Our collection has over 1 million records documenting the service of Australian men and women during World War II. These include service records for the Army, the Royal Australian Air Force and the Royal Australian Navy. 

Over the past 15 years we’ve digitised more than 200,000 WWII records and made them available to view online through RecordSearch. This includes all Royal Australian Navy service cards (series A6769 and A6770).

In 2019, the Australian Government announced funding of $10 million to help us digitise the remaining 850,000 records over 4 years, with work starting in July 2019.

Since then we’ve digitised 100,000 additional records, with over 2 million pages made available online. 

What we’re doing now

Large-scale digitisation of the remaining WWII service records began in October 2020.

Army records

Records will be digitised by place of enlistment.

• Citizen Military Forces personnel service records (Series B884) – digitisation began in October 2020
• Second Australian Imperial Force personnel dossiers (Series B883) – digitisation due to begin mid-2022

Air Force records

Records will be digitised alphabetically by surname (Series A9300) and by service number (Series A9301).

• Royal Australian Air Force Non-Commissioned Officers and other ranks personnel files (Series A9301) – digitisation began in July 2019
• Royal Australian Air Force Officers personnel files (Series A9300) – digitisation due to begin mid-2021

Batches of records in these series will be temporarily unavailable to the public while they are being digitised. As records are digitised, the digital copies will be added to RecordSearch and made available free of charge.

The table below provides specific updates on the progress of records being digitised. We will update this table regularly.

Use our Request for World War II Service Records form if you have a question about access to these records.