DNA parentage possibilities

[Lochnagar]

On behalf of my (half) sister I am endeavouring to to track down her father, or at least a name. Let me just call him AA for want of a reference. Through the DNA Heritage site we managed to find someone with a high DNA count who was a great help. We got information which took us back 3 generations to a time when (AA) age wise, was a possibility. However there was no way of finding out if AA and our mother ever crossed paths. If they did it would have had to be between June and August 1941 Our mother came from the Aberdeen area, (and to our knowledge never left ). AA was from the Airdrie/ Lanark area. I'm treading warily here by not posting names. I have investigated his family but he had only one brother who was older and produced a family who were static in the Lanark area.  There seems to be other threads from different people, who one way or another have ancestors with AA’s surname, and possibly links. The DNA percentage count between AA’s gt grandson and my sister was 7.5%. Given that a recently discovered niece shares 12.5%, on our mother’s side, this seems to indicate that an ancestor 3 generations back could have easily have had 50% DNA.
AA was in the Army during WW2 but without access to his records, I cannot even guess if he was ever in the North East of Scotland. I am led to believe I can access these Army records 115 years after his birth. That would be next year.
So any suggestions as to how we could proceed given that the few tenuous links we have garnered from the DNA Heritage site seem to dry up as soon as difficult questions are asked.

[Cell]

I am led to believe I can access these Army records 115 years after his birth. That would be next year.
So any suggestions as to how we could proceed given that the few tenuous links we have garnered from the DNA Heritage site

Hi,
You can apply  for his WW11  records before  that  after 116 yrs/ 115  birth date ,  if you don't want to wait until next year to apply for them..
All you need to do is  provide them with  his death cert on the application  - whilst  over 116 /115 years they presume the person is deceased , so no need to provide them with a  death cert. 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/request-records-of-deceased-service-personnel

It will take months for them to  provide you  with his  record though, possibly a year's wait  , as they are dealing with a  massive backlog at the moment . It will probably be the same  next year too , so whenever you apply,  this year or next year, be prepared  to wait  months on end  after you submit  your application.

I  recently  applied for my husband's  grandfather and another relative of mine and am waiting for their records. Ive paid for one of them  , and am still waiting ( the other I still waiting for the link to pay)  , this below is what  their current  estimates are ( copied and pasted from the last emails   sent by them to me,  dated August just gone )..:
So goodness knows how long it currently takes and I may  have a very long wait  to go ( I did my own grandfathers   a while back , well over a year ago  in feb last year,  and it only took a couple of months  waiting time back then . I received his records from them pretty quickly compared to the now current waiting times)

"this department is currently handling an exceptionally high volume of cases with around 12,000 active requests, and our current average timeline for records to be sent is ten to twelve months. "

Kind regards 

 Ps
They will  also accept a war death  record from the CWGC   if  they died  in action, as one of mine that I am currently waiting for  his records  from them , his  birth was way under 116 year's, he was born in 1923  , but  he died in action  . I provided them the link to the cwgc record  and  didn't  need to provide them with an official   death cert from the GRO

I see  they have moved the bar of birth  dates again -  it  says  this when you go through the portal/ online  application form , see my  attached screenshot   ( surely  it is a typo ?  ) :
" You do not need to send a copy of a death certificate if the person:
was born before 1 January 1907"

My grandfather was born  7 months after  that Jan 1907  date   and I did not provide  a death cert for him ,Which was over a year ago , as his fell outside their then cut off dates for providing a death cert .

Anyway, you can certainly apply  for his  records  if  you  have a  death cert for him , or of course wait  until  a required  time after his birth  if you don't want to  purchase his death cert, or if you can't find one.
 Kind regards 

[4b2]

On behalf of my (half) sister I am endeavouring to to track down her father, or at least a name. Let me just call him AA for want of a reference. Through the DNA Heritage

What website? It doesn't appear there is a DNA Heritage site. There is MyHeritage, but I think only 23AndMe lists relationships as a percentage as you have don.

The most economical way of approaching DNA testing for genealogy is to do a test with Ancestry and 23AndMe (as these companies don't support uploading DNA from other companies). Then upload your DNA data from Ancestry or 23AndMe to FamilyTreeDNA and MyHeritage.

Ancestry has by far the largest number of tests, at something like 30 million, MyHeritage is around 7 million. I don't roughly know the others. Wherever you have uploaded to you seem to have good matches. But you may get more with other sites.

I don't follow exactly the predicament, but if you think your half-sister has a half-niece match at 12.5% shared, then this sounds to be correct. But as you probably know, the amounts shared can be ambiguous.

To get a better idea, put all the known DNA matches that relate on this line into this site - https://dnapainter.com/tools/probability

Given you have two very close relatives it should be able to give you a very narrow range of possible relationships.

N.B. you will need to convert the % shared to cM. You can do that using this tool - https://dnapainter.com/tools/sharedcmv4 - Press {or enter %} and it will give you the cM above. Enter any DNA relatives on the relevant line 40cM and above.

Further N.B. - that tool won't work properly if you are taking more distant results from 23AndMe, FamilyTreeDNA or MyHeritage. It's designed for cM from Ancestry. If you don't have DNA matches from ancestry, don't use matches below 200cM.

Brief primer on that tool - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfDJPzrJP-E

[Biggles50]

Not all service records survived so do be aware that this might be the case for AA.

I applied for WW1 service records for both a Grandfather and a Great Grandfather and in both cases they returned that records were not available.

[Lochnagar]

Thanks for those who replied with advice, yes it was My Heritage DNA  and I have applied through MOD for his records, so we can get an idea of his movements. Maybe a long shot but I would love to solve this mystery for my sister's sake.