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.
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