Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/USS Anzio (CVE-57)/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by David Fuchs via FACBot (talk) 23:43 7 July 2026 FACBot (talk) 11:06, 8 July 2026 (UTC).

USS Anzio (CVE-57)


Nominator(s): Stikkyy (talk) 00:05, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

USS Anzio was one of the fifty Casablanca-class escort carriers built for the U.S. Navy during World War II. She had a distinguished, but unheralded career during the Pacific War, supporting the island-hopping campaigns and hunting submarines. This article recently passed a MILHIST A-class review, and I believe that it is now ready to undergo the FAC process. This is my first FAC nomination, so robust scrutiny is both warranted and welcome. I disclose that I am registered in this year's WikiCup, although I have not been a very active participant. Stikkyy (talk) 00:05, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

Image review by JacobTheRox

  • All 11 images are in the public domain because they were produced by in-service navy officials.
  • The last image hangs over into the next column for me, which then makes the table thin. Consider adding a {{clear}}.
  • I removed the last image, it didn't seem to be adding much.
  • All captions correctly formatted
  • Correct grammar in alt text "An aircraft carrier at sea with both aircraft elevators are depressed."
  • No other issues I can find
  • Image review is a  Pass

Other comments by JacobTheRox

  • Currently your end has:
Lvl2 "Notes"
Lvl2 "References"
Lvl2 "Sources"
Lvl3 "Online sources"
Lvl3 "Bibliography"
Semi-colon "Military documents"
This makes no sense to me – the use of a semi-colon as a section header is proscribed and if bibliography is for books, shouldn't it be its own lvl3 anyway? And why is it called "bibliography" while only including books, not "Book sources" to match the other headings?
  • The cost is only in the infobox; please add it to the actual prose itself. I would also add {{inflation}} with it so we know how much it is today.
  • That is all for now, I look forward to hearing your response.
  • P.S. My article Robert Jacomb-Hood is at FAC at the moment; please do consider dropping by!
Should all be resolved, I'll get around to your FAC ~soon. Stikkyy (talk) 18:10, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

A.Cython

An interesting article of an aircraft carrier during the WWII. As a non-expert on the era, I only have some minor comments.

  • where her aircraft were replenished perhaps aircrafts?
  • Aircraft is the plural form.
  • My command of English is not good by any means but my understanding of the literature is that "aircrafts" is used when to refer the plural of different kinds/collections of aircraft. Google Scholar 257000 results suggest this. However, ignore my comment as the audience might not pick up this distinction. A.Cython(talk) 21:08, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
  • another group of an estimated 30–50 Japanese planes were "were" → was (you are talking about a single group)
  • in-between remove dash
  • was attached with "with" → "to"
  • hardpoints which could mount "which could" → that
  • wikilink: torpedo bomber first appearance is at the end of "Design and description" section, consider moving it
  • wikilink: squadron (at "Design and description") → squadron
  • wikilink: West Coast as it can ambiguous in its meaning (though it is clear if one reads the text), e.g., West Coast is a disambiguation page
  • Perhaps splitting "Okinawa and post war" into two sections? The section felt a bit too long (6 paragraphs).
    • The same applies for "Typhoon Cobra and Iwo Jima"
  • Consider moving the two figures below the infobox per WP:SANDWICH: a­void sand­wich­ing text be­tween im­ages, in­fo­boxes, or sim­i­lar tem­pla­tes hor­i­zon­tally op­po­site each other.
  • For clarification, are you referring to the two images under "Gilbert and Marshall Islands" or the action report images?
  • The ones with the caption "Coral Sea ..." and "TBF-1 Avengers of ...". A.Cython(talk) 21:08, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
  • I got rid of one of the images to reduce the proportion of text that is sandwiched, but I don't think I can put the remaining one under the infobox without shunting it out of the relevant section on some displays. Stikkyy (talk) 21:36, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
    I understand your point.A.Cython(talk) 22:56, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

A.Cython(talk) 00:48, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I've responded to your points. Stikkyy (talk) 17:10, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
  • Support because this is a great article about an aircraft carrier actively participating in WWII. Good luck with the nomination. A.Cython(talk) 23:08, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Pbritti

Swinging by after Stikkyy's hard work on the FAC I nommed. I'll make a few comments here and there over the next couple days. ~ Pbritti (talk) 05:05, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

  • The caption for the photo Anzio in Shanghai's waters says it was the first American carrier to visit the city. This is not mentioned in the body and is unsourced in the caption.
  • Info moved to the body, backed by DANFS.

