Using RAAF records to find your family’s military stories

Ancestry ProGenealogist, Simon Pearce provides some of his top tips for using Australia, Royal Australian Air Force Personnel Files 1921-1948 in your search to piece together your family’s military stories.  It is known that military files can be particularly lengthy, however, incredibly rewarding. When working through the below tips and viewing a service record, be sure to make use of the filmstrip button at the bottom of your screen to jump to different pages – you might even stumble across a photograph of your service person if you are lucky.

There are many useful pages within a RAAF service record, but one of the most important being the ‘Personal Record of Service – Airmen’, the term airmen or airwomen relating to male and female personnel who were not officers. Key sections to look out for include:

1. The ‘Postings’ and ‘Attachments’ sections detail the units and squadrons the person served with, and will allow you to piece together a timeline of their service. You can then turn your attention to the Operations Record Books, essentially a day-to-day diary of a squadron or unit’s activities, to learn more about their wartime experience. Many of the units are recorded in shorthand so you may need to search online for the full name. See this site for a list of handy abbreviations.

2. The ‘Movements and Miscellaneous Items’ section is also useful in terms of tracking an airmen or airwomen’s movements and can indicate when they were posted overseas, noting their dates of embarking and disembarking, adding further detail to their story. You could even add the embarking and disembarking dates to the person within your Ancestry tree.

3. ‘Musterings’ (section 17) and ‘Promotions, Reclassifications, Reductions and Reversions’ (section 18).

4. And finally, section 16 relates to the medals and awards the individual was entitled to. If the person did not claim their medals then designated family members can apply for the medals. See the Department of Defence guide on applying for medals.

Now, don’t forget about the ‘Airman’s Record Sheet’ – it is a useful page for piecing together an individual’s movements, particularly for overseas service…

And for officers it is a similar process, only the page is named ‘Personal Record of Service – Officers’ and the sections are organised slightly differently. The ‘Rank’ section will help you understand their ranks and promotions and the ‘Postings’ section will help you to track their movements.

 

Why don’t you explore the stories of your ancestors who may have served and sacrificed in conflicts through history? There could be more to your story. Piece it together with a 14-day Free Trial at Ancestry.com.au.