on-line source for Admiralty War Diary 1939-1945

There is a wonderful on-line naval history resource that I thought members of this forum would find potentially useful. An American company www.fold3.com specializes in digitizing military, naval and aviation documents from the U.S. National Archives. Fold3 operates a subscription service with the documents available over the web. They have a wide variety of U.S. military records from different time periods but what I have made extensive use of is the Royal Navy’s Admiralty War Diary 1939-1945. This war diary is a compilation of enormous numbers of messages sent between various high ranking Royal Navy officers regarding a wide variety of topics. There are frequent references to Norwegian merchant ships as well as the occasional mention of Norwegian warships. Royal Navy operations along the coast of Norway are also the subject of messages. Among the most common types of messages were announcements that certain ships had departed from or arrived at a particular port, or been damaged or sunk. This immense document with thousands of pages can be fully explored using the website’s search function. There is a free seven day trial available.

Mark C. Jones

Hello, and thanks a lot!! Most interesting.

B

I have used them many times and each time I find new and unique material and photos. An excellent site, not always easy to navigate.
Did not know of these war diaries. Thanks Mark!
Atle