RAF Awards Database - VC, DSO, DFC, DFM and MiDs

The Distinguished Flying Cross Database - All 20,888 WW2 awards
This is the second installment of the Awards Database that had been in the works for some time.

RAF Awards Query to query

You will find all the entries for 20,888 DFC Awards - Citations, and Links to the original gazette issues. easily searchable via the query.. This DB was something I always wanted to do - for years since LG had their issues available. Thanks to the some of the previous work and coding effort, and scraping of London Gazette website, and additional verification from various ref books, the DFC DB is now complete.

Big shout out to Malcolm Barrass for contributing to the grunt work along with me in scraping the Citations and Notifications off the 500 odd LG issues.

At last count, 6180 DFC awards have citations and 14708 DFC awards are "Notification Only". Eitherway all are linked to the original Gazettes. Note that since this depends on how the LG was OCR-ed in the first place the spelling errors and character errors from the GAzette have been replicated in the database. At best use the DB to locate the original gazette links.

Since the Award DB is linked to all our other DBs - CWGC, aircraft, LGindex - you will find entries now a bit more enriched. eg.. Leonard Cheshire - CHESHIRE (72021), ) [Royal Air Force WW2 Casualty] or Wing Commander G P GIBSON (39438), Royal Air Force) [Royal Air Force WW2 Casualty]

 

What an amazing effort Jagan, congratulations. I've used it already with great success.

 

Excellent well done and thank you

 

Thanks guys. glad to see that is of use. as I get other awards in (DFM, AFC, AFM, MinD) , it will start showing more value.

 

Since I am on a roll . I uploaded the first cut of the M-I-D awards into the DB. Its not complete, its not perfect, but it is 75% coverage

The OCR-ed file out of LG will require some months of work . A first pass could salvage only about 75% of the entries that being said, I have loaded whatever files i have into the DB.



33628

Or RAF Awards Query

There are over 43,000 M-i-D to the Air Forces in WW2..

Again, spelling mistakes, and other errors have crept in - not all ranks are available in the DB.

The M-i-Ds are limited to roughly about 50 issues , so it was a bit easier to scrape - but still 44,000 lines of entries is a bit too much to clean up - so for now this temporary update should suffice.

 

What a fantastic database! Very much appreciated Jagan.

 

Well done Jagan.

I asked the Savannah publishers a good few years ago if they would publish a second edition of all the DFC Citations rather than just the LG notifications and they said they were considering it, presumably it never happened. A shame because their DFM books contains all the DFM citations and is an excellent resource.

 

Yes Drew, that book seems to be nearly 2000 pages and out of print - not even a used copy available around .. https://amzn.to/2V0InEy it seems to have been an amazing piece of work

 

I think I paid about £200 for both DFC Vols but it only contains the London Gazette entries. The DFM one however is excellent as it contains nearly all the complete DFM Citations. That cost me £300 from the publishers for both volumes.

 

Added the Distinguished Flying Medals - Again thanks to Malcolm for lending a hand.

Victoria Cross 30
Distinguished Service Order 1222
Distinguished Flying Cross 20889
Distinguished Flying Medal 6483
Mentioned in Despatches 33708

1487 have Citations attached
4996 are Notification Only awards

The Database has also been updated that clicking on DFM Awardee's service number will bring up all the awards including ones he got as an officer with a different service number. The search is not perfect and in some cases with common name may generate errors, but it works 95% of the time.

I might end up adding GCs and MCs.. they are only a handful and all of them have interesting citations to go with..

 

Added RAF MCs

Military Cross 85

Work in Progress - RAF MMs, Army DFCs..

 

Great to see a few Chindit awards within this latest section. Most with their boots on the ground too.

 

I realised that when I was looking at this yesterday - Robert Grainger Ker THOMPSON (70672)

Sqn Ldr Robert Granger Ker THOMPSON (70672), RAFVR) [Royal Air Force WW2 Details]

MC and a DSO - both on the ground!

