Wikipedia:Featured article review/Heinrich Bär/archive1

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

The article was delisted by Casliber via FACBot (talk) 4:05, 20 March 2019 (UTC) [1].

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Heinrich Bär

Notified: WikiProject Military History, WikiProject Biography, WikiProject Aviation, WikiProject Germany, MisterBee1966, Dapi89

Review section

I am nominating this featured article for review because it has had an Unreliable Sources tag since June 2018 and the Talk page shows multiple unsuccessful attempts to address the issue. Additionally, a recent RfC reached consensus that "Stockert, Peter (1996). Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945 Band 1 [The Oak Leaves Bearers 1939–1945 Volume 1]" is not a reliable source. Stockert is cited multiple times throughout the article and thus fails FAC 1c. –dlthewave ☎ 16:59, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. I've just read the article and have tagged it for tone. It is written like he's superman. I'm undecided about the reliability of the refs as I haven't looked into it sufficiently, however I suspect they are being used to back up the superman tone. Szzuk (talk) 18:02, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

• The tone tag was removed without discussion. I'm not replacing it because edit warring may follow. Checking the article history it was promoted to FA in 2009. Szzuk (talk) 08:58, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

• I am looking at deWikipedia's article, which has a whole section on how Bär was glorified by the Neo-Nazi and far right press and the "ace" image cultivated. Given that the proffered source mentions Bär by name, it might merit discussion in article? JoJo Eumerus mobile (talk) 08:22, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
• Comment: does not meet the current FA criteria for NPOV and sourcing. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:34, 26 February 2019 (UTC)
• Comment I agree that the article's tone is problematic, and some elements seem inaccurate. As examples:
  • "Hermann Göring's personal dislike of Bär, coupled with Bär's insubordinate character and lack of military discipline, deprived him of this award" - "deprived" is an odd word here: insubordinate and undisciplined military officers are lucky if they get anything other than dismissal. Often they end up in jail, and the Nazis executed rather a lot of them.
  • "His outspokenness frequently landed him in trouble with Göring" Why did Göring (the head of the German air force and the second most powerful person in Germany at this time) care what this pilot thought? Is this really true?
  • There's almost no coverage of Bär's role in the Battle of Britain, despite presumably being a leading ace of this campaign
  • "JG 77 was tasked with supporting the hard fighting in the Crimean Campaign over the Kerch Strait on the Crimean Peninsula. Led by the flying aces (Experten) Gollob and Bär, JG 77 took over the air space above Kerch-Taman " - this reads like Nazi propaganda (which really is not something I say lightly).
  • Why are the western pilots Bär shot down often named when none of the Soviet pilots are?
  • " Galland was greeted by Major Joachim Müncheberg, who introduced Bär to Galland. Thus began a comradeship which outlasted World War II" - also reads like propaganda, and is totally unclear. Were they friends, or only comrades? What did this involve?
  • "Bär had increased his tally to 179, but, fighting a losing battle against ever-increasing Allied air superiority, Bär lost his fighting spirit, and suffered severe mental and physical exhaustion. " - also propaganda (especially "lost his fighting spirit"). The literature on fighter pilots of World War II notes that the German air force required its pilots to remain in combat until they became casualties of one kind or another, while the western Allies regularly rotated theirs through combat and non-combat duties. As a result, many veteran German pilots suffered breakdowns or were killed due to fatigue. This literature needs to be drawn on in this context.
  • "His combat skills were hard to overlook" - the German air force's fighter pilots were being massacred by the Allies by this stage of the war, and it was cutting the quality of training for new pilots in a doomed attempt to make up the numbers. They had no choice but to force broken down men back into combat.
  • "On 15 March 1944, Bär, now a Major and rehabilitated from the demotion" - how did this happen? It was presumably related to the vast casualties the Germans suffered over this period.
  • "Bär had just landed at Störmede airfield from a II./JG 1 intercept when a smoking United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) B-24 of the 458th Bombardment Group passed overhead. Bär and his wingman quickly got into their aircraft and intercepted the B-24. The bomber's gunners had already bailed out of the aircraft, making it an easy aerial victory." - this obviously implies that the bomber was already badly damaged and probably doomed, something which should be noted if this is going to be described.
  • "Unternehmen Bodenplatte, a Luftwaffe mass attack against Allied airfields in the Benelux area. The operation resulted in hundreds of aircraft losses on both sides. " - this makes it sound like it was some kind of draw, when historians are unanimous about it being an utter disaster for the German air force.
  • " Karl Koller had ordered JV 44 to relocate to Prague and continue fighting. Bär, as a Galland loyalist, attempted to ignore the order." - sounds dubious. During this period German military personnel (almost all of whom saw the war as lost) were rushing west to surrender to the Western Allies. It seems likely that Bär and his men wouldn't have wanted to go anywhere near the Soviet front lines for this reason.
  • "interrogation by US Intelligence officers of the 1st Tactical Air Force's Air Prisoner of War Interrogation Unit" - according to our Tactical air force article, these were British Commonwealth formations, and 1 TAF was an Australian unit which served in the Pacific. The Commonwealth unit in Europe was 2 TAF, and it's not clear why its POW interrogators would be American.
  • The article provides almost no coverage to the 12 years between 1945 and 1957.
  • What was the cause of the crash which killed Bär? Nick-D (talk) 10:12, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

FARC section

Ongoing concerns are comprehensiveness, tone and balanced sourcing. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 22:57, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

• Demote. The article needs many edits and many hours from committed editors. I have checked and no work has been done. I'm not expecting any meaningful work to be done given the difficulties outlined. Szzuk (talk) 14:09, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Delist: does not meet the current FA requirements for being (1.c) well researched, due to low-quality sources; (1.d) neutrality, due to representing the subject with bias; and (4) length, due to containing much unnecessary detail such as jr promotions and exhaustive list of each and every aerial victory claim. --K.e.coffman (talk) 08:13, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
• Delist as article is no longer meeting FA requirements, as well as the difficulty of making the article up to standards. Kirbanzo ^{(userpage - talk - contribs)} 22:42, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
• Delist the article does not meet criteria 1c and 1d. Nick-D's comments are a good indication of the problems with criteria 1d, in particular. However, I strongly disagree with the premise that it doesn't meet criteria 4. Promotions and aerial victories are necessary detail on a military pilot, that detail is central to his biography. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:33, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• Closing note: This removal candidate has been delisted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please leave the {{featured article review}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:05, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.