Historian slams RNZAF record keeping

Antipodean Andy · Sep 9, 2008

Historian slams Air Force record keeping - New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz

New Zealand aviation historian Errol Martyn harshly criticises the Air Force for "mindless destruction" of historical records in his just-published final volume of the 1400-page trilogy For Your Tomorrow.

He says in the preface to Volume 3, out three years later than expected, that completion has been "greatly hindered by decades of poor management by those ultimately responsible for the preservation of the relevant records".

Martyn, who lives in Christchurch, also attacks the Army bias in the post World War 2 production of the Official History series, claiming in effect, that it is scandalous that minor army units were given full volumes while there was no book about the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) in Canada and the 8000 New Zealand aircrew who learned their skills there.

The first two volumes of For Your Tomorrow described the "fates" of the almost 4900 men and women who have died serving in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and allied air forces since 1915, the great bulk of them in World War 2.

The new volume updates the earlier two and carries 450 pages of biographies of the dead.

Each has name, rank, decorations, service number, date and place of birth, education and pre-war work details, training dates and progress, postings, types of aircraft flown, number of war operations, date of death, name of burial place or memorial, and names of next-of-kin.

One of the extended appendices includes the names of no fewer than 12,000 aircrew who sailed away to war (except those who served in the Pacific) indexed to the names of the ships that carried them and dates of sailing.

Others feature precise totals of deaths by wartime theatres and, for the first time anywhere, deaths by aircraft types – most were on bombers such as the Wellington (697) followed by the Lancaster (545), Stirling (418) and the Halifax (148). Spitfires and their carrier-based equivalents, the Seafires, claimed 221 lives.

Martin is scathing of the RNZAF's record-keeping and records preservation.

He notes that he has had to correct tens of thousands of errors and omissions that "abound in surviving records".

His preface contrasts Australia's record-keeping with New Zealand's.

"The Australian authorities have not engaged in the appallingly widespread and uncontrolled destruction of papers" held in service and casualty files, housed here in "an old and completely inappropriate wooden building at Trentham".

He notes too that Australia began digitising its service records for free online viewing five years ago.

The possibility of something similar in New Zealand doesn't seem imminent, he adds.

Discussing records of New Zealand aircrew who sailed overseas, Martyn says 900 names of trainees for Canada are missing for the November 1942-July 1944 period, "because of years of neglect and the mindless destruction of RNZAF historical records".

Up to about 60 copies of each nominal roll, the lists of men on ships, were prepared at the time but only a fragmentary collection survives.

"That this should have been allowed to occur is quite astonishing, given that a prime `reason' for the air force's existence and massive expansion during the war was the provision of aircrew under the BCATP."

Martyn notes that the plan turned out 130,000 aircrew in Canada alone and that United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the enterprise the "Aerodrome of Democracy".

"Amazingly, of 50 volumes of official history. . ., many of which are given over to the histories of very modest army units, there is not one dedicated to New Zealand's contribution to this extraordinary endeavour."
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spidge · Sep 9, 2008

A surprising state of affairs. I thought they would have been as painstaking with their records as Australia is.

Kyt · Sep 9, 2008

Erroll is a member on rafcommands, and a very nice, helpful chap he is too. If he says that things have gone tits up over there, then he would be the one to know.

Shame really, but atleast they are allowed access unlike here where so much is still kept secret

Antipodean Andy · Sep 10, 2008

Makes you marvel even more at quality books like Lambert's Night After Night.

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