this is the ancestral findings podcast number 40 if you're looking for military service records for
anyone who served in the US Army or Air Force between 1912 and 1964 you may have a difficult
time their record may or may not still exist that is because those military records were stored at
the National personnel records Center in st. Louis Missouri and the floor on which they were stored
suffered a devastating fire on July 12th 1973 those firefighters arrived to battle the blaze
only four minutes after it was reported they faced numerous problems in putting it out the intensity
of the fire inadequate water pressure for their hoses and a broken pumper truck all contributed
to the issues and it took them days to officially put it all out the fire was uncontrolled for 22
hours and after that though it was under control areas of the building still smoldered it wasn't
until four days later on July 16th that the fire was declared officially out and people were
allowed back into the building by this time a lot of damage had been done not only to the building
but to the millions of records that were stored there though several million military records
were not in the building at the time having been on loan to the Department of Veteran Affairs this
was only a small amount of the total records that were stored at the st. Louis facility to
make matters worse the records being stored at the facility as well as those that had been lent out
to other government agencies were not indexed and no copies of them were ever made therefore it was
impossible for those who worked with the records to accurately determine just which records have
been lost and no way to get backups nevertheless restoration efforts on the vast quantities of
burned and water damaged records in the building started immediately even before the fire was
totally put out plans for restoration were underway in fact those restoration efforts are
still ongoing today which shows just how extensive the damage was it's been over 40 years and records
damaged and even almost destroyed in the fire are still being brought back to life officially all
military service records for Army personnel who served between 1916 and 1960 were lost except the
ones on loan to other government agencies records for Air Force personnel who served between 1947
and 1964 were also lost beginning with names after Hubbard James II this encompasses anyone who was
in the Army or Air Force for the United States during World War 1 and World War two as well as
the Korean Conflict however all is not quite as lost as it seems while some records were
undoubtedly completely destroyed in the fire most of them still have some remnants existing it is
from those remnants that restoration work is being done the records and pieces of records that are
left are charred around the edges water damaged and often affected by mold though mold mitigation
was one of the first steps taken to preserve what was left of the records some records are
little more than ash but as technology increases in the restoration field it is being discovered
that information can even be gleaned from these previously unreadable pieces of paper the federal
government issued an order immediately following the fire that prohibited the destruction of any
documents held by any government agency that might be useful improving military service for
the people whose service records were destroyed in the fire this helped veterans who needed proof
of their military service to get benefits it also helped restoration experts put things
back together again as best they could over 6.5 million records were able to be recovered
from the building after the fire though they were in terrible condition they were carefully dried
sprayed with mold repellent and pieces of records that were charred began to be put back together in
a painstaking careful and slow process x-rays and other techniques were used to read what was still
legible on them Ultra violet light is now used to lift pieces of text off of crumbling ashy paper
fragments allowing restoration experts to read what has been hidden for decades there is now an
index to restored records also while restoration work is ongoing the National personnel records
Center still receives hundreds of requests for military records every day if the records fall
within those that were affected by the fire the restoration experts determine if any piece of
the record still exists if it does they will do a restoration of that record on demand and send
the results to the person who requested it while some records were totally destroyed beyond any
restoration effort there are alternative record sources that can be used to substitute for the
official military service record if your ancestors records do not exist anymore in any form you will
be directed to one or more alternate sources these sources include VA claims files state
military records pay voucher records Selective Service registration records pay records from
the GAO government accounting office medical records from military hospitals and entrance
and exit x-ray records for military personnel though the official service records of millions
of twentieth-century military personnel were destroyed in the 1973 fire they were not all
totally lost your ancestors record may be among the ones lent to other government agencies one
that was not destroyed such as the a through H Air Force records or may have already been restored if
it hasn't been restored it may be among those that can be restored if it was completely destroyed
by the fire you still have plenty of alternate sources you can use to put together the record
of your ancestors military service for your genealogical records and family history research
do you have any particularly difficult genealogy problems and aren't sure how
to go about solving them in the next ancestral findings comm podcast I'll
share some tips to get you over that brick wall