WIREDGOV

The first tranche of Ministry of Defence (MOD) service personnel records recently (05 April 2022) made our catalogue and was made available for ordering. These are the first of 9.7 million records that will be transferred from MOD over a six-year period.

The records are those in series WO 420 and relate to the Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers regiment. They relate to service personnel with a date of birth greater than 115 years.

Service records are a record of an individual’s time in the military. The information contained in the record typically consists of personal information and interactions between the individual and the part of the armed forces they served with such as record of service, disciplinary and conduct sheets, service postings and information captured when they first signed up.

In February 2021, the MOD began the transfer of historic service personnel records to The National Archives and since then staff have been preparing the records for access. This work is continuing and we will provide updates when more records are available.

Currently, documents can only be viewed when ordered in advance (4 days) which allows us to ensure the preparation of the records before viewing and allows us to monitor usage and popularity which in turn will enable us to react to researcher requirements.

Advice on how to access records can be found here.