Catalogue description Admiralty and Ministry of Defence: Naval Intelligence Division and Defence Intelligence Staff: United Kingdom Beach Intelligence Records: Files, Maps and Photographs

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Details of ADM 360
Reference: ADM 360
Title: Admiralty and Ministry of Defence: Naval Intelligence Division and Defence Intelligence Staff: United Kingdom Beach Intelligence Records: Files, Maps and Photographs
Description:

This series consists of files, maps and digital images of deteriorated negatives relating to beach intelligence reports of the coasts and inland waterways of the United Kingdom. They are from a comprehensive survey conducted in the 1950s and reports of beach surveys carried out in succeeding years. The majority of the records were photographic negatives, some were in microfilm form. Those degraded were digitised and the JPEG 2000 digital files were included the series as JPEG 2000 files. This is therefore a hybrid series containing both physical and digital records.

Note: Some records include earlier material that pre-dates the Operation Sandstone survey.
Date: [1941-1966]
Related material:

For the reports generated from the survey data from the negatives see ADM 326
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Board of Admiralty, Hydrographic Department, 1795-1856

Board of Admiralty, Hydrographic Department, 1863-1964

Ministry of Defence, Hydrographic Department, 1964-1973
Physical description: 55980 digital records, files and maps
Access conditions: Open
Immediate source of acquisition:

From 2005 United Kingdom Hydrographic Office
Custodial history: These records form part of the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO) Historic Archive formerly held at Taunton (as an authorised place of deposit under section 4(3) of the Public Record Act, 1958) and transferred to The National Archives from 2005.
Accruals: No further accruals are anticipated.
Administrative / biographical background:

Operation Sandstone was instituted in 1947 to survey the coast of the British Isles to facilitate re-occupation by the United States (US) in the event of the United Kingdom (UK) being over-run in war. During the Cold War it was feared that Communist Russia would capture the UK if war broke out. It was thus seen fit by the US to know about the coasts of the UK and the Republic of Ireland in order to re-occupy the countries.

The Royal Navy was asked to carry out a survey of the coast including ports and airfields in an operation codenamed Sandstone. The coastline was split up into phases 1-15, and phases split into parts so that every detail was recorded. Ports were not studied in the phases, but separately due to their strategic importance.

The survey team was disbanded in 1966 before the project was completed due to the invalidity of the original strategic concept by that date.

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