Monday, 30 June 2014

FindmyPast launches RAF and RFC records

FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has released 450,000 Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force service records in partnership with The National Archives, including 342,000 Airmen’s records never seen online before.

The majority of records in this collection date from 1912 with the formation of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and include men who continued to serve in the RAF up until 1939. The earliest records date from 1899 with the Royal Engineers Balloon Service in the Boer War.

The records, comprising National Archives series AIR 76 (Officers’ service records) and AIR 79 (Airmen’s records) contain information about an individual’s peacetime and military career, as well as his physical description, religious denomination and family status. Next of kin are often mentioned and this too has been fully indexed and is easily searchable.

The collection is searchable at http://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-Records/british-royal-air-force-airmens-service-records-1912-1939?_ga=1.77632980.1175916522.1363352244

(With thanks to Alex Cox)

Chris

Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And FindmyPast - please reinstate the original Scottish census citations on your new site.

1 comment:

  1. Yes very good, but as per usual recently with FMP, they've messed up again, and reduced the power of the search facility and reduced the value of those records.

    Because the enlisted men's records all contain service numbers, and the numbers are displayed in one of the columns on the search results page, but the sort order of the service numbers on the search results page can't be changed, nor can one search for a specific range of numbers, oh dear, flouted common sense and got it wrong again.

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