First World War Archive Shared Online by Museum

The Royal Air Force Museum, has today launched a new website, casualtyforms.org, which enables online visitors to explore the Casualty Forms of officers of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force who served on the Western Front and in the Middle East during the First World War.

I had a search of the Casualty Forms and found one of my Peer relatives - Harold Emerson Peer, illegitimate son of Alberta Peer. He was born in 1894 in Elgin County Ontario Canada and I never knew what happened to him. I used the Advanced Search with Peer as the surname and Canadian in the Regiment field to find any Canadians.

Funding was secured through Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and The National Lottery Heritage Fund to conserve the collection. After digitisation, over a hundred of the Museum’s dedicated, online volunteers transcribed the information in the forms, making them available to search.

The RAF Museum also holds digitised First World War Casualty Cards at rafmuseumstoryvault.com



  

Finding an Ancestor in WW1 RAF Service Records Online

The Royal Air Force (RAF) was the world's first independent military air arm and by the end of the First World War it had become the largest.

Now you can search and download First World War service records of RAF officers. This database is of interest to Canadians whose ancestor may have enlisted in WW1 as a pilot. Canada did not have its own Air Force and any individual wishing to join the Air Force had to join the RAF. 

Approximately one-quarter of the aircrew in British Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons were Canadian. A large RAF training establishment operated in Canada to produce new aircrew.

The collection contains records for over 99,000 individuals and is searchable by first name, last name and date of birth.

Searching the indexes is free but to obtain full details a small fee is charged by the National Archives UK. I tried this database with a generic search for my PEER ancestors. Because I search for all PEER individuals in North America, it's always of interest to me to see if one of them can be found in any new database online.

My search gave me two results for PEER. In order to view the scans of their service records I saw that it would cost me 3.50L for each man (that converts to $11.00 Canadian) The website stated each man's records consisted of 3 pages. I added both to my Shopping Cart and then made the purchase. This is what I love about ordering from the National Archives UK website - after entering my Credit Card details, I was given an immediate link to download the service records. The link is good for 28 days.

As is common with Military Service Records you never know what you're going to get. Some are full of information, others are not.

The Service Record I downloaded for Walter James Peer gave his name, date of birth, next-of-kin in Canada, address in Canada and place of employment. There wasn't much recorded in the section for his whereabouts throughout the War.


The second record for Harold Emerson Peer had a full page of entries for his movements throughout his time in the RAF but no date of birth, no next of kin and no location in Canada. For me that $11.00 was well worth it as I pursue my genealogy with the goal of obtaining as much detail as possible about every individual in my database.

One caveat - when the National Archives UK website states there are x number of pages in a set of records, be aware that the first page is a Title Page with no information on the person involved.