Crew Logbooks

Apart from photographs, the aircrews log book is perhaps the most personal memory of their operational career and latterly of an individual.

Missing or killed in action, personal effects, including the log book(s) would be held before being passed to next of kin. This seems to have been rather a hit or miss affair with the RAF – some would receive the log book, others wouldn’t be so lucky.

It is said that by 1959, these unclaimed logbooks covered some 6500 feet of shelving. It was decided that representative samples would be preserved in the Public Record Office and the remainder destroyed at the end of 1960. This decision was announced in the Press and a number of people claimed logbooks. But the vast majority were destroyed.