Pbritti, are you still planning on conducting a review? Stikkyy (talk) 03:13, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

@Pbritti: Another courtesy ping, it's OK if you're just busy elsewhere. Stikkyy (talk) 18:29, 28 May 2026 (UTC)
@Stikkyy: Deepest apologies. I've had extremely little time to devote to thoughtful editing and I'm incapable of providing an FAC-quality review. My best wishes on the rest of this review. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 21:57, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Support - Parsecboy

Some general comments to start:

  • The box is too bloated; remember that the point of the box is to summarize the topic of the article at a glance. There's a tendency to assume that because a field exists, it must be filled. What, for example, is the significance of including Martha Richards Fletcher? She's not a notable individual, and the reader is not helped to understand the ship by this detail. Similarly, the laundry list of engagements and operations is excessive.
  • I've cut out some content.
  • There are too many images and they are not well arranged; on my display (which is admittedly fairly wide), there is a lot of white space between the last two sections of the article. The Turkey Shoot maps could be put into a gallery to save space, for example.
  • I arranged the action report images into a gallery, do you think that I should keep trimming?
  • This looks much better
  • There are a few dupe links
  • Are you referring to the wikilinks? I've removed one duplicate, but I think that it's OK to have items wikilinked once in the lead, and then again in the body.
  • The Babcock & Wilcox boilers are still linked twice, once in the design section and again in the construction section
  • Good eye, is there a tool that could help me with spotting these?

Design/Description section:

  • The first paragraph assumes too much background knowledge on the reader. Why is the Battle of Atlantic and "the U-boat threat" relevant to this ship?
  • Cut
  • No, I meant it needed more explanation, not to be removed. We do want to put in context around why this ship was built, and the Battle of the Atlantic was one of the main reasons the Navy ordered scores and scores of escort carriers. Take a look at SMS Prinz Heinrich (currently at at FAC, if you'd like to review it), which provides a good bit of detail on why the ship was built and what it was intended to do. Parsecboy (talk) 10:35, 3 May 2026 (UTC)
  • I've added a background paragraph, but I don't think that I can add too much to this–the escort carriers were born out of the necessities of WWII, and became obsolete just after it, so there's not really any predecessors or successors to draw comparisons to.
  • This looks good, along with a minor tweak for clarity. Nice work on the article!
  • It is stated that the expected complement is 27 aircraft, but then lists a breakdown that amounts to 30 - are 3 of these spares? And if so, this should be explained. Note the table at the bottom provides a maximum air group of 27
  • Specified, Chesneau & Gardiner were referring to a 1943 air group while Ross was listing a 1944 air group.

Construction:

  • The {{inflation}} calculator should use the US-GDP parameter instead; the government does not buy warships the same as you or I buy milk and bread ;)
  • Done

Service history:

  • There are cases where the text strays onto other topics. A couple of examples:
    • "702 men, including Rear Admiral Mullinnix, were lost with Liscome Bay, which remains the deadliest sinking of a carrier in the history of the United States Navy.[22] With the death of Mullinnix, Captain Roscoe Leroy Bowman, the commanding officer of Corregidor, temporarily took charge of Carrier Division 24" - what is the relevance to Anzio here?
  • Cut
    • A beacon was dropped at the submarine's approximate location, and Lawrence C. Taylor, guided by the beacon and her sonar, let loose a full Hedgehog barrage at 11:40. This triggered two massive underwater explosions about 1,000 ft (300 m) below the surface that knocked out power to Lawrence C. Taylor's sonar and caused her some engine room damage. Robert F. Keller followed this up with another Hedgehog barrage, but this proved to be unnecessary, as the former contents of I-13 surfaced. - more excessive detail that could effectively be summarized as "the destroyer Lawrence C. Taylor sank the submarine."
  • Also cut

Parsecboy (talk) 19:17, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

@Parsecboy: I've responded to your points. Stikkyy (talk) 03:11, 3 May 2026 (UTC)
@Parsecboy: Should be done, I'll get to your FAC soon. Stikkyy (talk) 19:46, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

Comments from Noleander

  • Compliance with MOS meets FA expectations.
  • Citation format/layout/uniformity meets FA expectations.
  • Prose, overall, is professional and meets FA quality criterion.
  • Bold text: "...receiving the hull symbol CVHE-57. .." I'm not familiar with navy articles ... is the boldface correct?
  • USS Anzio (CVHE-57) is a valid redirect, but if it's just the hull symbol, maybe it's not needed.
  • Air pressure: "At the height of the storm, Anzio recorded a reading of 28.88 in Hg (978 mbar) in pressure and encountered winds that reached an estimated 120 kn (140 mph; 62 m/s; 220 km/h)." Readers will be familiar with wind speeds IRL; but for the air pressure, 99% of readers won't have any idea of the significance of "28.88 in Hg". Consider (a) removing that fact; or (b) explaining its significance in body text or footnote.
  • The anemometer was blown off, so the barometer was the only accurate instrument for assessing the height of the storm.
  • Moved up from the footnote into the body. Stikkyy (talk) 18:31, 28 May 2026 (UTC)
  • Per MOS:CAPFRAG captions:
    • "The view from Coral Sea, 17 June 1944." probably should not end with a period. Needs a verb to have a period.
    • "A TBM-3E Avenger lands on Anzio, 20 May 1945". Should have period.
    • "Anzio in Shanghai, 1 December 1945." probably should not end with a period.
  • Not all readers know that word: "... word that she was renamed to Anzio, after the eponymous battle, ... Consider removing "eponymous" replacing with link to the full battle name. Currently, it looks like the author of the article is trying to show off their vocabulary :-)
  • Not my intention, I swear! :)
  • Cite for data undelying images: Coral Sea's action report depicting the engagements from 17–19 June Readers should not have to click thru to the image page in Commons to discover what the source is for those images. Consider putting a cite/source in this article for the source of those images.
@Noleander: Thanks for the review, I've addressed your points. Stikkyy (talk) 18:29, 28 May 2026 (UTC)
Support. Noleander (talk) 18:34, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

