Military Chat

RAF Bomber Command WW2:

RAF BOMBER COMMAND IN WW2
This website tells the story of the Royal Air Force's bomber aircrews, airmen and airwomen and their contribution to victory in the Second World War (WW2) ...

www.rafbombercommand.co.uk/ - 4k - Similar

Edit:
1. Service records
The National Archives does not hold service records if the officer served after 1922 or the airman or woman served after 1924. The records are still held by the Ministry of Defence. Ex-servicemen and next-of-kin may obtain brief details; write to:

RAF Disclosures, Room 221b, Trenchard Hall, RAF Cranwell, Sleaford, Lincs, NG34 8HB.

Another site for promotions etc:

Flight magazine archive section
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/index.html

Many war diaries are kept at either Kew or the Imperial War Museum, but some are still held within the regimental archives of the relevant regiment, so do not know if those will be released.

When I sent off for my dads army records (as mentioned above) I also got some of his Home Guard records as there was a cross over, between Home Guard, Territorial Army and his National Service.

Service records for those who served after WW1 but not including WW2 (not sure of cut off date) should be available at the National Archives (and possibly online) relatively soon (don't know when, yet!).

I believe Home Guard records for WW2 will also be released "soon".

Most WW1 British Army War Diaries aren't online, although a lot are. I'm told all will be online by next year.

Thank you for adding useful information :-)

www.britains-smallwars.com

A very good site.....

Copy of post, originally by Janey Canuck, made 2/6/11 23:42
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PP, as I understand it, the release date for most of those inter-war records has not been reached yet. My grfather stayed in the military after WWI to about 1925, and I'm patiently waiting.


Many men born in the UK enrolled in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in WWI.

You can search those records here:

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/cef/001042-100.01-e.php

For most, the original enrolment form can be seen. It shows date and place of birth, occupation and address, and name and address of next of kin (wife, if married, mother, if living, sometimes sister or brother -- the NOK will often be in the UK).

This is also useful if there is a marriage in England around the time of WWI and the groom can't be identified -- he may have come from Canada in the Cdn military.

The Cdn counterpart of the CWGC site is the Canadian Virtual War Memorial:

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/sub.cfm?source=collections/virtualmem

Sometimes there will be different details there, and also the public is invited to submit photographs to be included in the record there. As well, the ornate pages from the Books of Remembrance can be downloaded and printed (linked from the casualty records).

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If you go to the CEF search URL in Janey's post, there's a search help link there with a link

"How to order a copy of a complete service file"

The cost is postage, plus a per page copying cost (with a discount for OAPs).


Another link is "War Diaries of the First World War"
Once you've gotten his or her service record, so know which unit they're in, you can look up the day to day activities of that unit. Officers will be mentioned by name, but rarely will "other ranks" be named.

Most WDs are digitized and online (also true of Oz AIF WDs).

Rather than a useful site a useful bit of information:

It is harder to find records for those who served between WW1 & WW2, for some reason these records are very hit and miss, mostly miss.

And having contacted Glasgow, it is not necessarily down to the WW2 bombing which left us with very fragmented WW1 records.

EDIT: As with most records they can be obtained by Next of Kin & as my grandfathers only living descendant I am entitled to access to those records (as my OH is able to access his fathers army records from the 60's). But Glasgow have told me that his records have either been lost or misfiled. And this was not that long ago. I also recently obtained my late fathers army records from just after WW2, he served 1946-1950.

World War II RAF

Many men volunteered and joined up before war broke out in September 1939. Worth looking at RAFVR:

Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve - Wikipedia, the free ...
The British Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) consists of a number of groupings of individual military reservists for the management and operation ...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force_Volunteer_Reser...

RAF:
military-genealogy.forcesreunited.org.uk/3704/RAF

The London Gazette is useful for tracing promotions during WW2

Many of the Squadrons have their own websites. Just enter the name into your search engine.

thanks for the info, bookmarked for later use.

You might also like to try

AIF Project and
Mapping our Anzacs

if you are searching for Australian War Service information.

- for new readers.

- for new readers

http://www.militaryandfamilyresearch.co.uk/index.htm

http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/contact/obtaining-royal-navy-service-records-and/

The War Graves Photographic Project which has photographs of war graves and if no grave is present then a set of photographs of the inscription on the appropriate memorial.

Photographs may be e-mailed or sent hard copy as required.

Easy to use search available on site.

http://www.twgpp.org/

You're welcome :-)




http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/

Thank you for a very informative thread

Compliments of Hawkwind.

I recently obtained my late father's War Medal. You contact the ministry of Defence Medals Office. Here is the weblink

http://www.mod.uk/defenceinternet/defencefor/veterans/medals/

On there you can download the necessary forms to apply for any unclaimed medals.


Add

Thank you, cuz :-)