[Frank Olynyk]

To expand on what Rich has said. A deck log has two kinds of pages. Each day has one "columnar sheet", which has hourly data on the ship: average revolutions of the screws, distance travelled (by revs and by log), course, wind direction and force, barometric pressure, air temperature wet and dry bulb, water temperature at induction, weather code, clouds, visibility, ship's position (at 0800, 1200 and 2000; sometimes only 1200), fuel and water status. A lot of detail. Then several pages, initially blank, filled in by the Officers of the Deck, for each watch. These pages have two types of entries: Administrative matters, and Operational matters. Administrative matters are things like people leaving or going aboard ship, court martials (few details) and captain's mast with their results, injuries and deaths aboard ship. Operational matters are ship movements (change of course and speed) for each occurrence, drills and exercises, gun firings, aircraft launchings and landings (but usually only the number of aircraft, and times), damage, aircraft losses at the boat and sometimes in combat.

A lot of detail. Which is why the pages are about 12 by 15 inches. The deck logs for the period 1941 to 1950 are in over 10,000 boxes. Enterprise's deck log is in 11 boxes. I doubt that the deck logs will end up on Fold3, although NARA has started putting some of them online. War Diaries and submarine patrol reports are typically in Fold3.

A War Diary is an extract (ie, not all) of the operational matters in the deck log.

In addition to the above, each ship could prepare an Action Report covering a period of time in combat. This has combat details beyond those found in a deck log. There are over 1700 boxes of Action Reports.

Enjoy!

Frank.