Military Research

Some ideas to start you off

Until Mick Gray of Corby told me that military research was possible, I had not even considered this aspect of family history. I happened to mention something about my dad's cousin who had been killed in an aircrash in World War Two and he told me how to go about tracing an airman's service career. The quickest way to discover a lot of information is to write to the Ministry of Defence at Hayes (Army and Navy) or Innsworth (RAF). They will supply to the service person or their next of kin a service record which will give personal details, dates and units and information regarding medals or good conduct badges. There is a Ł20 non-returnable search fee per record. Note that 40% of World War One Army records were lost in the blitz.

Personal service records before 1914 are held at the PRO, Kew and are generally open to the public. Later ones have started to become available with the release of Classes WO 363 and WO 364. However, the medal rolls are all accessible and these will often provide some detail about a man's career. For the army, you can go into the Microfilm Reading Room at Kew and see the fiche covering the subject's surname and be shown an index card which is in rough alphabetical order. This will give details of campaign medals awarded, the man's service number and his unit(s). There may also be an indication of dates and theatres of war in which served. For more detailed information, please see "Army Service Records of the First World War" published by the PRO in November 1996.

The information from the medal index card can be used to order the medal roll (a bound volume) itself which lists the men of a given unit. This should list all regiments/units for each man but may well give no more than was on the index card. For the Royal Navy/Royal Marines etc, you can order the relevant piece directly after looking in the class list for the correct reference. The pieces are arranged according to the branch in which served and then by surname range. Again, you will find a man's number and where he was when awarded the medal. This may indicate a later ship or his death.

If you manage to find out, or already know a man's ship, squadron or battalion on a particular date, you can probably find out just what was going on all around him. The number of formerly "Secret" documents at Kew is enormous, so unless you are writing an entire regimental history, you do need to know the unit and a precise date or a range of dates in order to be sure your subject was there. If your subject died on active service in a World War, write with an SAE to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission - they will almost certainly provide a man's rank and unit at death as well as indicating where he died.

ROYAL NAVY The simplest item to research is the ship's log in ADM 51 or 53. This was meant to be for navigational purposes but very often contains many remarks and details of battles as well as telling you where the ship was. For the nineteenth century, ships' musters also survive, around ADM 36.

ROYAL AIR FORCE In class AIR 27, you will find microfilmed copies of squadron Operations Record Books. For each sortie made by a squadron, you should find a list of aircraft taking part with details of their flights and a list of each member of crew as well. There are also ORB's at Station, Wing and Group level, along with many summaries and reports at Command level.

ARMY Here, we need to use the "WO 95 Supplementary Finding Aid" on the shelf at Kew next to the WO 95 Class List, in order to find out with which Brigade and Division a battalion was serving. Then we can find the War Diaries. These are arranged firstly by theatre of war and then by Division (20,000 men); by Brigade (four battalions) and by battalion (1,000 men). At each level, you will find details of the orders under which the men fought and the actions in which they were involved. Often, you will find contemporary maps backing up the records. If not, there are plenty of 1:20,000 scale trench maps in WO 297 which you can use to trace what happened almost every step of the way.

This should be enough to start off an interest in military research. However, there is a lot more detail than can be given in this short article!