28 July 2017

Ancestry adds UK, Royal Air Force Airmen Records, 1918-1940

This collection, taken from AIR 79 at The (UK) National Archives comprises 616,118 partially transcribed records of "Airmen serving in the Royal Air Force during the years 1918 up to, and including, 1940."
Transcribed information is typically: name, gender, age, birth date. birth place, service date, service number, mother (name), next of kin (name), relation to airman.
There are links to original images, available with a subscription to Ancestry's FOLD 3 website. These are two page service files; those I examined showed only service into the early 1920s.
Many of those included were not born in the UK. An exact search for born in Ontario, Canada gave 523 hits, although 12 of the first 20 were not!  There were sex with birth place Ottawa: Langford James Gannon (not Cannon as transcribed), Raoul Lawrence Esmonde, Maynard Stansfield (not Stausfield as transcribed) Fellowes, John Paul Laframboise, William Ernest Short, and Samuel Le Roy Switzer.

Other military sites worth checking for prior service of these men are the CEF files from Library and Archives Canada, and the Royal Flying Corps, prior to the formation of the RAF, www.airhistory.org.uk/rfc/home.html/.


No comments: