The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire – DB Update.

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is one of the most confusing decorations that a non-british person would encounter who is not familiar with the system.  Divided into five classes, GBE, KBE (or DBE), CBE, OBE and MBE, with a sixth category of British Empire Medal for non-officers,  nearly 6000+ RAF and Commonwealth Air Force personnel were decorated during the Second World War.

The current Awards Database on this site now incorporates the names of the recipients, citations and links to the original Gazette issues.  There are roughly 300 entries in BEM category that still need to be checked for Notification vs Citation details, but in the interest of completion the data can be found here.

VC : 30	GC : 27	GBE(M) : 4	KBE(M) : 44	DBE(M) : 3	CBE(M) : 548	DSO : 1222	OBE(M) : 1422	MBE(M) : 2338
DFC : 20927	MC : 85	AFC : 2481	CGM(F) : 107	BEM(M) : 2320	DFM : 6484	MM : 131	AFM : 292	MiD : 33708