How to Research Your WWII Ancestor's Service History

If you're helping a teenager apply for a veteran-descendant scholarship, there's a good chance the qualifying ancestor is a WWII grandparent or great-grandparent. Nearly a million Australians served between 1939 and 1945, which makes the Second World War the single most common source of eligibility for programs like the Gallipoli Scholarship Fund and AVCAT's sponsored scholarships. The catch is that most applications expect you to name the veteran, state their service accurately, and in some cases attach documentary proof of descent and service.

The good news: Australian WWII records are remarkably accessible. As of 30 June 2024, 99% of WWII service records have been digitised, and they're free to view online. You don't need a subscription, a professional researcher, or a trip to Canberra. What you do need is a method - because the records are spread across three services (Army, RAAF and Navy), each with its own filing system, and the Army alone splits its files across two separate series.

This guide takes you through the whole process, step by step.

Why WWII research is easier than you'd expect

Compared with WWI, the WWII paper trail is friendlier to first-time researchers in almost every way:

• Service numbers are unique. Each person got one number for the war, prefixed by their state of enlistment - NX for New South Wales, VX for Victoria, QX for Queensland, and so on. Women's Army numbers carried an F in the prefix (NF, VF, QF), so your grandmother's AWAS number is just as findable as your grandfather's.
• There's a free lookup tool. The DVA WWII Nominal Roll covers over one million personnel and returns the service number in seconds. WWI has no equivalent.
• Forms were often typed. Enlistment paperwork from the 1940s is usually far easier to read than the handwritten WWI equivalent.
• You might get a photo. Roughly 40% of WWII Army and Air Force files include a small identity photograph, glued or pinned into the record at enlistment or during service. WWI files almost never have one. (Most Navy files don't either.)

This is also the era where women's service records become abundant. If the veteran in your family tree served with the AWAS, WAAAF, WRANS, AAMWS or AANS, her file sits in the same National Archives collections as everyone else's, and the research process below applies exactly the same way.

Step 1 - Collect what the family already holds

Before you open a single database, raid the family archive. WWII sits within living memory for many households, so surviving paperwork is common - and every scrap narrows your search.

Look for:

• The full name, including middle names (WWII records are quite consistent with these)
• A service number - check medals, pay books, identity discs and old letters
• Which branch they served in: Army, RAAF or Navy
• A unit name or number
• Where they enlisted, and where they served (Middle East, New Guinea, Borneo and so on)
• Photographs, letters or telegrams
• A discharge certificate - the jackpot document

Discharge certificates turn up in WWII families far more often than WWI ones. If you find one, it lists the service number, rank, unit, enlistment and discharge dates, and total days served in Australia and overseas. That's everything you need to jump straight to Step 3.

Step 2 - Look up the service number

No number in the family papers? The DVA WWII Nominal Roll at nominal-rolls.dva.gov.au is the quickest route. It's free, searchable by surname, and covers all four services: Army (around 845,000 people), RAAF (around 218,300), RAN (around 50,600) and the Merchant Navy (around 3,500). Each entry gives you the service number, rank, unit, key dates and place of enlistment - and you can print a commemorative certificate straight from the entry, which some families like to keep alongside the scholarship paperwork.

If the Nominal Roll comes up empty, go directly to the National Archives' RecordSearch and use NameSearch, selecting the relevant WWII category. Item titles usually show the service number, place of birth and place of enlistment, which helps you confirm you've got the right person and not a same-named stranger.

Not sure what a service number actually is or why it matters so much? We've covered that in what is a service number.

Step 3 - Download the service record

Every Australian WWII service record is held by the National Archives of Australia. Which series it sits in depends on the branch:

One trap worth knowing: plenty of soldiers appear in both Army series. It was common to start in the CMF (the Militia) and later volunteer for the AIF, so if you find a thin B884 file, keep looking - there may be a fuller B883 dossier for the same person.

Because 99% of these records are digitised, you'll usually be reading the file within minutes of finding it. For the small remainder, or for a full walkthrough of the request process, see how to request war records from the NAA and which Australian war records are available online.

What you'll find inside the file

A typical WWII service record contains:

• Attestation form - the enlistment snapshot: age, address, occupation, religion, marital status and next of kin. Often typed, which your eyes will thank you for.
• Service and casualty form (Form B103) - the chronological spine of the record: every posting, movement, hospitalisation, promotion and disciplinary entry. This part is still largely handwritten and packed with military shorthand.
• Discharge form - a service summary including days served at home and overseas. Included more often in WWII files than WWI ones.
• Identity photograph - present in roughly 40% of Army and RAAF files. A genuine bonus for a scholarship application essay or a family history project.
• Correspondence - references, medical reports, sometimes telegrams and personal letters.