zzz plant

Hi! Nice work on the article. I'll do a prose review. Feel free to push back on anything you don't agree with. This is not my area of expertise so also take my notes with a grain of general reader salt :-) Zzz plant (talk) 17:11, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

Lede
  • would tweak one of two first sentences of second para so it doesn't echo the [In month year] pattern
Design and description
  • "During the first six months of the Second Happy Time, over 2,000,000 tons of shipping were sunk off the Eastern Seaboard by German submarines." I'd put this in active voice, like "German submarines sank over 2,000,000 tons of Allied shipping off the Eastern Seaboard in just six months."
  • "The 1942 escort carrier program had already called for the conversion of twenty-four hulls into escort carriers, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed that more were needed to stem the loss of shipping." suggest "The 1942 escort carrier program had already called for the conversion of twenty-four hulls, but President Roosevelt believed that more were needed to stem the loss of shipping."
  • "declared that he desired" feels unnecessarily wordy, would suggest simplifying to something like "backed" or "selected"
  • similarly, "Although Kaiser wished to build not less than a hundred of the design, an order of fifty ships was placed." suggest something like "Although Kaiser proposed building at least a hundred ships, the Navy ordered fifty."
Construction
  • this section does read a bit dry and sparse on details. if sources allow, a bit more color here would be extremely helpful. was the ship launching ceremony reported in the papers? and with the renaming, I assume naming a ship after a recent big victory would be quite a morale boost, but it sounds more like a simple bureaucratic move from the text.
Gilbert and Marshall Islands
  • "...began, commencing..." reads repetitive to have synonyms next to each other
  • "sortied" I think a wikilink could be added here
  • "Just 76 hours later, Tarawa and Makin had both been captured." Tarawa wasn't mentioned up until this point?
  • "Furthermore, the three escort carriers of Carrier Division 24 were plagued by accidents that killed four airmen and six deck personnel..." feels a bit breadcrumby, as I read I just want to know more- what kind of accidents?
  • Noles p.66, p.78, p.82 capture some of the accidents on Liscome Bay in detail, but the causes of the accidents (engine failure, engine failure, tail hook malfunction respectively) seem disparate (hard to capture in summary style), and not of particular interest to an article about the carrier itself.
  • I believe 23 should either be spelled out or reworked to avoid a figure at the beginning of a sentence, per MOS:NUMNOTES
  • what is the Coral Sea's war history document? If this is an official document of some kind I feel like it should be capitalized and/or italicized in full
  • at beginning of last para there are three "conduct-" in close proximity, would try to swap/remove at least one
  • "En route on 25 February, Coral Sea and Corregidor were both recalled to Pearl Harbor." because of the bombing? or were they just generally called back as a matter of routine
  • Almost certainly because resistance on Eniwetok was collapsing, but the (primary) sources don't say that.
Solomon Islands and New Guinea
  • I don't feel a strong sense of continuity/transition between the end of the last subsection and the beginning of this one. I'm not really sure how we ended up here
  • "Her aircraft commenced strikes on D-Day, 22 April, but found little opposition." I'm not sure I fully follow this- I would have guessed finding little opposition during a military operation would be a good thing, but the "but" to me implies it's a negative or unexpected outcome?
Mariana Islands
  • "...Coral Sea arrived at Kwajalein on 8 June, which served as the staging point..." it sounds like the date is a staging point because of the placement, suggest "...arrived on 8 June at Kwajalein, which served as..."
  • assumed Kantai Kessen was a person until clicking link, I think this could be solved by glossing briefly as something like "Imperial Japan's naval doctrine"
  • the narrative in this section is particularly strong; there's dates/times but it still feels like a very cohesive and engaging story
Typhoon Cobra
  • "Anzio held sea trials off the California coast before setting off for the western Pacific on 16 September with 71 aircraft and 200 passengers embarked." this is a pretty dense topic sentence, and to me "passengers" kinda implies they were not involved in the military operations described, which seems strange if true.
  • "slim pickings" sounds informal to me
  • "By the next day, a 2 mi (3.2 km) wide oil slick covered the area." if sources permit, it would be nice to make it a bit clearer that this strongly implies the submarine was destroyed
  • "Accentuating the crisis, as the weather continued to deteriorate on 18 December, Admiral Halsey made a series of blunders that maneuvered his fleet directly into the typhoon's core." this feels a bit wordy, would simplify to something like "As the weather continued to deteriorate, Halsey made a series of blunders that steered his fleet directly into the typhoon's core on 18 December." also, fwiw I'm very curious as a reader what kind of blunders he made!
  • "When Halsey called off the search..." would swap for "By the time Halsey called off the search..."
Okinawa
  • "...radio traffic was fielded to mimic Halsey's fleet..." fielded feels like a strange verb choice here, is this military-specific vocab?
Post-war
  • "She sailed for Guam on 19 August, where she unloaded VC-13 and took on Composite Squadron (VC) 66." Idk what unloaded means in this context, and it feels weird to define an acronym after it's already used (if they refer to the same VC?)
  • first para has four Septembers in four consecutive sentences which feels a bit repetitive
  • maybe the sources don't explain so I'm not suggesting synth, but if context exists it would nice for narrative to briefly explain why the ship went through some of these post-career milestones: decommissioned, mothballed, redesignated, then struck
  • Decommissioned and mothballed because they couldn't support modern aircraft, particularly jets. Converted to helicopter carriers, based on the example of Thetis Bay, if they were ever going to be put back into service, it would be with helicopters (which does neatly align with FDR's original intention), since the Bogue-class was more economical for aircraft transport. Struck because they were no longer useful.