 

Thompson was an exceptional RAF Liaison officer on the two Wingate campaigns and as you probably know, went on to have a distinguished career in advising on counter insurgency:

Sir Robert Thompson

 

Military Medal 131

Apologies for the drip drip drip in updates.. but every award is a bit of a milestone.

whats left?
GC, AFC, AFM, OBE, MBE, BEM , CGM(F), Kings Commendations.

 

Hi Jagan

This is great, well done. Keep up the good work.

I have a small spreadsheet containing every medal, honor or mention in dispatches awarded during the Liberation of Greece and the Greek insurrection 1944/45 that I am aware of thus far.

Of the 420 I have, a paltry 12 are from the RAF and I am absolutely convinced there are many more out there as yet undiscovered.

Is there any way of getting your database to return RAF awards from just one theatre?

Any assistance would be brilliant.

Thanks

Gus

 

Gus , great question, and I have wondered that myself with my interest in SEAC. but in its current form - there is no way to return the RAF awards from one theatre. one way to go about it is to try Unit by Unit and with the time period in mind.

if the unit is not mentioned then that doesnt work. Also not helping is that LG does not have citations for every award - and usually its only notifications. Occasionally the notification says "for services in the south pacific area" etc.. but that info is not captured fully either.

I will add a feature to search on the keyword in the citations that may help a bit - but is not the full answer you are expecting.

 

Thanks for getting back.

I have the OOB for the RAF in Greece so I will search as you suggest.

Gus

 

Gus,

I did some rough queries on the backend database directly

Awards with the word "Greece" int he citations

DFC 36078 James Richmond GORDON-FINLAYSON 1941-01-07 211 Sqdn LG35037
DFC 37843 Patrick Hamilton ALINGTON 1941-07-11 230 Sqdn LG35217
DFCBarI 44068 William VALE 1941-07-11 80 Sqdn LG35217
DFC 37143 James Robin WILSON 1941-07-11 208 Sqdn LG35217
DFC 40615 Alexander FRAME 1941-07-11 228 Sqdn LG35217
DFC 37847 Lewis George BURNAND 1941-07-15 208 Sqdn LG35219
DFC 36058 Roderick Harvey SPENCER 1941-07-22 113 Sqdn LG35225
DFC 41702 Richard John Kitchener HOGG 1942-01-09 115 Sqdn LG35413
DFC 40179 Sidney LINNARD 1942-01-20 274 Sqdn LG35425
DFC 37060 Harry Lennox Inns BROWN 1942-12-15 616 Sqdn LG35822
DFC 565380 Harold VERTICAN 1943-05-14 462 Sqdn RAAF LG36015
DSO 16245 Geoffrey FRANCIS 1941-07-22 230 Sqdn LG35225
DSO 88460 George Yull MACKIE 1944-02-11 115 Sqdn LG36374
MC 43119 Arthur George CORK 1941-07-22 LG35225
MC 102836 John Jerome ORR 1946-05-17 2 PRU LG37568
MM 1438523 Frank Alan RANGER 1945-01-05 LG36879
MM 905304 Thomas Henry ELLERTON 1945-06-12 LG37125
MM 1670981 Arthur OLIVER 1945-06-12 LG37125
MM 931758 Bernard Frederick BROOKS 1945-07-06 LG37165

With the word "Kos" in them

DFC NZ401286 Kossuth John NEWMAN 1944-06-09 684 Sqdn LG36555
DFM 1336789 Raymond Kenneth SMITH 1944-06-09 684 Sqdn LG36555
MM 943328 D E PAYNE 1948-02-20 2909 Sqdn, RAF Regt LG38213
MM 1483158 William TUCKER 1948-02-20 2909 Sqdn, RAF Regt LG38213

These are awards with citations in them - you could try querying on the individual units if needed.

 

Thanks for this.

I put all of the squadrons in last night and strangely enough only came up with the ones I already have.

At least that validates my spreadsheet. Doesn't explain why there isn't any more.

I'll keep digging.

Thanks again

Gus