RAF Commands site databases

Discussion in 'The War In The Air' started by dp_burke, May 18, 2019.

  1. dp_burke

    dp_burke Junior Member

    The mods over on RAF Commands have done massive work last year to tie together CWGC, AIR81, ORBs, newspapers, bmd indexes and forum posts into an easy to search database.

    Well worth a search for whatever your searching for

    RAF CWGC War Dead Query
     
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  2. Jagan

    Jagan Junior Member

    Thanks Dennis for the plug.

    While several attempts have been made to put "Cause of Deaths" on the CWGC Database over the past two decades that CWGC has started hosting this data - I dont believe anyone has come close to doing what we have done on the site.

    The ground work has been already been laid by the members over there - Ross with starting the forum, late Henk Welting for starting the late Unaccounted airmen thread and several others including authors like Bill Chorley, Colin Cummings, James Halley for publishing various books on attrition and losses, and other websites (aircrewremembered, naa.gov.au, international bomber command etc) who have published similar data. My role has been coding the pages, and then bringing all the data together under one working framework (lots of midnight oil burned in manually transferring links serial numbers etc to the names).

    This is the first time that all that is coming under one umbrella - and the results are there to see.

    • 122357 records exist in CWGC DB related to commonwealth airmen. On our DB 70423 records (57.56%) have circumstances of death as of today. Roughly another 52000 to go.
    • 1939 , 1940, 1941 have over 90% coverage. Rest of the years are hovering at 50% each. I expect to knock 1945,1946 and 1947 out of the way first this year before focusing on the rest
    • The ability to have the database cross linked with RAF Serial numbers and aircraft types have allowed me to generate informative charts on geographical and aircraft type information. those can be seen here RAF and Commonwealth Air Forces War Dead (Courtesy CWGC) (and further filtered by year if needed)
    • The ability for researchers to filter results by aircraft type is another feature that has not been done on the net before.. eg... Gladiator fatalities or Hawker Audax fatalities
    There is still a long way to go - and we could really do with some help in speeding up the process. If there are members here, for whom this kind of work is a passion, i invite them to volunteer to help - please email admin AT rafcommands.com

    The data does not intend to store circumstances of the aircraft losses - but merely aircraft serial numbers and provides links directly to the sources should anyone want to find out more. (That way copyright is respected in almost all the cases).

    An example of a Chart showing casualities by aircraft wise. (This was 15000 records ago).. it has since then changed

    [​IMG]

    The CWGC War Dead is just one DB project there. Other projects include
     
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  3. Jagan

    Jagan Junior Member

  4. Jagan

    Jagan Junior Member

    Another Bump because of a recent milestone

    90% of all the airmen casualties recorded in CWGC now have a cause of death recorded
    RAF CWGC War Dead Query

    And finally - the number of unaccounted airmen dips below 10%..

    Current query terms returns 122357 records,
    110130 records (90.01%) have circumstances of death.
    about 12227 records (9.99%) do not have details.

    Next milestone - get the unaccounted to drop below 10,000 .. into 9999! thats 2228 records away

    And probably at that point we will hit a wall.. where we can make absolutely no progress. I am assuming that wall we will hit will come around when we have 8-9000 records left or so..

    Year by Year breakdown at RAF and Commonwealth Air Forces War Dead (Courtesy CWGC)

    This is how the coverage was an year (and a month) ago - 20% coverage
    [​IMG]

    This is how it looks now - 90%

    [​IMG]
     
  5. KevinBattle

    KevinBattle Senior Member

    No mention of Geoff's Search Engine which is why the CWGC paid a massive amount to replicate what Geoff was able to do simply.....
     
  6. Jagan

    Jagan Junior Member

    CWGC's Search is still a bit of a pain IMO.. that was one of the reasons I built my own (thats how it started its life as ).

    Ofcourse it was really nice of CWGC to allow us to download their data to play with it...
     
  7. gmyles

    gmyles Senior Member

    Hi

    I am researching the British counter insurgency operations in Greece 1944-1945.

    During this time, Air HQ Greece at Kifissia was attacked and overthrown by insurgents from the Greek communist militia ELAS. I believe this was the only RAF HQ ever to be taken by force anywhere.

    According to CWGC quite a lot of RAF men and of the RAF Regiment sadly lost their lives.

    I visited Kew last year to copy some ORBs but it turns out that immediately prior to their surrender, almost all of the units destroyed their ORBs.

    Am I right in assuming that casualty reports (Air 81) are strictly to do with air combat casualties and does not cover those killed or wounded whilst on the ground?