@Zzz plant: I've responded to your suggested changes. Stikkyy (talk) 00:51, 10 June 2026 (UTC)

@Zzz plant:, nudge. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:20, 13 June 2026 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder, I'll get back to this one tomorrow! Zzz plant (talk) 19:46, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi, I just have a few more comments from a second read-through. Zzz plant (talk) 17:51, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

  • "After an overlay at Pearl Harbor..." should this be layover?
  • would remove "Unfortunately" per MOS:EDITORIAL, suggest something like "However, the rendezvous point lay directly in the path of Typhoon Cobra"
  • "...while Anzio was taking on aviation fuel from the Cimarron-class oiler Caliente, a pair of fuel tanks ruptured..." is there a way to re-word this so it's clearer which ships had the ruptures?
  • "Anzio's ship's history records her crew's claim that she was the "only ship to relieve the entire Task Force 38."" couple things: the double possessive trips up the flow and "records" can be read as a plural noun rather than verb, suggest something like "The ship's history documents (or recounts? notes?) the crew's claim..." I also wondered about MOS:CLAIM- is it meant to signal doubt, or is this more of a colorful perhaps tongue-in-cheek characterization? to my uninformed self, it sounds unlikely that a smallish carrier could literally replace a full fleet.
  • Left over from DYK, I guess it doesn't really tell much. Stikkyy (talk) 03:25, 15 June 2026 (UTC)
  • I'd consider swapping whence for where. whence is correct but it sounds notably more formal/archaic compared to the rest of the prose
  • post-war section is going in the right direction - adding that Casablanca-class carriers had become obsolete helps explain decommissioning/mothballing - but the flow still feels a little compressed. I would try to smooth the sequence out. and wonder if "On the 19th, she headed to the West Coast to join the Operation Magic Carpet fleet, arriving at San Francisco on 30 September." could be glossed, I was familiar with the operation's concept but it doesn't instinctively track to me that for a mission to retrieve a bunch of American military personnel, they'd be arriving in SF. and the para break between that and the follow-up feels a bit odd.

@Zzz plant: Thanks for the input, can you take a look at the result? Stikkyy (talk) 18:03, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

The post-war section looks great- engaging and clear narrative for a general reader, "why"s well-integrated with "when"s. I made one small verb tense adjustment, but feel free to revert if you disagree. I support on prose. Zzz plant (talk) 18:55, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Source review by Sturmvogel_66

  • Conways is actually a collection of individual chapters written by a variety of authors. The US chapter is written by Norman Friedman.
  • The DANFS articles on CG-68 and CVB-42 are signed at the bottom. He should be added as the author to both cites. More after dinner.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:12, 23 June 2026 (UTC)
  • Done and dusted. Stikkyy (talk) 18:32, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

@Sturmvogel 66: Hi, gentle nudge. Stikkyy (talk) 01:26, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Sturm ? Gog the Mild (talk) 20:25, 29 June 2026 (UTC)
Hey Sturmvogel 66 do you have any more feedback? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 16:12, 5 July 2026 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

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