For more than 30 years many a veteran has been faced with the chilling reality of discovering that their military service records had gone up in smoke in a St. Louis fire.

Since that time countless numbers of veterans have been fired up by responses to inquiries and benefits applications that include the now infamous "Your records were burned…" statement.

To this day among many veterans the standard wisecrack upon being told that a service or VA document of theirs has been misplaced or is temporarily unavailable is- "Must have had another fire in St. Louis." More skeptical vets feel that the fire offered a convenient opportunity for covering up long standing mismanagement of important records and offered the system yet another means of dodging the benefits bullet.

What about the fire? And what was burned? The only answer is the official one and official answers tend to serve only as confirmation to the believers and fuel for fire for the skeptics. Nonetheless, here it is:

"On July 12, 1973, a disastrous fire at National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records (NPRC-MPR) in St. Louis destroyed approximately 16-18 million Official Military Personnel Files."
The National Archives

Image of burning National Personnel Records Center on left with image of destroyed and damaged records on right
Just as important an issue is- Which records went up in smoke? Once again, the official word from The National Archives:

"Army records: Personnel discharged November 1, 1912, to January 1, 1960. 80% estimated loss.
Air Force records: Personnel discharged, September 25, 1947, to January 1, 1964 (with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E.). 75% estimated loss."

From NPRC (MPR):

"No duplicate copies of the records that were destroyed in the fire were maintained, nor was a microfilm copy ever produced. There were no indexes created prior to the fire. In addition, millions of documents had been lent to the Department of Veterans Affairs before the fire occurred. Therefore, a complete listing of the records that were lost is not available."

All finger pointing and bad mouthing aside. Is there anything that an affected veteran can do to obtain proof of service? Actually there is. NPRC (MPR) can attempt to reconstruct certain basic service data from alternate sources. If they are successful in reconstructing your data a Certification of Military Service will be issued. This Certification can be used for any purpose for which the original discharge document was used, including the application for veterans benefits.

How do they do it?

  • A primary source of alternate data is a collection of 19 million final pay vouchers. These records provide name, service number, dates of service, and character of service. These are the most critical service data elements needed for the reconstruction process.
  • In 1988, a collection of computer tapes containing ten million hospital/treatment facility admission records was transferred to NPRC (MPR). These records, originally created by the U.S. Army Surgeon General’s Office (SGO), were discovered by the National Academy of Sciences and offered to the National Archives for use by NPRC (MPR). The source records existed in a computer code format and required extensive analysis to interpret the code into English. Between 1988-1990, NPRC (MPR) was able to salvage 7.8 million records of individual admissions for use as a major supplement to other smaller sources of medical information.

Requesters should collect as much information from old personal papers before submitting a request pertaining to records from the fire-related collections. Good information on a request helps NPRC (MPR) identify which sources to research for reconstructing basic service data. As always, if you are unsure about your situation or the service data reconstruction process, get some help from experienced people.