
                    **********************************
                          PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE 
                    RECORDS INFORMATION Leaflet No: 43
                    **********************************

  [Note: this and all other PRO Records Information leaflets are (c)
  Crown Copyright, but may be freely reproduced except for sale or
  advertising purposes.  Copies should always include this Copyright
  notice -- please respect this.]  (C) Crown Copyright, January 1986

------------------------------ start of text ------------------------------

              OPERATIONAL RECORDS OF THE ROYAL NAVY IN THE
                        SECOND WORLD WAR, 1939-45
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Documents in the Public Record Office relating to the war are described in
"The Second World War; a guide to Records in the Public Record Office"
(London, HMSO, 1972).  This leaflet concerns itself solely with records in
the Public Record Office* relating to naval operations; it does not deal
with records of administration, supply, research, or the higher direction
of the war. No personnel records of this period have been transferred to
the Public Record Office. It should be remembered that during this war the
integration of the three services with one another, and with civil
government and allied forces, was carried far further than hitherto, and
there is a correspondingly larger amount of material on naval operations
in records not relating specifically to the Royal Navy, and not mentioned
here. Further records of naval operations in the Second World War have not
yet been transferred from the Ministry of Defence.


OPERATIONAL RECORDS

The most important operational records are to be found in three classes,
ADM 1, ADM 116 and ADM 199. The first two represent the original records
of the Secretariat of the Admiralty, from which a large part of ADM 199 was
subsequently extracted by the official historians. Other records used by
them and incorporated in this class derive from the Naval Staff and from
naval commands at home and overseas. ADM 1 and ADM 116 are each arranged
by subject according to a system which is fully explained in the class
lists. ADM 199 is listed in very general terms, and in an almost completely
random order. There are card indexes to ships, convoys and operations in
the Reference Room, and readers should be prepared to spend much time and
energy in searching this class. The main series of the class includes
convoy commodores' reports, the War Diaries of commands and squadrons, and
a large number of reports of actions of all sorts, including those of Fleet
Air Arm Squadrons, and of the United States' Navy in the Pacific. To this
series have been added others, including records of Operation Neptune (the
invasion of Normandy, 1944), 'X Cases' (Naval Staff records), 'Y Cases'
(papers of various flag officers), a collection of submarine patrol reports
from Flag Officer Submarines, the First Lord's Records, Daily Operations
Reports for the First Lord, Daily Summary of Naval Events, and War Diary
Summaries, U-Boat Incidents and analyses of U-Boat Attacks, Monthly Anti-
Submarine Reports, Wartime Damage to Ships, and records of the Trade
Division of the Naval Staff and of the South Atlantic Command.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
* The records described in this leaflet may be seen only at the PRO, Kew.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

STATION RECORDS

The Portsmouth Station Records (ADM 179) contain numerous reports of
actions and other papers concerning operations in the Channel. The records
of the South Atlantic Station, as noted above, are in ADM 199, which also
contains some material extracted from other station records. ADM 217,
Western Approaches Command, consists of an incomplete series of Reports of
Proceedings from Senior Officers of Escorts and others, and is indexed by
convoy and by Senior Officers' ships. No other station records of this
period have been transferred.


OTHER NAVAL OPERATIONAL RECORDS

ADM 236 is an incomplete collection of submarine Patrol Reports from the
Mediterranean, supplementing those in ADM 199. ADM 237 'Convoy Packs', are
convoy records maintained in the Operations Division of the Naval Staff.
They include Reports of Proceedings, Commodores' Reports and other papers.
About half this series was destroyed. References are included in the card
indexes in the Reference Room.


SHIPS' LOGS

In ADM 53 are the logs of battleships, aircraft carriers, cruisers and
armed merchant cruisers, with some gaps caused by enemy action. In ADM 173
are submarine logs. The logs of all other HM Ships are in ADM 53 for 1939
and the early months of 1940, but thereafter only a very few have been
transferred to the Public Record Office; the remainder are believed not to
have survived. It should be borne in mind that the log is primarily a
navigational document concerned only incidentally with operations. HM Ships
do not keep War Diaries.


COMBINED OPERATIONS

Many Combined Operations are dealt with in the main series referred to
above. DEFE 2 consists of the papers of Combined Operations Headquarters,
which cover the planning and execution of all sorts of seaborne military
operations. ADM 202 contains similar papers of Royal Marine Headquarters,
including Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisations, and the War Diaries of
Royal Marine units. References are included in the card indexes in the
Reference Room.


ADMIRALTY

The Minutes of the Board of Admiralty are in ADM 167, and a set of
Admiralty Fleet Orders and Confidential Admiralty Fleet Orders in ADM 182.
The First Sea Lord's papers are ADM 205. The minutes and papers of the War
Cabinet Committees on the Battle of the Atlantic and on Anti-U-Boat Warfare
are in CAB 86.


