The Genealogist: New RAF Operations Book Records 6th February 2020

This was was mention on a family history list earlier.

New RAF Operations Book Records 6th February 2020

In a release of over half a million records, this is the first batch of RAF Operations Records Books (ORBs) to join our ever-expanding military records collection. This is the first time that these RAF records are fully searchable by name, aircraft, location and many other fields, making it easier to find your aviation ancestors.

Sure most are aware but the Canadians have quite a bit online. Files of WWII service war dead, war diaries and ORBs

www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-...es/introduction.aspx

Having just spent £7.00 on two very poor scan copies of ORBs this sounds interesting, although £44.95, may not be that cost effective as I normally spend about approx £60 a year on ORB copies.

It is not made clear what units are available of if it is only Squadrons and you wonder how TNA benefits. The one intriguing part is the searchable bit and if this is from transcribed versions it would be most welcome to avoid the 98% of pages that have nothing of interest to me. However if it is based on existing scan them I doubt it would be any use as the majority of scans are of poor quality and some completely unreadable, although I have noticed that some squadrons have higher quality versions judging by the greater intrusion by the TNA logo.

If anyone has taken the plunge can they report back on quality and ease of use?

The original Canadian based ORBs were not searchable online but most were of good quality but some researchers had published indexes. Not sure about the above link to Canadian archives as that is not the source I have been using.

Most genealogy sites have a pay per view option but I don't think they do.

You sometimes find that when a set of records on one site then it will appear on others later.

I had never heard of this one so it does not seem to be one of then "big players", might mean TNA will make available to others (at a price).

That's the one. The 6 Group ORB contained a lot of useful stuff and I think I have gone through most of the UK based ORBs.

It has or at least a copy has. This applies to all the 400 series RCAF Squadron records and Base records, all of which are available in Canada and Kew. The 6 Group only covers the incarnation of 6 Group from October 1942 to 1945 and not the earlier version(s) the previous one becoming 91 Group in May 1942 and was a training group.

I have long thought that there are, in some cases two versions of some unit ORBs covering the same period and it is clear that some 540s were typed up after the war either from a damaged copy or from hand written diaries which were probably the basis of the 540 anyway.

I did have the instructions for completing 540s somewhere but I have no idea where I would have filed them. Perhaps I should check the RAF Administration Manual, of which I have two copies.