A fact from Lascaris Battery appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 March 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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It's totally wrong to claim that this facility was "the focal location for all the offensive operations directed against Axis forces in the Mediterranean" (an incredibly strong claim). Malta was isolated for much of 1941 and 1942, and the Allies fought the war from Cairo (for the Army and air forces) and Alexandria and whatever ship Cunningham was embarked on (for the Navy). For some of 1943 Malta was an important headquarters location during the invasions of Sicily and Italy (but even then lots of HQs remained in North Africa), but this didn't last long. Nick-D (talk) 09:37, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As supporting citations for the above, in his book Fortress Malta James Holland describes Lascaris as only the "nerve-centre for Malta's war effort" on page 170 (largely as it housed the RAF headquarters and its all important fighter plotting room), and states that the island was something of a backwater until the Lascaris was "transformed" into the headquarters for the invasion of Scily in mid 1943 (page 416). Nick-D (talk) 09:49, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've amended the hook and material in the article, with citations to Holland's book. I'm surprised that the hook was approved given that it wasn't cited to an independent source. All that said, this is essentially a good quality article on an interesting topic. Nick-D (talk) 09:55, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you think that's bad, you should have seen the hook before I amended it a couple of hours ago. Even after the amendment, I shared the same concerns that you express here, namely that the source was not independent enough for a statement of that type, but decided to stick with it partly because I didn't know for sure the source was inaccurate, and partly because not doing so would have required quite a bit of extra work, to remove the hook, find a suitable replacement, explain my reasons for doing so etc etc. In retrospect, I should have gone with my gut feeling and just pulled the hook anyway, but at least on this occasion someone with a bit more knowledge was on hand to minimize the damage, thanks. Gatoclass (talk) 10:33, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that, your change was also an improvement (the closest thing to 'British War Rooms' were what's now the Churchill War Rooms in central London, though the hook obviously didn't mean to imply that this was the HQ for the British war effort) Nick-D (talk) 10:51, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, exactly, pretty silly to think of Churchill and his war cabinet hunkering down in Malta for the duration :) Gatoclass (talk) 12:21, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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