NAVAL INTELLIGENCE RECORDS

ADM 223 is a collection of reports and papers of the Naval Intelligence
Division, including the texts of early decrypts of German naval wireless
traffic encyphered on the ENIGMA machine, and numerous reports and
summaries, both from N.I.D. and the Operational Intelligence Centre, based
on this 'Special Intelligence'. There are also reports from the
Mediterranean and Far East O.I.C. The Daily Reports of the O.I.C. have been
transferred only up to September 1940, and its Daily Log is still witheld.

The class includes photocopies of documents not yet transferred, but cited
in the footnotes of Volume 1 of the Official History of British
Intelligence in the War. DEFE 3 contains the texts of all enemy signals,
both naval and other, decrypted by the Government Code and Cypher School
which have been transferred to the Public Record Office. At present, many
of the naval, military and political decrypts from March 1941 have been
released, but none from earlier periods of the war.


FLEET AIR ARM AND COASTAL COMMAND

The surviving Operations Record Books of Fleet Air Arm Squadrons are in ADM
207 and AIR 27. Reports of Proceedings are with those of ships and
squadrons in ADM 199 and elsewhere. The Headquarters Papers of Coastal
Command are in AIR 15, with its Operations Record Books in AIR 24 and those
of its squadrons and constituent formations in AIR 25, 26 and 27. No
Carrier Flying Log Books are know to have survived. Fleet Air Arm and
Coastal Command combat reports are in AIR 50. A few flying log books of RAF
personnel serving with the Fleet Air Arm are in ADM 900.


LISTS

The confidential edition of the Navy List, containing the complete
information on officers and ships which was omitted from the published
edition in wartime, is in ADM 177. The Pink List, ADM 187, issued twice
weekly, gives the location in port, though not the position at sea, of all
HM Ships and Naval Air Squadrons in commission. The Red List, ADM 208,
gives similar information on minor war vessels in home waters; the Blue
List, ADM 209, (issued monthly), covers ships building; and the Green List,
ADM 210, deals with Landing Ships, Landing Craft and the like in home
waters.


PUBLICATIONS

ADM 234 contains a set of the Admiralty O.U. and B.R. series of
publications, which include Naval Staff monographs and Battle Summaries.
ADM 239 contains a set of Admiralty Confidential Books (CB) including
monthly reports of anti-submarine warfare from the East Indies Station.


PHOTOGRAPHS

ADM 176 consists of photographs of HM Ships, but very much better
collections of such photographs are held by the National Maritime Museum,
Romney Road, Greenwich, SE10 9NF and the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road,
London SE1 6HZ. In WO 240 are views of the "Mulberry" artificial harbours.
Many other photographs occur in the classes mentioned in this leaflet, but
there is no union index to them, and no easy means of tracing them. A start
has recently been made on the work of extracting photographs from files and
giving them separate references. Photographs from Admiralty documents are
being placed in class CN 1. The majority of photographs will not be so
treated for many years.


HISTORICAL WORKS

CAB 101/36-39 consists of a set of the Official History of the War at Sea
annotated with the references which were omitted from the published
edition. These references are to the original Admiralty system of
registering papers, now so much disrupted by subsequent rearrangement as
to be, in many cases, almost impossible to use. CAB 106 is a large
collation of despatches, reports and narratives, both published and
unpublished, and covering all three Services, made by the Cabinet Office
Historical Section. In ADM 189, the papers of HMS Vernon, the Torpedo and
Mine School, are monographs on the development and operation of mines,
minesweepers, net defences, anti-submarine weapons, demolitions, torpedo
aircraft and submarine attacks.


OTHER RECORDS

ADM 212, the papers of the Admiralty Research Laboratory, include papers
on camouflage which draw directly on operational experience. The same is
true of the Director of Naval Construction's papers, ADM 229, which deal
with the design of warships. ADM 219 is the papers of the Directorate of
Naval Operational Studies, which applied statistical and other methods to
the analyses of naval operations with a view to improving their
effectiveness.


COURTS MARTIAL

All records of Courts Martial are closed for seventy-five years.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1LR.
  Public Record Office, Ruskin Avenue, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU.
  Tel: +44 (0) 181 876-3444

  Opening hours: 9.30am - 5.00pm, Monday to Friday. Closed on public
  holidays and for annual Stocktaking (normally the first two full weeks
  in October). 

  Admission is by reader's ticket which will be issued on production of
  proof of identity, such as a (UK) driving licence or passport.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This text, and that of other PRO leaflets, is also available from:
 - World Wide Web URL: http://sable.ox.ac.uk/~malcolm/genealogy/pro/
 - Anonymous-FTP  (site)  sable.ox.ac.uk
             (directory)  /pub/users/malcolm/genealogy/pro
     - if you have trouble accessing either of the above, please contact
                                    (email) malcolm.austen@oucs.ox.ac.uk
 - Wishful Thinking BBS (Cheltenham, UK) - SysOp Rosemary Lockie
     Fidonet:  2:253/188         Tel: +44-1242-232623
------------------------------- end of text -------------------------------
