Talk:152 mm howitzer-gun M1937 (ML-20)
Latest comment: 18 years ago by LostArtilleryman in topic Recent rename
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Recent rename
Can I ask why was the article moved from "152-mm gun-howitzer M1937 (ML-20)" to "152 mm ML-20 field howitzer" ? (Same question about 37-mm air-defense gun M1939 (61-K)). Bukvoed 16:06, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
- Same question from me. The previous name was fine, and was a good translation of the official Russian name. Balcer 16:36, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
- O-oh, The Old Guard said its word :-). I am also for returning the previous name. LostArtilleryman 16:44, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
- Firstly, I believe that we would need to make some sort of naming convention for Soviet/Russian weapon systems, and the artillery systems in particular. It is quite obvious that these names have been taken from some Russian language text. Firstly, the current version is overly complicated. The article names are right now a mix of different designation systems! I suggest that we start with naming them with caliber, then weapon system, and finally name, like "122 mm howitzer D-30". Alternatively, the GRAU system could be used if that is more familiar for the system in question. The system with model and year could be dropped altogether from the header, but mentioned in the first paragraph with bold text.
- Secondly, the metric system should be written with a separating space in English, not with a hyphen like it is done in Russian (i.e. "122 mm", not "122mm" or "122-mm"). See [1]--MoRsE 07:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- O-oh, The Old Guard said its word :-). I am also for returning the previous name. LostArtilleryman 16:44, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Just to illustrate the current situation - we need to clean up and systemize the artillery systems here! --MoRsE 08:19, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
07:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- Well, as a Russian artilleryman, I can say that Soviet/Russian designations were the subject of change several times. E. g. official Russian name for the D-1 howitzer in 1943 was 152-мм гаубица обр. 1943 г. - 152 mm howitzer M1943 will the English direct analogue. But in everyday language this name is difficult to say. So more brief developer index such as D-1 was used. So, Russian historians in their books (Shunkov, Shirokorad) use the cumbersome concatenation of official name and developer's index in parenthesis. In ruWiki, where I am one of artillery articles supervisor, we shared this approach but only for WW2 pieces. After WW2 'model 19XX' designation in new Soviet artillery pieces was dropped and developer index was instated instead. So 122 mm howitzer D-30 or 152 mm gun-howitzer D-20 will be correct English translation. But older pieces never renamed! For the end of their operational life they designated in official texts such as ballistic tables with their WW2-era name. For ML-20 English equivalent is 152 mm howitzer-gun M1937. No field attribute. It never has it at all. Either highly official 152 mm howitzer-gun M1937 or informal but also official ML-20 were used in Russian practice. Only 100 mm BS-3 officialy had 'field' attribute. And today, indices were again changed. In Russian Army everyday talk the names such as Acacia, Msta, Nona is used and GRAU indices were added in some cases. So nonformal but quite common concatenation 2S19 Msta-S is used in descriptive texts including ruWiki ones. LostArtilleryman 08:23, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thank you for clarifying this. The most important thing is that we can get some order among these. I added some suggestions in the table above. Please correct them if you like. --MoRsE 08:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- I offer to divide Soviet/Russian artillery into three naming categories. First category is a pre-war and WW2 pieces. I agree drop into the article name developer index, but model IMHO must retain. For example, 76 mm divisional gun M1942 will be right translation from the Russian official name for 76-мм дивизионная пушка обр. 1942 г.. This is a name which used in manuals, ballistic tables etc. But the problem is in the rarely historical conversational usage of such name. Ziska, ZiS-3, Divisionka is colloquial names for the piece. Of course, all of them we can describe in a first passage of the article 76 mm divisional gun M1942 (official designation) or ZiS-3 (developer designation, also official) is a WW2 Soviet... and so on. It seems to me include developer index in parenthesis for better "compatibility" with primary Russian sources and ruWiki, but if majority will agree with the names without developer index (by default, we have it as redirect), I will not protest, this is a conditional and disputable matter. The second category is most simple - postwar Soviet guns. They have official names like 122-мм гаубица Д-30 and 122 mm howitzer D-30 is a perfect name for the article in enWiki. Modern ordnance is more difficult to name. When I was in Army, I did not see any manual for modern SPG howitzers, only for towed ones such as D-30 or D-20. In conversations we called machines by name, e. g. Where is Capt. Ivanov now? He is on exercises with his battery of Acacias (not 2S3). But in ruWiki we have an agreement: articles about "flowers" and "rivers" are called with GRAU index first and then the Army name - 2S1 Gvozdika. But modern towed pieces officially retain old order but developer index is replaced by GRAU one, e. g. 152 mm gun 2A36. And I guess, the official name of SPGs will be something like 152 mm self-propelled howitzer 2S3 without Acacia, but this needs to be checked and verified. Another topic for discuss is Katyusha MRLSs. This name is common one for definite set of combat machines such as BM-13, BM-13N, BM-13SN, BM-31, BM-8-24, BM-8-48. LostArtilleryman 09:27, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- Thank you for clarifying this. The most important thing is that we can get some order among these. I added some suggestions in the table above. Please correct them if you like. --MoRsE 08:58, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
- Well, as a Russian artilleryman, I can say that Soviet/Russian designations were the subject of change several times. E. g. official Russian name for the D-1 howitzer in 1943 was 152-мм гаубица обр. 1943 г. - 152 mm howitzer M1943 will the English direct analogue. But in everyday language this name is difficult to say. So more brief developer index such as D-1 was used. So, Russian historians in their books (Shunkov, Shirokorad) use the cumbersome concatenation of official name and developer's index in parenthesis. In ruWiki, where I am one of artillery articles supervisor, we shared this approach but only for WW2 pieces. After WW2 'model 19XX' designation in new Soviet artillery pieces was dropped and developer index was instated instead. So 122 mm howitzer D-30 or 152 mm gun-howitzer D-20 will be correct English translation. But older pieces never renamed! For the end of their operational life they designated in official texts such as ballistic tables with their WW2-era name. For ML-20 English equivalent is 152 mm howitzer-gun M1937. No field attribute. It never has it at all. Either highly official 152 mm howitzer-gun M1937 or informal but also official ML-20 were used in Russian practice. Only 100 mm BS-3 officialy had 'field' attribute. And today, indices were again changed. In Russian Army everyday talk the names such as Acacia, Msta, Nona is used and GRAU indices were added in some cases. So nonformal but quite common concatenation 2S19 Msta-S is used in descriptive texts including ruWiki ones. LostArtilleryman 08:23, 14 May 2007 (UTC)