If those document types are new to you, what is a service record breaks them down in more detail - and five things you can learn from a war record shows what the file can tell you beyond names and dates.

Step 4 - Cross-check with the DVA Nominal Roll

Even once you've got the service record, go back to the Nominal Roll. Its typed summary confirms dates, units and service details in a format that's far easier to read than the scrawled entries on Form B103, and it flags whether the person was a prisoner of war. It's especially handy for Navy and Merchant Navy personnel, whose service records can be trickier to pin down in RecordSearch.

Step 5 - Add the unit records

The service record tells you where your ancestor was. Unit records tell you what was happening around them - the context that turns a list of dates into a story. This is where WWII research gets more fragmented than WWI, where the war diaries are largely digitised.

Army war diaries

The Australian War Memorial holds WWII Army unit war diaries. Selected headquarters and infantry unit diaries are digitised and searchable through the AWM Collections Search, but many others exist only on microfilm at the Research Centre in Canberra. Check the AWM site for your specific unit before planning around it.

RAAF formation and unit records

The AWM's originals sit in series AWM64 on microfilm, but the NAA holds a duplicate series, A9186, and many of those are digitised. In RecordSearch, use the unit name as your keyword and A9186 as the series - for example, "453 Squadron" in Series A9186. Bear in mind that many RAAF personnel flew with Royal Air Force squadrons, so records held by The National Archives in the UK may also matter.

Navy Reports of Proceedings

For RAN ships and shore establishments, the AWM holds Reports of Proceedings in series AWM78 - daily records of operations, arrivals, departures and incidents. Digitisation is ongoing and many are already online through Collections Search. Search by ship name, such as "HMAS Perth".

For a clear explanation of how these sources differ, see the difference between service records, unit diaries and nominal rolls, and how to find where your ancestor served overseas for mapping the postings.

Step 6 - Round out the picture

• Roll of Honour and CWGC. If your ancestor died in service, the AWM Roll of Honour records their details, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records the grave or memorial, often with photos of the site.
• Prisoners of war. There's no single POW source. Combine the service record (capture and release dates may appear there), the Nominal Roll's POW flag, CWGC records and the AWM's POW research guides. The NAA also holds RAAF casualty files for aircrew killed or severely wounded, in Series A705.
• Trove newspapers. Search Trove for the name. Wartime papers ran casualty lists, enlistment notices, homecoming reports and letters from the front. Regional papers are gold - they often published detailed stories and photos of local service members that appear nowhere in official files.
• Repatriation Department case files. Held by the NAA in its state repositories, these hospital, medical and pension files can be voluminous. Most aren't digitised, but you can request them through RecordSearch or view them at the relevant state office. They're the best window into life after the war came home with them.
• Defence Honours and Awards. The searchable database at defence.gov.au/honours-awards covers awards from WWII onwards and often includes the full citation text that the service record only hints at.

WWII vs WWI research at a glance

If you're also chasing a WWI ancestor (see our WWI research guide), here's how the two differ:

From record to scholarship application

For scholarship purposes, the service record and the Nominal Roll entry together usually give you what an application asks for: the veteran's name, service number, branch, unit and dates. Pair that with birth, death and marriage certificates linking the generations, and you've established descent. Our guide on how to apply for veteran-descendant scholarships covers exactly what evidence different programs expect, and programs like the Long Tan Bursaries, Legacy's education support and the DVA education schemes each have their own eligibility fine print worth reading early.

One honest warning: the hardest part isn't finding the record, it's reading it. Form B103 is a wall of handwritten abbreviations - TOS, SOS, M/I, M/O - the same shorthand system the Army used in WWI, just squeezed onto a typed template. Missing or damaged pages happen too; if you hit one, see what to do when your war records are damaged or missing.

Where to next

Start with the ancestor, then find the money. Browse the free scholarship database to see every veteran-descendant scholarship currently open, and bookmark the ones your student qualifies for. And if you've downloaded the service record but the shorthand has you beaten, we can decode it for you for $59 AUD - every abbreviation translated, every posting mapped against unit histories, returned as a line-by-line spreadsheet plus a plain-language story of their service. Upload the record at decodemydigger.com.au/upload and we'll do the rest.