Division"...);
• in the French forces subsection, I suggest wikilinking "company" and "battalion";
• in the French forces subsection, "At the start of mobilisation the unit had high morale and very good cohesion. Because of the constant changes in organisation, the unit's battalions were..." (needs a linking modifier such as "however");
• in the Capture of Sedan section, "method of a brief assault before the ground forces moved in..." (brief assault, or "brief bombardment"...assault generally refers to a ground attack, whereas bombardment can be used for indirect, direct or aerial fire);
• in the Capture of Sedan section, "...to Guderian's delight" sounds editorialised;
• in the Capture of Sedan section, "...Von Kleist, Guderian's immediate superior, unknown to Guderian, had contacted Loerzer and banned Guderian's proposed long systematic approach in favour of one big assault." This could be tigher, e.g. "Unknown to Guderian, his immediate superior, von Kleist, had contacted...";
• in the Capture of Sedan section, I think there is a missing word here: "...With city itself secured, Guderian" ("With the city secured...");
• in the Allied airstrikes section, there appears to be a missing closed bracket here: "...On 14 May the Allies flew 250 sorties, the French losing 30 (another source states 21 and the RAF..."
• in the Missed chance section, "... the Chéhéry - Bulson - Haraucourt axis". The hyphens here should be endashes per WP:DASH;
• in the Missed chance section, "...a partial collapse of the 71s Infantry Division" - I think there is a typo here "71st Infantry Division?";
• in the Race to Bulson section, "... but they missed their chance owing poor staff work and general-ship..." (perhaps "owing to poor staff work...?")
• in the Battle of Bulson section, "The initial encounters took place as the Battle of Hannut was taking place during the Battle of Belgium" - perhaps reword, repeated use of "took place" and "taking place";
• in the Battle of Bulson section, "The Großdeutschland Infantry Regiment's late arrival that tilted the scales." (I suggest removing the word "that" and joining this sentence with the next one, with a linking clause "as they were able to eliminate...";
• in Footnote 1, there appears to be a punctuation issue "...forces in the area.[4] and that it was..." (I think the full stop before citation #4 should be replaced with a comma);

• It is factually accurate and verifiable.

  a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

• No issues.

• It is broad in its coverage.

  a (major aspects): b (focused):

• No issues.

• It follows the neutral point of view policy.

  a (fair representation): b (all significant views):

• No issues.

• It is stable.

  No edit wars etc.:

• No issues.

• It contains images, where possible, to illustrate the topic.

  a (tagged and captioned): b (Is illustrated with appropriate images): c (non-free images have fair use rationales): d public domain pictures appropriately demonstrate why they are public domain':

• No issues.

• Overall:

  a Pass/Fail:

• The main issue that I see is that the article needs a copy edit, other than that I believe that it meets the GA criteria. I'm willing to put the review on hold for a reasonable period of time (a week or two while a request is made, and I'm open to further extension if need be due to the backlog at the GOCE) so that this can be done. Please let me know if this is acceptable. Cheers, AustralianRupert (talk) 12:57, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

• Okay, my concerns have been addressed and I'm happy with the article now. I've made a few minor tweaks myself, though, so before I pass it for GA can you please take a look and see if you are happy with my changes? Cheers. AustralianRupert (talk) 22:02, 3 December 2010 (UTC)