Which Australian War Records Are Free Online Right Now

If you're putting together a scholarship application that asks you to demonstrate descent from an Australian veteran - or to write about their service - the first practical question is a timing one. Which records can you pull up on a laptop tonight, and which ones involve a form, a wait, and a delivery date you can't control?

That distinction matters more for you than for the average family historian. Programs like the Gallipoli Scholarship Fund and AVCAT's sponsored scholarships run to fixed closing dates, and an application that's waiting on a records request is an application at risk. The encouraging part: millions of Australian military records are already digitised and free to view. Nobody needs a subscription, a Canberra trip, or a paid researcher to see the core documents. What you do need is a map of which website holds what - because the records are scattered across half a dozen official sites, and none of them make the boundaries obvious.

Here's that map, organised the way a deadline-driven applicant needs it: instant access first, request-and-wait material second.

Start here: the National Archives holds the service records

Personal service records - the file the military kept on each individual - sit with the National Archives of Australia (NAA), which holds them for everyone who served in Australia's forces since Federation in 1901. This is the document scholarship selection panels and family researchers alike care about most: it contains the attestation form, the service and casualty form, discharge papers, correspondence, and sometimes a photograph. (If you're not sure what a service record actually contains, see What is a service record? - and if you're wondering why any of this proves eligibility, how to apply for veteran-descendant scholarships walks through what panels typically ask for.)

Every NAA record is searchable through RecordSearch, the Archives' free online catalogue.

Viewable online tonight, free

• First World War Army records (Series B2455). Every First AIF personnel dossier from 1914-1920 has been digitised - the complete set, free to view and download. That includes the nurses of the Australian Army Nursing Service, so if your great-great-grandmother served with the AANS, her dossier is sitting in B2455 alongside the infantrymen's.
• Navy service cards, 1911-1970. Digitised and free to view online.
• Second World War Army records (Series B883 and B884). B883 covers the 2nd AIF; B884 covers the Citizen Military Forces. As at 30 June 2024 the NAA had digitised roughly 1,058,000 Second World War service records - 99% of the total - all free to view and download.
• Second World War RAAF records (Series A9300 and A9301). Officers' files and other ranks' files respectively, digitised under the WWII Digitisation Project. WAAAF personnel are in these series too - women's air force service is documented the same way as everyone else's.

Partially online - check before you plan

• Second World War Navy records. Many are digitised, but coverage isn't as complete as the Army and RAAF series. Search RecordSearch for your specific person before assuming either way.
• Repatriation Department case files. These hold returned veterans' hospital, medical, and pension records, kept in the NAA's state repositories. Some are digitised; most aren't. You can request copies or view them in person.

Not online - build in lead time

• Post-WWII service records. Records for Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, and later conflicts are generally held by the Department of Defence rather than the NAA, so they won't turn up on RecordSearch. Former serving members and next of kin can apply to Defence directly; anyone else lodges a "Defence service after World War II" enquiry through the NAA. If your veteran ancestor served in Vietnam and you're eyeing the Long Tan Bursary, start this process early.
• "Not yet examined" records. Some items listed on RecordSearch haven't been cleared for public release. You'll need to lodge an access application, and clearance can take up to 90 business days - that's roughly four and a half months of calendar time. Against a scholarship closing date, that's the single biggest scheduling trap in this whole exercise.

Our companion post on how to request war records from the NAA walks through the search and request process step by step. And if a search turns up nothing at all, don't panic - see what to do when your war records are damaged or missing.

The Australian War Memorial: the story around the record

The AWM doesn't hold individual service records - a point that confuses almost everyone at first. What it holds is the material that gives a record its meaning: rolls, diaries, photographs, and research files. For a scholarship essay that needs to say something about what an ancestor's service actually involved, this is where the substance lives. Most of it's searchable through the AWM Collections Search.

