Valuable war archives are sitting out there untouched – and the Imperial War Museum has appealed to readers of Navy News to help collect them.

The archives are the memories of veterans involved in major conflicts, and their recollections could become part of the museum’s Sound Archive.

The Archive holds the national collection of recorded material relating to conflict since 1914, amounting to more than 38,000 hours.

As part of a national museum, the archive is open free of charge to all and is mainly used by researchers, academics, students and people looking into family history.

The bulk of the collection is made up of oral history recordings, with smaller holdings of broadcasts, speeches, music, poetry and sound effects.

Much of the oral history collection consists of veterans’ recollections of the two world wars, with less substantial holdings relating to inter-war and post-war periods.

Documentation and Liaison Officer Richard McDonough said: “Oral history is increasingly recognised as an important aspect of the nation’s heritage, offering a very human link with the past.

“It gives immediacy to historical events and an insight into human behaviour under the extreme conditions of war.

“No two recordings are the same; all are taken from a unique viewpoint, two people witnessing an event will often take a different view on what has occurred.

“The spoken word also provides what is so often missing in other archival mediums, namely an emotional link with the past, which has often been heightened by the interviewee’s experiences of conflict.”

The archive holds almost 1,000 recordings relating to naval operations and service, from pre-World War I to the Falklands.

Some of the earliest material relates to life on the lower deck between 1910-22, and is full of detail about training, conditions on board ship and relations between different Naval branches.

Details range from swimming instruction for boy seaman recruits at HMS Ganges to how Naval vessels were coaled, and among the topics are the Battle of Jutland, the Invergordon mutiny in 1931, and the RN Air Service in World War I.

The largest element of the archive relates to World War II, with good coverage of the Battle of the Atlantic, the hunt for the Bismarck, the D-Day landings, Arctic convoys and submarines.

Interviews also cover the Norwegian campaign and Malta convoys, while the Archive has two current projects relating to HMS Belfast – a branch of the Imperial War Museum since 1978 – and Captain-class frigates.

But archivists are engaged in a race against time to provide the nation with a comprehensive oral history of Naval operations in World War II, before memories fade and numbers dwindle.

Richard said the museum is particularly keen to find potential interviewees from the following actions:

•The sinking of aircraft carrier HMS Courageous, 1939; the sinking of the Royal Oak by U-47 in Scapa Flow, 1939;
•British Armed Merchant Cruiser actions, especially crewmen from the Rawalpindi, Jervis Bay and San Demetrio;
•The Battle of the River Plate, 1939;
•HMS Cossack crew’s boarding of the Altmark in Norway to release captured British Merchant Navy personnel;
•Destroyer actions during the Battles of Narvik, Norway, 1940;
•HMS Glowworm’s ramming of the Admiral Hipper;
•HMS Illustrious’ service in the Med, 1940-41;
•The mauling of the Italian fleet during the Battle of Matapan;
•The evacuation of Crete – especially crewmen from the destroyer flotillas, the cruisers HM ships Gloucester, Fiji and Calcutta and the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Coventry;
•Survivors of the sinking of HMS Kelly during the Crete campaign on which the Noel Coward film In Which We Serve was based;
•The sinking of HMS Barham in the Med, November 25, 1941;
•The Battle of the Java Sea, February 1942;
•HMS Walney and HMS Hartland’s role during the opposed landing of American troops in Oran Harbour during Operation Torch, November 1942;
•The Battle of the Barents Sea, especially the role of HMS Onslow during the battle in which Capt Sherbrooke won the Victoria Cross;
•The Battle of North Cape, December 26, 1943;
•Convoy escort groups hunting U-boats in the Atlantic from 1943.

Additionally, although not strictly Naval actions, the Archive would like to contact any survivors of the sinking of the Athenia on September 3, 1939, and any former crewmen of the tanker Ohio which brought badly-needed fuel to Malta in 1942.

Contact Richard on 0207 416 5362, or write to the Sound Archive, Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ.

Interviews are conducted by the Archive’s staff and a dedicated group of volunteers. Recordings are usually made in the interviewees’ homes, or alternatively at the Archive in London, and they take the form of a career interview, taking in all aspects of an interviewee’s service.