RAF Awards Database (04 July 2021: M-in-D Update)

**Jagan** · 11th February 2020, 23:59

This is the second installment of the Awards Database that had been in the works for some time.

http://www.rafcommands.com/database/awards/ or more specifically http://www.rafcommands.com/database/...php?qaward=DFC

You will find all the entries for 20,887 DFC Awards - Citations, and Links to the original gazette issues. easily searchable via the query.. This DB was something I always wanted to do - for years since LG had their issues available. Thanks to the some of the previous work and coding effort, and scraping of London Gazette website, and additional verification from various ref books, the DFC DB is now complete.

Big shout out to Malcolm Barrass for contributing to the grunt work along with me in scraping the Citations and Notifications off the 500 odd LG issues.

At last count, 6180 DFC awards have citations and 14707 DFC awards are "Notification Only". Eitherway all are linked to the original Gazettes. Note that since this depends on how the LG was OCR-ed in the first place the spelling errors and character errors from the GAzette have been replicated in the database. At best use the DB to locate the original gazette links.

Since the Award DB is linked to all our other DBs - CWGC, aircraft, LGindex - you will find entries now a bit more enriched. eg.. Leonard Cheshire - http://www.rafcommands.com/database/...qname=CHESHIRE or Guy GIBSON http://www.rafcommands.com/database/...8&qname=GIBSON

**wwrsimon** · 12th February 2020, 11:01

A great piece of work Jagan and Malcolm - many thanks indeed.

Regards

Simon

**Andy Fletcher** · 12th February 2020, 11:20

Great resource, many thanks to all involved in putting it together.

Best Regards

Andy Fletcher

**PeteS** · 12th February 2020, 17:17

SUPERB piece of work guys ! thank you

**paulmcmillan** · 12th February 2020, 18:11

Yes great resource well done guys this site is becoming the Ancestry of RAF research !

**Tom Semenza** · 14th February 2020, 15:52

May I add my thanks. This is an extremely useful data base. Any plans to add the DFM and/or MID in the future?

Regards,
Tom

**Jagan** · 15th February 2020, 04:22

Originally Posted by Tom Semenza

May I add my thanks. This is an extremely useful data base. Any plans to add the DFM and/or MID in the future?

Regards,
Tom

Yes both on the cards as well. we will get them in and find a way to link the airmen numbers to the officer numbers where applicable.

**Jagan** · 16th February 2020, 00:27

Regarding the query able M-i-D DB.. to be honest. the OCR-ed file out of LG will require some months of work

A first pass could salvage only about 75% of the entries that being said, I have loaded whatever files i have into the DB.

33628

There are over 43,000 M-i-D to the Air Forces in WW2.. so this covers about 75% of the awards.

Again, spelling mistakes, and other errors have crept in - not all ranks are available in the DB.

The M-i-Ds are limited to roughly about 50 issues , so it was a bit easier to scrape - but still 44,000 lines of entries is a bit too much to clean up - so for now this temporary update should suffice....

LG Issue	Date	No of M-i-Ds
LG34795	1940-02-20	83
LG34893	1940-07-11	123
LG35029	1941-01-01	1257
LG35107	1941-03-17	621
LG35284	1941-09-24	1367
LG35586	1942-06-11	2004
LG35827	1942-12-18	14
LG35841	1943-01-01	3190
LG35923	1943-03-02	3
LG35954	1943-03-26	12
LG35989	1943-04-23	22
LG36033	1943-06-02	3080
LG36034	1943-06-02	25
LG36131	1943-08-13	16
LG36175	1943-09-17	755
LG36196	1943-10-05	4
LG36215	1943-10-19	11
LG36285	1943-12-14	15
LG36287	1943-12-16	43
LG36310	1944-01-01	19
LG36329	1944-01-14	5273
LG36392	1944-02-22	21
LG36418	1944-03-10	43
LG36500	1944-05-05	14
LG36544	1944-06-08	4987
LG36545	1944-06-08	23
LG36566	1944-06-16	103
LG36777	1944-11-03	22
LG36793	1944-11-13	40
LG36866	1945-01-01	6511
LG36867	1945-01-01	10
LG36975	1945-03-09	95
LG36980	1945-03-13	22
LG37119	1945-06-14	6367
LG37120	1945-06-14	77
LG37221	1945-08-14	33
LG37405	1945-12-28	32
LG37407	1946-01-01	6486
LG37408	1946-01-01	60
LG37427	1946-01-01	4
LG37447	1946-01-29	28
LG37456	1946-02-05	55
LG37479	1946-02-22	88
LG37482	1946-02-26	18
LG37489	1946-03-05	42
LG37508	1946-03-22	173
LG37598	1946-06-13	391
LG37619	1946-06-21	7
LG37625	1946-06-25	211
LG37744	1946-10-01	255
Grand Total		44155

**Jagan** · 24th February 2020, 23:51

Added the Distinguished Flying Medals - Again thanks to Malcolm for lending a hand.

	Victoria Cross	30
	Distinguished Service Order	1222
	Distinguished Flying Cross	20889
	Distinguished Flying Medal	6483
	Mentioned in Despatches	33708

1487 have Citations attached
4996 are Notification Only awards

The Database has also been updated that clicking on DFM Awardee's service number will bring up all the awards including ones he got as an officer with a different service number. The search is not perfect and in some cases with common name may generate errors, but it works 95% of the time.

I might end up adding GCs and MCs.. they are only a handful and all of them have interesting citations to go with..