Hello there, Does anyone's know anything about unit diaries for the 169th railway workshop squadron, Royal engineers for the period on the Suez/palestine 1947-48.As they seemed to have scrapped war diaries in 1946. If anybody could help me here would be very grateful. Many thanks C.B
Use Lee's search engine for Palestine period. http://arcre.com/wdsearch The term for post war ''war diaries is Quarterly Historical Reports
I have been searching through Lee's search engine and I myself cannot find anything to do with what I'm looking for particularly the period in palestine 1947-48 royal engineers if possible for 169 railway workshops or 887 electrical and mechanical squadron's. Any suggestions thanks again
TNA Series ref should be WO 261 http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/details?Uri=C14466 which you can browse by ref, etc. http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/browse/C14466?v=r An advanced search using TNA Search brings up this, not sure if the results will keep or time out: for engineers http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/s/res?_aq=engineers&_ep=&_or1=&_or2=&_or3=&_nq1=&_nq2=&_nq3=&_sd=&_ed=&_col=0&_sw=ref&_cr1=wo+261&_cr2=&_cr3=&_ps=15&_ro=any&_rd=&_rsd=&_red=&_fr=&_st=adv for electrical http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/s/res?_aq=electrical&_ep=&_or1=&_or2=&_or3=&_nq1=&_nq2=&_nq3=&_sd=&_ed=&_col=0&_sw=ref&_cr1=wo+261&_cr2=&_cr3=&_ps=15&_ro=any&_rd=&_rsd=&_red=&_fr=&_st=adv If the results no longer show, use this Advanced Search, add WO 261 as the reference to 'search within' using any keywords you think relevant. http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/search/advanced-search?_aq=engineers&_cr1=wo%20261&_ps=15&_ro=any&_advtxt=engineers
Those are the right dates but because it has been generalised in to works for the royal engineers such as " 63 C.R.E (works) royal engineers or 20 C.R.E (works) I believe consisting of several companies/Squadrons e.g 169th Railway workshop squadron. Therefore it does not specialise in the catalogue but I have found a PDF with all the royal engineers units and companies for ww2 and post ww2 with the 169th on page 36. Someone may be able to help find which unit the 169th were in earlier on in the PDF. I have posted the link below: http://www.orbat.com/site/uk_orbats/files/6/RE%20World%20War%20II.pdf Any help would be much appreciated thanks
I can find diaries up to 1946 but nothing after that. It may be worth getting the 1946 one and see what it says in the end of it.
I would consider getting the last few pages of the diary but what kind of information would it contain that would help me in trying to locate diaries post 1947. Are you confident that it would have useful information and would you get the whole diary or just the last pages. many thanks
To answer most of your questions I have no idea. You never know what's in a diary until you look. The fact it finishes in June 1946 would suggest to me it was either disbanded, re-named or they came back to the UK. Just guess work on my part mind. Here's the ref in case you wasn't aware of it. WO 169/23317 169 Railway Workshop Company 1946 Jan.- June
Here's a Quarterly Report transcribed to give you a rough idea. It covers the period only when they were abroad, nothing available after that. No two ever take the same format, so it really is entirely up to yourself if or what you think is worth looking in to. Everything is a 'lucky dip'. http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/31536-quarterly-historical-reports-1st-bn-irish-guards-january-1947-march-1949/
I would be interested if there was a specific one for the years I'm interested in but I don't want to pay £50 and end up with a copy of the records for another company. My only hope is I have a service record on order from the MOD is there any chance of the service record having details of the Quarterly reports? Are you usually able to link service records to Quarterly reports or is it unheard of post 1945? I found the unit for the man I'm interested via medal rolls national archives. any other advice would be very welcome thanks again C.B
dbf Actually I think you'll find frequency varied over time and between theatres. Eg Borneo, a few units maintained war diaries, but all bde HQs seem to have produced weekly operational reports. I think the current term for a war diary is 'operational record', if you poke around you'll find the current MoD instruction detailing contents for RN, Army and RAF units. As war has become more 'legal' the importance of operational records has increased. Not forgetting that at least some units in non-operational areas produced an annual historical report and I believe these are in TNA.
Cheers Mapshooter thanks for the additional info, very interesting. I suppose I was referring in this case to keywords for TNA search engine / Palestine era, which is the only postwar 'diaries' I have had dealings with.
any takers for a searchlight pic thread? http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/search?query=searchlight&items_per_page=10&f[0]=mediaType%3Aimage&f[1]=contentDate%3ASecond%20World%20War
There was a website devoted to recording information about British units in the post-war period and it definitely covered Palestine, Suez and the like. But I can't seem to access it any more. It's www.britains-smallwars.com. But clicking on it's name is just resulting in a DNS error. I'm at work at the moment, so it could be being blocked by our internet security software. Or the site could be down, which would be a shame. Cheers Ian
No, it has disappeared. Which is a considerable loss as it was a resource for orders of battle and personal accounts.
http://web.archive.org/web/20140205122542/http://britains-smallwars.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20131015043027/http://britains-smallwars.com/main/index1.html
It may be that the Britains-Smallwars website is now called Brittain's Small Forgotten Wars http://www.britainssmallwars.co.uk
Could be, 4BnEYR But the original site seems to be up again. The page for units involved in Palestine is here - http://britains-smallwars.com/Palestine/units.html Some RE railway companies are listed, but not, as far as I can see, the 169th. Cheers Ian
