 | Fleet Air Arm |
| Fleet Air Arm |
11 August 2011
The RAN's Reports of Proceedings - the official records of activities of commands, vessels, shore establishments, administrative authorities and installations from 1939 onwards - are being made available on the internet.
Already they include RoPs for the aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney (pictured with Firefly aircraft) including the time the ship was on operations in Korean waters.
To mark the 100th anniversary of the formation of the RAN, the Australian War Memorial is digitising one of its most used naval archival series, AWM78 Reports of Proceedings, HMA Ships and Establishments.
The reports are the Navy's official record of activities. In mid-July, the Memorial published online the records of the first 50 ships. The Memorial will add further records to the website as each of the original paper records is digitised.
This is a major project that will generate up to 300,000 images. Senior curator and project manager, Robyn Van-Dyk, said this first release covered the activities of the RAN from 1939 through to the 1980s.
"We started by digitising the most heavily-used records such as those relating to HMAS Sydney (II) and (III), HMAS Perth (I), HMAS Vendetta (I) and (II), HMAS Vampire (I) and (II).
There are multiple files relating to each ship covering arrival and departures from ports, visits, official calls, operations, exercises, weather conditions and outstanding incidents.
Some files include photographs and newspaper articles. For shore establishments, the files cover promotion tests, mess activities, accounting, training, exercises and social events.
The files are being made available in PDF format - for HMAS Sydney, the size of the files range from 9MB to 38MB. They can be accessed from www.awm.gov.au/collection/records/awm78/.
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