Service records – and in particular the army and navy ones – can provide a lot of information, providing a real insight into the life of a particular soldier, sailor or pilot. The documentation for those serving in the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service and, after 1st April 1918, Royal Air Force, however, is less detailed, however, and it is often a challenge to determine where and how they served.
More than half of the RAF deaths I’ve researched were as a result of flying accidents, but the service papers for those personnel tell you nothing about the crashes themselves. There will often be a newspaper report about the incident, mainly because of the young man’s standing in the local community (pilots generally held the rank of Second Lieutenant or above, a commission that was often attached to their family connections).
The Royal Air Force themselves, however, have an archive of casualty cards holding details of incidents where servicemen were killed. Digitised and searchable, these are stored in the RAF Museum Story Vault – a resource that, as my research has extended beyond Somerset, has become increasingly useful.
The site allows you to search by surname, and includes a good insight into the incident that caused the fatality. The RAF produced a card for every casualty, and this information helps to cross-reference and match up the people concerned.
Individual casualty cards provide the serviceman’s name, rank regiment and squadron. They also record the date and location of the crash, along with the aircraft type, including its serial number and engine time. They confirm if anybody else was in the plane at the time of the crash, and what happened to them. The cards may also include hand-written comments summarising the findings of any inquest: this is not the case in every instance, but can provide an objective view of the crash, compared to the more salacious stance of contemporary newspapers.
The site allows you to hover over the image of the casualty card to see a legible version, and you can download the original for a nominal fee. This may not be needed, however, as the information is also summarised separately on the serviceman’s page. The RAF Museum Story Vault is a great resource, providing details about the death of a cadet, pilot or mechanic. I’ve found it a useful objective companion to the more salacious reporting of the newspapers of the time.
Death and Service 