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The Common Room / Re: My Grandads RAF Service
« on: Today at 02:24 »No WW2 service records have been destroyed. Maybe you are thinking of the large quantity of WW1 Army records which were destroyed by fire during WW2.
I helped my Dad to obtain his RAF service record from the MoD a number of years ago, and although he enlisted a few years after WW2 I was surprised that it was just a typed summary as the original documents had been destroyed. The covering letter from Air Command said this:
"Enclosed is a copy of your RAF Form 543 - Airman's Record of Service. Please note, the Form 543 was designed as a basic administrative aid to assist the personal administrators and it was not intended as a biographical document.
All other documentation has been destroyed in accordance with the MOD's Document Retention Policy".
They were also unable to locate his medical records and again cited the document retention policies.
Form 543 did give a summary of his unit and movements, but a lot of it looks like gibberish. Fortunately Dad remembered exactly where he'd been and when, as otherwise I wouldn't have made head nor tail of much of it!