Hi,i had a similar experience while trying to find my fathers army records.my father like a lot of men never spoke of his time during the war and we were more or less discouraged to ask,this resulted in when i was filling out the application form i was at a loss as i didn't know his army number nor even which regiment he was in so i applied with his D.O.B. i sent the form off along with the fee,and a few weeks later i recieved a letter from the m.o.d. saying there was no match for my dads name and D.O.B. i rang the records office in glasgow and was told they had done a search and there was no record of my father being in the army during ww2,and more or less that was the end of the matter.
i pushed the issue a bit further and asked could they look at any other record that had the same name and date of birth but different year of birth,there was one match but unfortunately it wasn't the record i was after. i took things a bit further again as i knew for certain my dad served in the army,i got the phone number for a higher department in the records dept and spoke to a very helpful lady,i asked her if she could look at some records a few days before and a few days after my dads d.o.b.(which should have been done in the first place ) and she rang me back within an hour and asked who my dads next of kin was,when i told her this,she confirmed she had found my dads records. there was a days discrepancy in my dads d.o.b. and the date on his enlistment papers.
apologies for the long winded answer,but the m.o.d. will only look at the date you put on your application and if there is no match they'll send back your application,so it might be worth your while to push for a further search as there could be a clerical error as in my dads enlistment papers.