Missing Believed Killed: The Royal Air Force and the Search for Missing Aircrew 1939–1952

by Stuart Hadaway

During the early years of WW2 it soon became apparent that the system for tracing the remains of R.A.F. aircrew deemed Missing Believed Killed was totally inadequate. The Missing Research Section (M.R.S.) of the Air Ministry was set up in 1941 to deal with this problem. It collected and collated intelligence reports from a wide variety of official, unofficial and covert sources in an attempt to establish the fate of missing aircrew, using forensic or semi-forensic work to identify personal effects passed on through clandestine channels or bodies washed up on Britains shores. In 1944 the M.R.S. a small team of fourteen men was sent to France to seek the missing men on the ground. With 42,000 men missing, the amount they achieve was limited, although a lot of useful work was carried out through contacts in the French Resistance. The book explains why, men volunteered for the job, and why they worked for so long at such a gruesome task. Facing difficulties in terrain and climate, from the Arctic Circle to the jungles of Burma and Germany and not knowing if the local people would be friendly or hostile. The book also explains how to trace R.A.F. members through both personnel and operational records, where these records are kept and how to access them.

Genres: World War II, Nonfiction, Aviation

468 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

Stuart Hadaway qualified as a museum curator in 2001 and worked in military museums at a local and national level until 2009 when he joined the Air Historical Branch (RAF) as Senior Researcher for the Official Historians of the Royal Air Force, where he is currently the Research and Information Manager at the Branch.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got to this book through a friend who is mentioned in the book. Douglas Hague, then a RAF Corporal, was a member of one of the MRES teams in Germany. Now 84 he has talked interestingly about his time with the Service. A very detailed and interesting review of the work in tracing missing aircrew. It must have been a very satisfying work. As Douglas said it was 'tje best detective job in the world'. Their work gave comfort to countless members of the families of the missing.

[Laurent Wiart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very impressive study of a little know story. A great hommage to all these men and to the work they did to trace and memorialize all these airmen killed during WW2. Would like to contact the author to speak with him of a case I work on here in France