Derek Holyoake enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy on July 8, 1940 at the age of 16 and was serving onboard HMAS Hobart when she was torpedoed on July 20, ...
Badges Issued to service personnel or family members
OFFICIAL BADGE DESIGN Silver War Badge The Silver War Badge was an Imperial award issued to those who had been honourably discharged as a result of wounds or injuries received ...
The Creer Brothers in the RAN
Reginald Charles (Ferrers) Creer (1881-1958), and Herbert Victor Creer (1881-1969) ...
Occasional Paper 99: HMAS Tarakan fire 71 years ago
With Australian’s focussed on celebrating Australia day and long weekends the anniversary of the tragic explosion and fire in HMAS Tarakan (I) on 25 January 1950 passes relatively unnoticed most ...
Admiralty Fleet Dock 17 (AFD 17)
The dock had been based at the Royal Navy Depot at Reykjavik, Iceland and was undertaking the longest ocean tow in history, at that time, from Reykjavik to Sydney, a ...
Occasional Paper 87: Disposition and Employment of Royal Australian Navy Ships following Cessation of Hostilities 15 August 1945
By David Stratton, Hugh Farmer and Dennis Weatherall At the end of the War in the Pacific in August 1945 the strength of the Royal Australian Navy was 36,976 men ...
Letter from Frederick Merrill RAN on the sinking of the S.M.S. Königsberg
Butcher, 2nd Class Frederick Priest Merrill, R.A.N., H.M.A.S. Pioneer, wrote to his parents in Sheffield with his account of the sinking of the S.M.S. Königsberg in the Rufiji delta, German ...
Australian Naval History on 26 October 2019
HMAS Melbourne III decommissioned at Fleet Base East. Since commissioning in 1992, Melbourne had steamed more than 900,000 nautical miles, deployed on operations to the Middle East eight times and ...
Before her time – the tale of Navy’s first female sailor
Twenty-one years before the first Women’s Royal Australian Navy members (WRANs) entered service due to a shortage of telegraphists during the Second World War, a young Tasmanian girl was enlisted ...
Special feature interview with an incredible veteran on the 80th anniversary of WWII
Alan Jones hosted a special feature interview to mark 80 years since Australia joined World War II. On September 3, 1939, Prime Minister Robert Menzies announced to the nation that ...