WW2 Tracer Cards

Discussion in 'Searching for Someone & Military Genealogy' started by peterinkent, Mar 2, 2011.

  1. peterinkent

    peterinkent Junior Member

    Hello All

    As a very infrequent visitor I have a question to ask.

    I have recently been using the tracer cards at Firepower that show the movements of RA personel during the WW2 period, does anyboy know any other archives that hold these or are the gunner the only ones that had this sytem and it has survived and is accessable to the public (only if you visit) ?

    Peter
     
  2. I have a feeling that the Tank Museum has some also. I enquired about a 44 RTR man and they were able to tell me the dates he transferred from the RA (he was one of the early 'militia-men' who was expected to be an AA gunner), which Training Regt he went to and when he was posted to his Bn.

    Charles
     
  3. izzy

    izzy Senior Member

    Peter can you explain what a Tracer card is ive never heard of them before.
     
  4. Izzy - from the Ogilby Trust July 2005

    THE MOD ARCHIVE MOVE FROM HAYES
    A Note from Joe Kelly at The National Archives
    The Story so Far
    The Hayes site is now empty, awaiting the bulldozers and redevelopment. The MOD archive has been moved to Swadlincote (a few miles south-east of Burton-on-Trent), into a building owned and operated by TNT, the company awarded MOD's 25-year contract for file storage and retrieval services. The likes of APC Glasgow and Veterans Agency Norcross now send to TNT Swadlincote for Army officers' and other ranks' files.
    In March this year, the National Archives (TNA) contacted various military museums with offers of material which MOD and TNT had agreed they no longer required and need not take to Swadlincote. These were administrative records created at the former corps / regimental record offices but later sent to Hayes and used by staff there in locating personal files of non-commissioned ranks. TNT's new archive database was expected to make all that sort of manual-search material redundant.
    In early May, last-minute concerns about the database caused MOD to agree TNT's request to take the material to Swadlincote after all, but to be kept there for just six months and then released to the museums as already agreed. Mid-May, TNT then decided it was after all interested in retaining only a portion of the material (enlistments books and transfers-in books) for this extra six months and asked for the rest (discharges books and tracer card indexes) to be removed from Hayes before the end of the month.
    Apologies have been made, but are made again, to all sixty-six museums involved for the confusion and uncertainty and for the last-minute rush at the end of May to move the cards and discharge books. My thanks are due to several of the Corps museums, to the NAM, and to David Chilton at the RGBW Museum in Salisbury, for reacting so swiftly with transport and manpower to move some quite huge quantities. And thanks also to those others who have acted as "staging posts" between Hayes and final destinations.

    And the RE Museum -

    World War Two Tracer Cards. These are the old MOD catalogue cards for the service records of Royal Engineers serving in World War Two. They vary in how much information they contain but in general will provide information on postings and give a service number. Note these are only accessible to staff and not available to researchers for browsing.

    Looks an invaluable research tool which only Bovington seem to use.
    Charles
     
  5. izzy

    izzy Senior Member

    Charles thanks for the link im researching R.E and R.A chaps named on a local Memorial so they may throw open a new line of research.
     

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