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Talk:Landing Ship, Tank

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Hammond Innes's Atlantic Fury

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Just read the Kindle edition of this book. The novel clearly states that the two ships caught in the storm are LCTs and not LSTs. Also, the description of the ships with uncovered tank decks fits LCTs. I propose this book description be moved from this article to the LCT article. Thoughts? Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 09:56, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OK, moved. Thanks! Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 03:04, 24 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"This enabled amphibious assaults on almost any beach."

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This description of LST use in the lede paragraph is highly misleading. As stated in the Landing Craft Air Cushion article, "Due to its tremendous over-the-beach capability, the LCAC can access more than 80% of the world's coastlines...Previously, landing craft had a top speed of approximately eight knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph) and could cross only 17% of the world's beach area".

While this quote states 'craft', the number for LSTs was similar.

Thoughts?Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 20:09, 11 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Newport Class is not mentioned

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The Newport class has it's own page, as do each of the ships. I don't know how to add a box on the right side of the page. Jtmilesmmr (talk) 20:54, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 4 August 2024

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– The military likes to list things by major category first, followed by modifier. The normal English way of referring to these things is actually more common in independent sources (some in all sources), and is more recognizable to most non-military readers than the backwards way that the military likes for list alphabetizing. None of these are proper names, as evidenced by frequent lowercase usage in sources. Example, from a Life magazine photo caption in 1943: "Boat is an infantry landing craft, carrying about 200 men. Offshore is tank landing ship." Another, from British War Production, H.M. Stationery Office, 1952: "It was, however, the tank landing craft, not the tank landing ship, that was to form the backbone of the British programmes of 1942 and 1943." I will add book n-gram stats for each, to compare both word order and case. Dicklyon (talk) 22:36, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Note – Several of these were reverted after my bold moves, so now we discuss.
  • Usage data – I have checked book usage stats on each, and compiled these comparisons, where both the case and word order can be compared. Some are much more common with lowercase and normal word order (e.g. tank landing craft), but in others the capitalized modifier-last order is somewhat more common (e.g. Landing Craft Infantry). It's still better to adopt the "English" over the "military" phrasing, for recognizability to the typical reader.
    Dicklyon (talk) 22:43, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More on usage of "Landing Craft Infantry" in particular: most occurrences seem to be in tables, e.g. this 1943 book page has it 4 times, and this 2011 book page has it 9 times, for different varieties, in a table of acronyms, as well as it being in the title of the book. These repetitions get counted in the n-gram statistics. Using contexts that knock out tables and titles and are more likely to represent usage in sentences, we see "infantry landing craft" ahead. The military style is great in tables and catalogs, but isn't what's mostly used to refer to these things in normal writing. Dicklyon (talk) 05:08, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Mechanized landing craft" implies the landing craft itself is mechanized while the meaning is that its used for armoured fighting vehicles (mechanized warfare). GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:20, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This Report 1334-2 – Naval Ship Research and Development Center, 1959 disagrees. It uses "LCM-A (U.S. mechanized landing craft)". The adjective "mechanized" clearly means "for mechanized", just as with "tank" and "infantry". Dicklyon (talk) 16:02, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Compare with landing craft vehicle personnel (which is at LCVP). Come to think of it, it may be these vessels are better known by their initialisms than their written out names. GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:24, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest that the most common place for a person consulting Wikipedia to have seen a name for any of these vessels is in military history and memoirs. This is where you will find the military word order or, as pointed out above, just the initials. Given the commonness of the initials, it seems contrary to have the full name something that does not directly support the initials.
Use of the normal military name also makes clear that we are talking about the exact class of craft, as described by the name given by the military, rather than a generic description that would be less precise. There is no hesitation in using the military name given to a class of aircraft (Spitfire, B17, etc.) so why be different here? ThoughtIdRetired TIR 07:56, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose moves as described.
These should remain at Landing Ship, Tank as they were. These are not tank landing ships in the same generic sense. That is a notable topic, we don't have a specific article on those, although we do have landing craft. These are specific US classes of landing craft, at particular times and with particular roles, which were correctly referred to by their name of Landing Ship, Tank. They were also abbreviated as LCT and LST, acronyms that are still in the article but would make no obvious sense to our readers if renamed.
There are two changes being pushed here. Firstly the removal of capitalisation, for no reason other than (yet again) a simplistic and incorrect blanket change. This is to prioritise a too-literal reading of WP:MOS over WP:RS and WP:V. Secondly, that has then encouraged an invented rewording of the names, pure WP:OR. Some of these are so bad as to become nonsensical: 'mechanized landing craft', as noted above, is not a landing craft that is mechanised.
No, it's not, and there's no confusion about that in sources that call it a mechanized landing craft, as I pointed out above. Here's a Motor Boating magazine from 1943 with "We shall need many more mechanized landing craft for the big job still ahead—the establishment of bridgeheads direct to Berlin and Tokio." See also Brassey's Naval Annual, Volume 55 (1944) with "L.C.A. Assault landing craft" and "L.C.S. (support) and "L.C.M. (mechanized)" and "mechanized landing craft" (with your British spelling and a different acronym style). Dicklyon (talk) 15:42, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tank landing craft is an excellent topic for an article. It should compare the Landing Ship, Tank to the Zubr-class LCAC and others, in an overall and generalised sense. This is not that article. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:44, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The British War Production book that I referenced as using "tank landing craft" and "tank landing ship" in the text also uses them capped, but normal word order, in defining the acronyms in a footnote: "... in 1942 were Tank Landing Craft (L.C.T.), Mechanised Landing Craft (L.C.M.), Assault Landing Craft (L.C.A.), ...". If we need a more generic article, we can talk about appropriate disambiguation; resorting to military catalog style is not a normal disambiguation style in WP. Dicklyon (talk) 15:51, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you really not understand the semantic difference between 'Landing Craft Mechanized' or 'Mechanised Landing Craft' and 'mechanized landing craft'?
