Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Operation Postmaster

Operation Postmaster

Operation Postmaster was a small joint operation by the Special Operations Executive and British Commandos. The operation involved a raid on a neutral Spanish port and sailing off in three Italian/German ships. I don't know how far this will progress at the moment but any and all suggestions for improvement are welcome. Thanks to those who have already commented on the article. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 15:46, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nick-D

This is a first-rate article Jim. My comments are mainly nit-picking:

"Operation Postmaster was a British operation on the neutral Spanish island of Fernando Po" - 'Operation Postmaster was a British operation conducted on the Spanish Island of Fenando Po" perhaps, and then say later in the lead that Spain was neutral - the current wording makes it sound like only the island was neutral territory

Changed wording

'operation' is repeated in each of the first three sentences in the lead

Yes now that you mention it -also changed

What's meant by the SSRF being 'nominally' under SOE command?

That's was my bad spelling it should have been normally - changed

How large was the SSRF at the time? (which seems relevant given that the article says that all of it was deployed)

Only 55 men - now added

It probably needs to be noted that Duchessa d'Aosta's cargo manifold was false - unless I'm mixing up my imperial units (always a possibility!) there's no way that she could have carried more than a fraction of that cargo of millions of pounds of bulky goods.

I never added them up will check

Were any British politicians involved in approving the raid? I'd imagine that a pre-planned raid on a neutral country would need to be approved by higher authorities than civil servants in the Foreign Office.

The only name in the sources is Hugh Dalton when he informed Churchill, it would be OR but I presume Churchill must have been somewhere in the loop. Even though the SSRF was under control of SOE Mountbatten as head of Combined Operations I suspect would also have been involved. But this would be OR.

Was the raid an actual breach of Spanish neutrality? It seems so, but the article states that it was only "seen as" a breach by the Spanish Government.

Yes according to international law, the ships should have been safe from attack.

On that topic, did the Spanish government do anything concrete in response to the raid, or was it's response limited to blustering? Nick-D (talk) 11:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All I could find in the English sources was the statement by Suner. The Allies were the only source of goods for Spain and there sole source of oil. Also MI6 were paying off the Spanish High Command to stop them going to war on the German side. Which may have had some bearing on their response. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 08:55, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can't get any sources right now on this, but in the long-term I intend to get some books on wartime Spain, and Franco, and see if this had any long-term effects. Skinny87 (talk) 17:07, 3 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AustralianRupert

A couple of minor comments;

there's a bit of whitespace in the Background section due to the placement of the Gulf of Guinea map;
in the Aftermath section there is a bit of mark up that is not working "{{quote|intolerable attack"
in the References section there is a Footnotes section but there are no footnotes;
in the Bibliography section the year ranges should have endashes. AustralianRupert (talk) 11:34, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all changed can you check for the white space it always comes up, but I can never see it. I think it must be my monitor. --Jim Sweeney (talk) 21:05, 30 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All fixed, looks good. I think it is probably just my screen. ;-) Take care. AustralianRupert (talk) 01:19, 1 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]