RAF WWII Operational and Flying Accident Casualty Files in the National Archives by Hudson Mary;

Author:Hudson, Mary;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Aviation
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Limited
Published: 2020-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Establishment of the RAF and Dominion Air Forces Missing Research and Enquiry Service

Post D-Day there was an increasing clamour from relatives for information about the casualties in liberated areas and the MRS was receiving a flow of information and artefacts relating to missing air crew which had been given to the liberating forces. It was decided to establish a field operations element to search for missing air crew. It was known as the Missing Research and Enquiry Service (MRES) and its function was to find all the available information relating to the missing and pass it back to the Casualty Branch Missing Research Section. It remained the task of the MRS to sift and investigate the information it received both from the newly established MRES and from other sources. Much detective work was often required, but Flight Lieutenant Sinkinson and his staff became expert at this, building up an invaluable collection of contacts, databases and knowledge to assist them since their formation in 1942.

The groundwork already done by the MRS at their base in Oxford Street proved invaluable to their field units who began their work in France in early 1945. MRES officers were instructed by the Inspector of Missing Research to ‘Find everything possible. Report clearly what you find. Remember that your most discouragingly sparse report may contain just one apparently insignificant item that will enable [the] Air Ministry to close a case.’

The first field unit of the new MRES was No 1 Missing Research and Enquiry (MRE) Section which had been instituted in December 1944 but did not begin its work in France until the spring of 1945. It was soon joined by No 2 MRE Section, formed in Belgium in May 1945. The MRE Sections were staffed by volunteer search officers (mostly air crew) drawn from the RAF and Dominion Air Forces, and the investigation of all RAF, Dominion and Allied Air Force (other than those of the United States) burials fell within their remit.

Initially the MRS within the Casualty Branch in London sent specific casualty enquiries together with the relevant dossiers to the MRE Sections operating in France and Belgium. However, it soon became clear that the task in France was so large that a new approach was needed. Two new MRE Sections (numbers 3 and 4) were formed as Mobile Sections; each was given areas of France to sweep, looking for aircraft crash sites, information on the crews, and the graves of known and unknown airmen. Cases arising from these sweeps were classified as X cases and the details obtained by the sweeping MRE Sections were sent back to P4(Cas). The X annotation can be found on some of the MRES documents included on Casualty P Files. The sweep approach enabled missing crews to be traced and identifications made in cases where little information was held in the Casualty Branch.

The war in Europe ended on 8 May 1945 and that against Japan in August the same year. With the cessation of hostilities the search

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