The first are proper name phrases. They are identifying particular classes, the US LCMs and also the UK's LCMs (which happened to have the regular linguistic variations between the two countries). And then there is the 'mechanized landing craft', which is a WP:WIKINEOLOGISM, i.e. we don't do that. It's the same as Landing Craft, Tank vs. tank landing craft, except that in that case there is at least plenty of IRL use of the term tank landing craft for the generic type. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:27, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that 'Landing Craft Mechanized' and 'Mechanised Landing Craft' and 'mechanized landing craft' all refer to various crafts of the US and UK that were also called LCM or L.C.M. And the sources I quoted from 1943 and 1944 make it clear that this is not a neologism, wiki or otherwise. Dicklyon (talk) 18:57, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That understanding is supported by sources such as this All Hands, Bureau of Naval Personnel (1968) with "the mechanized landing craft (LCM)". And this Sealift magazine, U.S. Military Sealift Command (1979) with "build 148 mechanized landing craft (LCM)." Dicklyon (talk) 19:06, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Checking through military history books that I have immediately to hand:
    Symonds, Craig L.. World War II at Sea: A Global History uses the military word order extensively, has one mention of early British use of "Tank landing craft" (before they adopted US terminology) and one mention of a "tank landing ship" in the index (perhaps the input of an indexer, not the author).
    Mawdsley, Evan. The War for the Seas: A Maritime History of World War II is less consistent and has about equal usage of the two word orders for both "landing ship tank"/"tank landing ship" and "landing craft tank"/"tank landing craft"
    Beevor, Antony. The Second World War uses exclusively "Landing Ship Tank" and makes no mention of landing craft for tanks.
    Roskill, Stephen. The War at Sea Volume III Part I The Offensive (HMSO Official History of WWII - Military) uses one instance each of "tank landing craft" and "landing craft tank", but is 100% on "Landing Ship Tank", "Landing Ship Infantry", etc.
    Peter Bull, To Sea in a Sieve (memoirs – great read! Author served in an LCT and then an LCF) exclusively "Landing Craft Tank", "Landing Craft Infantry", etc.
    The impression I get is that where there is mixed usage by one author it is a case of general descriptive language versus precise language – by analogy "fighter aircraft" versus, say, "Spitfires and Hurricanes". ThoughtIdRetired TIR 11:34, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    early British use of "Tank landing craft", but again, is that referring to the generic 'ships for landing tanks' or the subject of this article, the particular classes of 'Landing Craft, Tank' that were developed to do this? 'Ships for landing tanks' is a great topic for an article, but it's not the one that's here. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:49, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No, the early British terminology was "Tank Landing Craft". We see this in the Symonds ref above and somewhere I have seen a ref that describes these early vessels. They were (?nearly) all lost in the Dunkirk evacuation (there weren't many of them) and if I remember rightly, they could only carry one tank each. I might have read about them in an account of the raid on Spitzbergen. I am still looking for that ref. It seems that the first LTCs were designated TLCs (Peter Bull is my source for this, he has a glossary on page 41 and the narrative suggests that by the time the mark 2s were built, the term LCT was in universal use). By the time the UK had significant numbers of landing craft for tanks, I am persuaded (by a range of sources) that those who used them on a daily basis invariably used the name that came from the US: "Landing Craft Tank". ThoughtIdRetired TIR 21:33, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Not a good analogy, as Spitfire and Hurrican are clearly proper names, not descriptive. Dicklyon (talk) 14:48, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I think the analogy stands up quite well. The LTC came in a number of "marks", not "classes". The similarity between the LCT mark 2 to the mark 4 is reasonably equivalent to that between the mark 1 Spitfire and the mark Vb. (In both instances there is substantial further development beyond the marks 4 and 5b respectively.) These landing craft came off the production lines with little variability between members of one mark, just like aircraft marks. The individual members of classes of warship could have significant variations between them. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 21:33, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Also note that the article is organized around 9 different classes of LCT, and the one in the lead image has "TLC-124" painted on it. There's no doubt that "TLC" was the original designation, in spite of Andy's recent "dubious" tag for which I add a couple of book refs. Dicklyon (talk) 15:14, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    (1) They were not classes of landing craft, they were "marks" of this design. (The ref Peter Bull discusses some differences, mostly concerning how comfortable the minimal crew accommodation was.) "Tank Landing Craft" was briefly and originally used by the British (not in the US), it was mostly a different design concept, and (in line with WP:COMMMONNAME) it is enormously outnumbered by examples of the design series termed Landing Craft Tank (and all the variants like LCFs, etc.).
    (2) You can also find "tank landing craft" being used as a generic term, especially by those with no special appreciation of the classification of the wide range of types of landing craft. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 21:33, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you really think, and claim as you seem to be doing here, that either all sources are in perfect agreement on minor orthography? Or else if they do differ, then it now becomes an option to pick a personal favourite from amongst them, according to a whim or a formatting style guide (style guides BTW are not WP:RS). That's not how it works. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:02, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And of those first page of hits one is a run on where "vehicle and personnel" is the end of one line in a table and "Landing craft" is start of next, and another is an author saying " Funny how the army always gets things backward . Why not Vehicle and Personnel Landing Craft?" GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:46, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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