Investigating aircraft crash sites

Thanks everyone – that’s really helpful. CRO are a new direction!

Lifeboat records can help. Civil defence records may exist, such as when i looked in filing cabinets at the Flowers Hill bunker Bristol during duty cover for the firemans strike. There were many uncensored photo prints of raid damage and some air craft incidents. hope the records got saved or perhaps are still in the bunker. The bunker had been used for exercises into the seventies.

[QUOTE=OneEighthBit;1284069] I don’t think they allow photography of documents like the PRO do QUOTE]

Me and Wellington285 took our digital slr`s with macro lenses and were allowed to take pictures of all we wanted (staff said it was the 1st time that had been tried) prints came out great. We asaked 1st though. Also for Research, there assistant (very helpfull) would get any book they had from there vast catalogue for us to go through.

As stated above, just book an appointment with the Research Department (details on the RAF Museum website) and you can sit in their reading room and go through stuff.

Staff were very helpful when I was there although a little busy at times as their main office is right next to the reading room so they had to keep popping in and out when they could.

The microfilm/fiche is linked to a printer so it’s a case of find the bit you want, hit the button and out pops a copy. Be warned though that if gets pricey if you get carried away! I don’t think they allow photography of documents like the PRO do and you do have to sign the usual copyright disclaimer as to what you’re can/can’t do with the copies.

Oh, and be warned, it can get REALLY warm in the reading room!

So anyone can go through the records or do you have to be in a group?

Hi
As far as i know anyone can go. There might be a minimum age limit.
G.

So anyone can go through the records or do you have to be in a group?

How does one go about accessing the microfiche records at Hendon?

Give Hendon a phonecall and make an appointment to visit their reading room. When you get there, a really helpful assistant will show you how to use the microfilm machine and you can even make photocopies just by pressing a button. Me and a mate went last month for the first time and found it easy to use.
Best Regards
G.

The Churches may have some records. Didn’t a lot of ARP Wardens also base themselves in Church Halls? (It wasn’t just in Dads Army!!)

Air Ministry Form 1180

Other useful sources are the Air Ministry Form 1180 cards which are held on microfiche at the RAF Museum in Hendon.

How does one go about accessing the microfiche records at Hendon?

Some of my thoughts:

…In the North West / Midlands Police reords seem to be non-existant. I have requested information from Cheshire, Derbyshire and South Yorkshire and non of them have any war time records. They are meant to be held at the County Records Office but when I contacted Derbyshire they didn’t have any and there is nothing on the Cheshrie CRO catalogue that looks likely….

I have found that to be the case with Nottinghamshire Police too. Nothing in the CRO catalogue for Nottinghamshire looks likely either.

…Only a handful of allied aircraft were reported in newspapers, they tended to be the one that crashed in built up areas. Usually though the censor wouldn’t allow mention of location. Even Luftwaffe crashes were censored to some degree. A piece about an He111 that was shot down close to here in 1941 didn’t say much about its location…

I was surprised to find that a newspaper report of one crash in Nottinghamshire (1943) involving a 25 Squadron Mosquito was not censored. It went as far as naming the street on which it crashed, but did not name the aircraft type, just referring to “an RAF plane” and went on to say that the 2 crew died.
Oddly enough, I can’t find any reference in the local archives to a 1941 crash involving a Wellington at Wilford, which just missed the village, nor to the two 30 OTU Wellingtons that crashed on the same night at opposite ends of the city; one in Arnold and one (again) at Wilford.

Like Alan says, the local archives can be very “hit and miss.”

(If a full investigation was held into a particular loss, wasn’t it noted on the Form 1180?)

Hi all

One source of information I am trying at the moment is the Civil defence records for Norfolk. I have e mailed the Norfolk County Council and it seems there was a diary kept so I will be going along to have a look.
I well let you know if it is of any use for crash research.

Andy

The AVIA 5/xx series of report are generally 2/4 pages prepared by the AIB, though only when requested to do so by the RAF so only a small proportion of aircraft have these reports and alsmot all for 1944 are missing. They were never depositied with the NA.

Also at Kew are Board of Trade / Court of Inquiry reports in the BT 217/xx and BT 233/xx series. These contain far more info but again are not comprehensive in their coverage. These also always have a copy of the AIB report so if you are researching an accident where there is an AVIA 5 and one of the BT series go for the BT report.

The MU records (in the RAF Misc units section AIR 29/xx) are very hit and miss coverage wise but can give some useful infromation about how they went about recovering aircraft. On the whole they only seem to report difficult recoveries.

In the North West / Midlands Police reords seem to be non-existant. I have requested information from Cheshire, Derbyshire and South Yorkshire and non of them have any war time records. They are meant to be held at the County Records Office but when I contacted Derbyshire they didn’t have any and there is nothing on the Cheshrie CRO catalogue that looks likely. In some areas I belive they are very comprehensive and useful.

Only a handful of allied aircraft were reported in newspapers, they tended to be the one that crashed in built up areas. Usually though the censor wouldn’t allow mention of location. Even Luftwaffe crashes were censored to some degree. A piece about an He111 that was shot down close to here in 1941 didn’t say much about its location.

Elliott, Hi,
Wartime Death Certificates will not – except in some circumstances – give you much information about the precise circumstances of the death. The precise medical causes may be given.
Post-War DCs of WW2 personalities (at least in England/Wales) show the details, and address, of the person informing the Registrar of the death. We have found, on a significant number of occasions, that these are often close relatives, and have (if you’re lucky!!) the deceased’s papers, log-book, medals, etc, etc.
War time archives are very variable. Some organisations or Local Authorities kept meticulous records and retained them in their archives. Others did not.
What is absolutely VITAL is that you come up against an Organisation, or Local Authority, Archivist or Historian who is interested! If you can get that then you are halfway there!
Some y’win – some y’lose!!!!
Good luck
Resmoroh

Other useful sources I’ve found are the Air Ministry Form 1180 cards which are held on microfiche at the RAF Museum in Hendon. There is also the AVIA 5/X series of documents at the National Archives which contain a number of accident reports.