Free and online now

• WWI Embarkation Roll. Around 330,000 AIF personnel recorded as they left Australia, with age, occupation, address, next of kin, troopship name, and embarkation date. Fully digitised and searchable.
• WWI Nominal Roll. An alphabetical list of about 324,000 AIF members who served overseas, showing whether each person returned, was killed in action, died of wounds, or was discharged.
• Roll of Honour. Every service member who died during or as a result of service. Many entries link to digitised Roll of Honour circulars - forms completed by families, full of personal detail you won't find anywhere else.
• Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau files (WWI). About 32,000 digitised case files covering soldiers reported wounded or missing after July 1916. These contain eyewitness accounts, physical descriptions, burial details, and letters between the Bureau and anxious families. If one exists for your ancestor, it may be the most moving document in your entire application. Find them under the AWM's "People" tab.
• Honours and awards database. Award details including citations, searchable online.
• Photographs. An enormous digitised photographic collection spanning every conflict.
• Selected unit war diaries. The AWM has digitised the First World War diaries (the AWM4 series), selected headquarters and infantry unit diaries from the Second World War, and Korean War diaries. These log a unit's daily locations, operations, and casualties - the raw material for describing what your ancestor's battalion was doing on any given day. (Confused about how diaries differ from service records? See the difference between service records, unit diaries, and nominal rolls.)

In-person only, for now

• Many WWII unit war diaries. The ones not yet digitised are on microfilm at the AWM Research Centre in Canberra.
• RAAF formation and unit records (AWM64). Microfilm at the Research Centre - though the NAA holds a duplicate series (A9186), many of which are digitised and searchable on RecordSearch, so check there first.
• Navy Reports of Proceedings (AWM78). Summaries of each ship's activities. The AWM is digitising these progressively and many are now online, but coverage isn't complete.

DVA nominal rolls: the fastest starting point of all

If you know a name but not a service number, the free Nominal Rolls published by the Department of Veterans' Affairs at nominal-rolls.dva.gov.au are usually the quickest first move. Rolls exist for four conflicts:

• World War II - over one million personnel: roughly 845,000 Army, 218,300 RAAF, 50,600 RAN, and 3,500 Merchant Navy
• Korean War - over 18,000 personnel
• Vietnam War
• First Gulf War

Each entry gives a snapshot: service number, rank, unit, enlistment and discharge dates, place of birth, and prisoner-of-war status. The WWII roll even lets you print a commemorative certificate. For an application form asking for your ancestor's service number, this is often a two-minute answer - and our post on what a service number is explains how to read the one you find.

Four more free sources worth a look

Commonwealth War Graves Commission. For ancestors killed in WWI or WWII service, cwgc.org documents 1.7 million graves and memorials across 150 countries - name, rank, unit, date of death, and the cemetery or memorial location, frequently with photographs of the site. Useful alongside finding where your ancestor served overseas.

Trove. The National Library's trove.nla.gov.au offers more than 26 million digitised newspaper pages. Enlistment notices, casualty lists, obituaries, homecoming reports, even Red Cross fundraisers that name local volunteers - search by name plus a date range and see what the local paper said.

The AIF Project. Run by UNSW Canberra at aif.adfa.edu.au, this database covers the 330,000 men and women who served overseas with the First AIF, compiled from multiple sources. A solid launching pad for WWI research.

Defence Honours and Awards. The Department of Defence's searchable database at defence.gov.au/honours-awards covers awards from WWI to the present day, across all three services.

A note on paid platforms. Ancestry and Findmypast do carry some Australian military records, but every primary collection - NAA service records, DVA nominal rolls, AWM embarkation rolls and diaries - is free on the government sites listed above. Put the subscription money towards textbooks instead.

The deadline planner: what's instant vs what waits

The rule of thumb: if your ancestor served in WWI or WWII, you can probably have the full service record on your screen before bed. If they served in Korea, Malaya, Vietnam, or later - or the record's marked "not yet examined" - treat the request as week one of your application timeline, not week last.

From downloaded record to written application

Downloading the record is the easy half. What lands on your screen is often twenty pages of handwritten abbreviations, crossed-out entries, and military shorthand from eighty-odd years ago. A line like "TOS 2/14 Bn ex gruber reo" won't explain itself, and neither will the place names scattered across a service and casualty form - yet those details are precisely what turns a scholarship essay from "my great-grandfather served in the war" into a story a selection panel remembers. Our guides to researching a WWII ancestor's service and five things you can learn from a war record show what's hiding in there. (And if you've ever wondered where the word comes from, here's what a digger actually is.)

Where to next

Two moves from here. First, browse the free scholarship database to see which veteran-descendant scholarships and bursaries fit your situation - from Legacy's education support to the DVA education schemes. Second, once you've downloaded that service record, we can decode it for you: upload it at decodemydigger.com.au/upload and for $59 AUD we'll turn the abbreviations, dates, and unit movements into a plain-language narrative you can quote straight into your application.