Royal Air Force Lists (Downloadable Online from Scotland Archives)

[Jagan]

Folks, I havent noticed this posted online - and my apologies if I missed such a post, but I found that the National Library of Scotland had uploaded Several Air Force Lists dating from 1919 , and 1938 - 1945.

Amazing reasearch potential and the PDF downloads are huge (eg 100+MB for a 1500 pg AF list)

http://www20.us.archive.org/search.p...licdate&page=1

PS: Dont break the server.. :)

Updated:

http://archive.org/search.php?query=... t=-publicdate

[Luc Vervoort]

Hi Jagan,

Thanks for the link.

Great files !

best regards from Belgium

Luc

[Pierre Renier]

Hi Jagan

Fantastic link!

Several (dozen) files, a couple of hours and 3.2Gb of data later now have an amazing database for research. Many thanks for a great link.

I see that by clicking on the tab marked Related Creators - Great Britain. Ministry of Defence, similar documents have been scanned for the Navy Lists and Army List for the same time frame. Hopefully can use these to track personnel seconded from the other services to the RAF.

It might be useful for Ross to make this a sticky as family genealogists would have a field day looking at these.

Again many thanks for a great link

Pierre

[dennis_burke]

Are there 'confidential' lists in the national Archvies that show what unti an officer was with or am I thinking silly things?

I believe that the lists that are available online now at the above links show graduation dates and seniority for the most part.

I have used them briefly this week where I have only got a surname and rank and seen how many of that surname there were at that time, no use for Smiths or Jones I might add!!

So, is there similar lists that gives units or am I imagining things?

[Ross_McNeill]

Hi Dennis,

Confidential Lists are available in paper format in the document reading room via the order system.

May 1939 continues the Pre 1939 system of showing where serving for all officers.

However..

From 1940 it changes to show only those in staff positions and omits the general pilot and aircrew.

But

Included in the normal Air Force Lists from 1940 is the Officer's service number.

Swings and roundabouts.

A better place to look is the Group/Command ORBs to see if POR are recorded in the Standing/Monthly Orders.

http://www.rafcommands.com/forum/showthread.php?11859-POR-Personnel-Occurance-Report-Summary

Regards
Ross

[dennis_burke]

As I thought, if such a thing existed sure we would have no hobby!!

[dennis_burke]

Not sure the first link in post #1 above still works as it did, see if this lasts longer

http://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Anlsairforcelists&sort=-publicdate

[tomdocherty72]

I cannot get this to work. Is there an error in your link? I have tried going directly to the NLS website and searching but it only comes up with a few Air Force Lists which can only be accessed at the library itself. Help!

[dennis_burke]

Which of us is that directed at? The link I posted above works fine for me at home and at work.

Google for archive.com air force lists

the very first result I get today has a link in the center of page, thrid red topped box down, This Just In (more)

Click on that and it brings you to the link I pasted above last week.

http://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Anlsairforcelists&sort=-publicdate