RAF and Royal Navy records

Royal Navy and RAF records can now be ordered online as well as by post.

https://www.gov.uk/get-copy-military...-elses-records

Christina

That's useful information, Christanel, thankyou. I much prefer being able to order things online as opposed to by post.

I've just oredered a death certificate once it arrives I shall order RAF service record.

Excellent. Hopefully it will speed things up a bit.

Might order my records and my late father's

Is there an online location where I could find the ports of call of naval vessels in late 1940s?
It may help to unravel a puzzling story.

I have an interest in a young man (Leslie Kenneth George SPARROW), born 1925 in Essex, died 1957 in Australia, who went AWOL in 1946 and 1947 from his naval ships in Australia - this is based on two Police Reports in 1946 and 1947, from the state of South Australia.

His UK Naval Service Number was CH/X 111074

His desertion from H.M.A.S. Australia, 13/2/46 (an Australian vessel - why?)
and from H.M.S. Glory, 14/7/47

He applied to Australian Immigration Department on 16 May 1946 to remain in Australia (papers from that date to 10 July 1946), having married an Australian woman prior to that application (in 1946).

Sydney newspaper articles 22 and 23 March in 1947 give the story that they were pen friends for some years, and many years later met accidentally in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney in 1945, and "We were married a month later. Until that chance introduction I had not the slightest idea that he was in Australia."

She departed Sydney for Southampton on the "Asturias", giving as her intended permanent address Clacton-On-Sea, Essex - which I know to have been the address of her husband Les's parents and younger siblings.

I believe also that his father Victor George SPARROW was in the UK Navy.

In one of the newspaper articles it is mentioned that she had "left Sydney yesterday to join her husband, a Royal Marine, in Ceylon".

The ports of call of naval vessels may be useful. I'm not sure that I would be able to get his full service record which may show his date of joining and leaving the service, and other useful information.

Although Leslie SPARROW died aged 32 (1957) in country Victoria, Australia, I believe he had married again and that woman died only recently (Feb 2012, aged 84), and they have a common memorial plaque in the Healesville Cemetery.

Whether his second wife was born in Australia or England, unsure. Also, I cannot find an Australian marriage for them.

That's useful Christanel, thank you.

Re: ports of call Naval vessels -nothing online as far as I am aware I'm afraid.
I think the issue is similar to that of showing army movements -the only practical way of doing this is unit by unit from the diaries (or in this case 'ships logs').
https://discovery.nationalarchives.g...etails/r/C1762

Thanks for the link, timbo58. It allows me to print a list of the logs held for HMS Glory, so I have done that.
I'm assuming that their holdings are all paper/book format, and a request must be made for specific dates/items to be extracted, at the 30GBP + fee.

If they haven't been digitised then yes, it's either paying them or paying another researcher to do mass digitising for you. Neither are cheap unfortunately.

There's an interesting index here, which contains images of the pages they have digitised, but I don't think it contains everything, and I didn't see any of the ships/era you are after I'm afraid.
https://archive.ceda.ac.uk/corral/index.html

If anything appeals then I'd download it pretty quick as I have my suspicions whether it has the archives permissions to use and they could ask the website take them down!

Thanks for the link, where I've had a good look but it isn't relevant for me.

This project (ended, I think - a few years back) covers vessels and voyages mainly* in the 19th century, and - oddly - it is a project to obtain temperatures and atmospheric pressure observations, as supplementary historic data for "climate change" projections.

* (late 18th to early 20th century archive material)

However, it has digitized the logs from James Cook's voyages, etc - as such, historical important.