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 349,370 files, containing over 6.5 million pages. Over 121,000 of these have already been released for public access online through RecordSearch, and more are being loaded every day.
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 began in April 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 began July 2021
Accessing service files
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.
We have experienced some delays to our loading of images due to COVID-19 lockdowns, but we are working hard to catch up.
The table below provides details of the records currently being digitised, and those completed.
| Series | Batch | Progress |
|---|---|---|
| B884 | Northern Territory Tasmania Western Australia |
Completed |
| B884 | Papua New Guinea | In progress |
| B884 | South Australia Queensland New South Wales Victoria |
In progress |
| B883 | Darwin | In progress |
| B883 | Western Australia Tasmania |
In progress |
| B883 | South Australia | In progress |
| A9300 | AARONS to PEAD | In progress |
| A9300 | ABBOTT to ZUCKER | In progress |
| A9301 | Service number 1183 to 1495 Service number 14448 to 21142 |
Completed |
| A9301 | Service number 21889 to 37057 Service number 21090 to 27054 Service number 60141 to 90337 |
In progress |
Use our Request for World War II Service Records form if you have a question about access to these records.
