Popular documents

The National Archives is digitising some of its most popular individual documents, which are most frequently ordered by our readers. Some of these documents are single pieces within a series. Although further pieces from a given series might be digitised in the future, we cannot guarantee that the whole of the series will become available online.

UFOs: reports and photographs

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The National Archives holds Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) files that have been released by the Ministry of Defence. These files contain a wide range of UFO-related documents covering the years 1978 to 2002.

Ministry of Defence (MOD) policy states that its sole interest in UFOs is in whether there is "hostile or unauthorised" activity in UK airspace, or another defence issue. The MOD has produced a form to report any sightings of UFOs entering British airspace/ air activity. These forms have been distributed to RAF bases, civil airports and police stations. Members of the public also report sightings of UFOs by letter. Secretariat (Air Staff) 2a or Sec (AS) 2a is the division that collates reports of these UFO sightings, while other divisions offer advice on specialist areas such as radar evidence or satellite activity.

The files contain diverse documents ranging from reports, official replies, responses to replies, illustrations, the Apollo XIII Review Board report and Meteorological Office logbook extracts. You can bring up all the digitised UFO documents by searching DocumentsOnline for the keyword 'UFO'.

We have digitised files from the following catalogue references: AIR 2/18565, AIR 2/19086, AIR 20/7390, DEFE 31/172, DEFE 31/173, DEFE 31/174, DEFE 31/175, DEFE 24/1913, DEFE 24/1922, DEFE 24/1923, DEFE 24/1924, DEFE 24/1925, DEFE 44/119 and PREM 11/855.

Royal Marines: selected Plymouth attestations (Cat ref: ADM 157/140)

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This volume holds Royal Marines Attestation Forms for Plymouth Division, 1805 - 1848. It also includes Portsmouth and Woolwich Divisions. The forms gathered a considerable amount of personal information about the Marine, such as date and place of birth, his trade, physical characteristics, details of his enlistment and attestation and sometimes even references to next-of-kin.

Waterloo Medal Book (Cat ref: MINT 16/112)

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Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, a coronation had been the one standard occasion for the creation and distribution of an official medal. The issue of official medals began to be extended with the award of the Waterloo Medal, which set the precedent for the award of general service and campaign medals for the Navy and Army. The Waterloo Medal Book is a record of the Corps and Regiments engaged in the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815). It lists the name and rank of officers and men.

Royal Hospital Chelsea: selected volumes of Soldiers Service Documents

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WO 97 is the main series of service documents of soldiers (but not officers) who either became in- or out-pensioners of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. The attestation and discharge documents within it constitute the most detailed record of a soldier's service.

The volumes available are: WO 97/6347, WO 97/6354, WO 97/6360, WO 97/6361, WO 97/6364, WO 97/6366, WO 97/6367, WO 97/6373, WO 97/6375, WO 97/6378, WO 97/6379, WO 97/6380

The series generally does not contain the records of soldiers who died in service or who took an early discharge and never received a pension. Those service records would not have survived because they were not required for pension purposes.

The records usually give particulars of age, birthplace, service (including any decorations), information about physical description, previous occupation on enlistment and the reason given for discharge to pension. Documents after 1883 usually contain fuller particulars, such as next of kin and details of marriage and children.

Most of these documents date from the period 1843 - 1899, although WO 97/6347 and WO 97/6354 cover 1900 - 1913. Some of these later files also include an image of the death certificate, obtained from the General Register Office for administrative purposes.

Indexes to seamen's names (Cat refs: BT 154/4-6)

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The Board of Trade managed the records of the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen and its predecessor, the General Register and Record Office of Seamen which was in operation from 1835 to 1872.

The files in DocumentsOnline contain indexes to the registers of merchant seamen's names for the period 1860 - 1867. (The full BT 154 series of indexes covers the period 1852-1889.) The indexes are used to locate the records of receipt of dead sailors' wages and effects, or their proceeds. They are ordered by year and within each year, by surname. They give the page and column reference and include the name of the ship.

The seamen's documents were passed to Shipping Masters by the masters of British ships under the Seamen's Fund Winding-up Act 1851 and they are filed in the series BT 153 (not available online).

Silver War Badge: Officers (Cat ref: WO 329/3247)

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This records the names of officers who served in the Army or Royal Flying Corps in the First World War to whom the issue of Silver War badges had been approved. The Badge was awarded to all military personnel who were discharged as a result of sickness or wounds contracted or received during the war, either at home or overseas. Name, rank, corps, certificate number and address of the officers are given.