    Thanks

    Gus
     
  8. Jagan

    Jagan Junior Member

    Gus,

    Are these your chaps? - All buried in Greece and unaccounted for 1944 - and many from the RAF Regt. when did the attack happen?
    RAF CWGC War Dead Query 1944


    I have seen AIR81 descriptions covering casualties on ground . A few examples:


    Citation Description Link
    AIR81/309 Aircraftman 2nd Class W J Bolton: report of death from injuries received in a bombing action by the enemy, 11 May 1940. C14142158
    AIR81/443 Leading Aircraftman W H Lay: report of death from injuries received during a bombing raid, France, 26 May 1940. C14502114
    AIR81/788 Aircraftman S T Sumpter: report of death. Aircraftman 2nd Class W Parsons: injured; enemy bombing raid, 6 June 1940. C14502459
    AIR81/940 Aircraftman 1st Class W C Gallagher: injured; enemy bombing, 15 May 1940. C14502572
    AIR81/959 Leading Aircraftman V T McFarlane and Aircraftman Ellis: injured. Leading Aircraftman R P Godfray: report of death; enemy bombing raid at Souge, France, 15 June 1940. C14502410
    AIR81/967 Acting Flying Officer R C Hodgson: report of death; enemy bombing of a troop train at Rennes Station, France, 17 June 1940. C14502418
    AIR81/1017 Aircraftman 2nd Class A Tolley, Aircraftman 2nd Class P A Mitchell, Aircraftman 2nd Class J Meadowcraft and Sergeant J Derbyshire: injured in enemy bombing, RAF Driffield, 4 July 1940. C14502856
    AIR81/1336 Aircraftman 2nd Class J Anderson: report of death from injuries. Aircraftman 2nd Class C W Clarkson: injured in an enemy bombing raid on RAF Lympne, Kent, 21 August 1940. C14502976
    AIR81/1338 Leading Aircraftman S H Bell: report of death in an enemy bombing raid on RAF Lympne, Kent, 12 August 1940. C14502978
    AIR81/1366 Squadron Leader L de L Leder and Pilot Officer A D Mountstephen: report of deaths. Flight Lieutenant A E Dark: injured in an enemy bombing raid on RAF Andover, Hampshire, 13 August 1940. C14503053


    Ofcourse the AIR81s related to 1944 havent yet been made available so there is going to be a wait.
     
    Last edited: May 7, 2020
    gmyles likes this.
  9. gmyles

    gmyles Senior Member

    Hi

    Yes that's them.

    Sorry I was trying to use this as an lead in for my question about the casualty lists.

    There are quite a few good reports of this attack and the AHQ did some retrospective work in the January 1945 ORB so all is not lost.

    That's both interesting in that we might have some luck and frustrating as we will have to wait a while for it.

    Thanks again

    Gus
     
  10. Jagan

    Jagan Junior Member

    Crossed a mile stone in the CWGC Database - Less than 10000 now left.

    Of the 122357 records, 112362 records (91.83%) have circumstances of death recorded in the DB.

    99,431 are aircraft/aviation related. 12,931 are non-aviation deaths ..

    Only 9,995 records (8.17%) are left that needs to be accounted for.
    http://www.rafcommands.com/database/wardead/index.php?qt=UN
     
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  11. Jagan

    Jagan Junior Member

    Just a bump to give a 2020 year-end update on the commonwealth/empire airmen war dead database. we have reached 93.84% completion in this DB.

    122434 casualty records in this database.
    114891 records (93.84%) are "Accounted for". with a known cause of death

    Which leaves about
    7543 records (6.16%) are still "Unaccounted" without a known cause of death.
    RAF CWGC War Dead Query

    The highest numbers by region - Europe, followed by SEAC.

    Region Total Casualties Unaccounted
    Europe
    4353 (4.88%)
    SEAC 1456 (17.83%)
    Africa - North 746 (11.04%)
    Mediterranean 466 (7.25%)
    Africa 262 (10.56%)
    Middle East 213 (48.97%)
    Pacific 27 (0.59%)
    Americas 19 (0.43%)
     
  12. Jagan

    Jagan Junior Member

    Bump - we crossed the milestone of 95% Coverage with a great effort by fellow forum member jonheyworth

    122,434 casualty records in this database.
    116,334 records (95.02%) are "Accounted for".
    99,737 are aviation.
    16,597 are non-aviation deaths.
    6,100 are still unaccounted.

    Only 4.98% are unaccounted in terms of 'cause of death'

    RAF CWGC War Dead Query

    Incidentally request to the admins/mods - would it be possible to rename this to
    "RAF WW2 Casualty Database" ? or something of the sorts?
     
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  13. Jagan

    Jagan Junior Member

    Bump - we crossed the milestone of 97% Coverage .. Again All hail jonheyworth as he keeps chugging along with updates.

    122,432 casualty records in this database.
    118,799 records (97.03%) are "Accounted for".
    99,890 are aviation.
    18,909 are non-aviation deaths.
    3,633 are still unaccounted.

    Only 2.97% are unaccounted in terms of 'cause of death'

    RAF CWGC War Dead Query
     
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  14. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    A truly grand job with masses of time and effort put in.
    Well done and thank you to all the team for their dedication.
     
    Jagan likes this.

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