My thoughts on the http://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/ website.
1/ General Search ( apart from medal information did not provide any more details than what I found elsewhere for free ):
Preferably need forename and surname. The results return the details twice; once as name and once as initials. If you do not know the forename it is a long trawl through the list. There are no options to search by anything other than these details although you can narrow it down using filters:
Service number
Nationality
Service
Died in active service
Survived active service
Received gallantry award:
Mentioned in despatches:
Conflict
Most of the filters are things you may not know and are trying to find anyway.
If the person you are looking for died in active service you will probably find their details for free on the CWG website. The only other main details you may find are any medals and commendations.
I have one relative that served in the RFC, Army and Royal navy air service. He may have been a Chelsea pensioner as well; the result were just for the Army and it may or not have been the person I was looking for as I knew no more than his name and there was nothing else to tie him down.
There are regiment badge images and details of the regiment linked the person you find.
2/ POW search ( limited list and again I found more details elsewhere for free ):
I have two relatives that died in Asia during WW2 and I searched for them. I know the forename and surname but can only input the surname, camp and regiment. I started with surname as the camp was not listed and neither relative was found.
3/ Historic documents search ( lots of information and could be interesting to the right person but really little to do with genealogy? ):
This is better as you can put in any text you like and the relevant page of the document is found. I searched for air gunner and it returned 451 results. This can be filtered and I went for Royal air force and was left with 7 results. You can then view a scan of the page or the whole document.
Mostly military pamphlets, magazines, handbooks etc.
4/ Mediveal search:
Interesting but I have no details on anyone this far back.
5/ Search regiment, ship or RAF base histories:
You can only actually search by unit name, war/date and service. I went for Air force and it returned 640 Air Force records. All listed alphanumerically with no further way of searching these results. Although you can filter by regiment name first character; regiment is not the correct word filter by result would be more accurate.
I do not know what I was expecting to find but was disappointed that I did not find anything useful to me.
Has anyone else tried the website?
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