These files are part of the series WO 329 which contains the "Medal Rolls". The Medal Rolls record the entitlement to service medals and awards of the First World War. Most pieces concern those serving in the Army although some refer to the Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force (RFC/RAF) or to civilians in military establishments.

You can also access the "Medal Index Cards", held in the series WO 372, on DocumentsOnline. These cards contain a summary of the medal entitlement for all those who served in the Army or RFC/RAF in the First World War.

Selected Second World War Escape and Evasion Reports

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These Prisoner of War reports have been listed by the name of the person making the statement, the date of the interview and the individual report number (as it appears in the report, so for example, MI9/SPG: 1402). In addition to Prisoner of War accounts, the reports include dates of capture and escape and personal information such as civilian occupation and home address.

The volumes available are: WO 208/3307, WO 208/3315, WO 208/3320, WO 208/3322, WO 208/3324, WO 208/3325

Security services: selected files

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The series KV 2 contains files gathered on groups in which the Security Service took an interest, such as suspected spies, communist sympathisers and pacifists. In August 2008 the National Archives released further security service files, 15 of which have been made available at DocumentsOnline. Read more about these security service files

Other files available from DocumentsOnline include:

James or Norman John Klugman (cat. ref. KV 2/788), one of the "Cambridge Spies". He joined the Royal Army Service Corps as a private in 1940. A proper security assessment cannot have been made because he was transferred to Special Operations Executive (SOE). His files include extracts from Special Branch reports.
Soviet Military Intelligence officer Walter J Krivitsky or Walter Thomas (cat. ref. KV 2/802-5): after Stalin's Great Purges he feared for his life and fled to the USA. Later he was brought to London by Guy Liddell to be interviewed by MI5 officers. He was found dead in a Washington hotel in 1941. These files include the details he supplied about Soviet Intelligence techniques and operations.
Sidney George Reilly (cat. ref. KV 2/827), the most famous alias adopted by Shlomo Rosenblum. He is also sometimes referred to as "Reilly, Ace of Spies" and he is generally thought to be the model for Ian Fleming's character, James Bond. Much of the uncertainly surrounding his background is due to his own myth-making. After acquiring British citizenship he volunteered his services to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), now MI6, working there from 1918 to 1921. He was captured and interrogated by the Soviets in 1925 and shot in November that year.
Horst Kopkow (cat. ref. KV 2/1500), a Gestapo officer. He was interrogated about his work, during 1945 and 1946, including the investigation of the Rote Kapelle and Rote Drei Soviet spy networks and the investigation he led into the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944.
Ewan MacColl (cat. ref. KV 2/2175-6), a writer, broadcaster and folk-singer who was a Communist Party member for most of his career

There are also digitised files which have been released under Freedom of Information including: Arthur Mitchell Ransome (cat. ref. KV 2/1903-4), Ernestine Louisa Evans (cat. ref. KV 2/1986), William Gallagher (cat. ref. KV 2/1755), Paul Robeson (cat. ref. KV 2/1829-30) and George Orwell (cat. ref. KV 2/2699).

Guy Liddell diaries, August 1939 - June 1945 (Cat refs: KV 4/185-196)

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Liddell was one of Britain's principal wartime spymasters, having joined MI5 in 1927. These twelve volumes of Liddell's diaries represent almost a daily account of his work for the entire period of World War Two (August 1939 to June 1945). At the end of each day his secretary, Margot Huggins, would diligently type up his dictation and later she also produced an invaluable index for each volume. In November 1979, MI5 agent Goronwy Rees confessed that he had been a Soviet spy and added that Liddell had been part of a spy ring including Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt.

Tithe Redemption Commission: selected records of assertainments (Cat ref: IR 104)

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The duty of repairing the chancel of ancient parish churches fell on the owner of the rectorial property and was more particularly associated with the rectorial tithes. When the Tithe Act 1936 extinguished all tithe rentcharge, it became necessary to provide for liability for chancel repairs attaching to the ownership of rectorial tithe rentcharge and any vicarial rentcharge that bore this liability. The liability to be borne by the owners of tithe rentcharges was ascertained by the Tithe Redemption Commission.

These files cover the period 1939 - 1951. Browse all the files by searching on "Tithe Redemption Commission" in Quick Search. You can refine your search to specific years using Advanced Search, selecting only "Society & Law (Other Records)".

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