The National Archives of Australia has over 1 million records documenting the service of Australian men and women during World War II. These include service records for the Army, the Royal Australian Air Force and the Royal Australian Navy.
Over the past 15 years the NAA has digitised more than 200,000 WWII records and made them available to view online through RecordSearch, and in 2019 the Australian Government announced funding of $10 million to help digitise the remaining 850,000 records.
This project was planned to take place over 4 years, with work starting in July 2019. Since is commenced the NAA has digitised 200,000 additional records, with over 3 million pages made available online.
Large-scale digitisation of the remaining WWII service records began in October 2020.
Army records
Records are being digitised by place of enlistment.
- Citizen Military Forces personnel service records (Series B884) – digitisation began in October 2020
- Second Australian Imperial Force personnel dossiers (Series B883) – digitisation due to begin mid-2022
Air Force records
Records are being digitised alphabetically by surname (Series A9300) and by service number (Series A9301).
- Royal Australian Air Force Non-Commissioned Officers and other ranks personnel files (Series A9301) – digitisation began in July 2019
- Royal Australian Air Force Officers personnel files (Series A9300) – digitisation began July 2021
Batches of records in these series will be temporarily unavailable to the public while they are being digitised. As records are digitised, the digital copies will be added to RecordSearch and made available free of charge.
The table below provides specific updates on the progress of records being digitised. The NAA updates this table regularly as work progresses.
| Series | Batch | Progress |
| B884 | Northern Territory Tasmania Western Australia | Completed |
| B884 | South Australia Queensland New South Wales Victoria | In progress |
| B884 | Papua New Guinea | Early 2022 |
| A9300 | AARONS to PEAD | In progress |
| A9300 | ABBOTT to ZUCKER | In progress |
| A9301 | Service number 1183 to 1495 Service number 14448 to 21142 | Completed |
| A9301 | Service number 21889 to 37057 Service number 21090 to 27054 Service number 60141 to 90337 | In progress |
| B883 | All states | Mid-2022 |
So take a look at the National Archives of Australia and see if there is new information available for you about your WW2 Australian ancestors.
No comments:
Post a Comment