 Welcome to the National Archives and Records Administration's 2023 genealogy series. My name is Andrea Matney, the program's coordinator, and we are so happy you've joined us. In recognition of public service, we are offering a themed program that will provide family history research tools focused on both military and civilian records. You will also learn how to preserve your own family collections. Presenters are topic experts broadcasting from across the United States and offering sessions intended for beginners to experienced family historians. All are welcome. In addition, we invite you to join the conversation. Participate with the presenters and other family historians during each session's premier time. Here's how to engage in live chat. You can ask questions via chat by first logging into YouTube. Continue to watch chat because the speaker will answer your questions there in the chat. Type your questions about today's topic at any time. In addition, please select Show More to find links to handouts and the event's evaluation form. We are offering six genealogy sessions on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. eastern time, starting in May and ending in mid-June. If you missed the premier broadcast, know that the videos and handouts will remain available after the event and at your convenience. Today's program is entitled National Archives at St. Louis, Understanding the 1973 National Personnel Records Center Fire and Its Impact on Genealogical Research. I'm pleased to introduce today's presenter, Eric Kilgore. Eric is an archive specialist with the National Archives and Records Administration. He has been with the National Archives at St. Louis since 2010, with the majority of that time working directly with the public in the research room. Eric holds a Bachelor's of Art and a Master of Arts in History from the University of Missouri. I'm now turning the program over to Eric. Hello, and thanks for that introduction. Again, my name is Eric Kilgore. I am an archive specialist with the National Archives and Records Administration. I work primarily with on-site researchers here at the National Archives at St. Louis. My main focus is assisting researchers such as genealogists, scholars, historians, or anyone else interested in conducting research at the National Archives and connecting them with information they need to meet their research goals. This sometimes involves complex multi-year projects with federal agencies to an afternoon helping somebody retrace their grandfather's steps through World War II. During the course of this presentation, we'll be taking a look at the 1973 fire at the Military Personnel Records Center, as it was once called, and the challenges it presents to researching these records almost 50 years later. As a matter of fact, this July 12th will mark the 50th anniversary of the catastrophe. As you'll see, we've made some amazing strides over the years, but the lasting effects of the fire present challenges to research. The National Archives at St. Louis is co-located with the National Personnel Records Center and houses records of those individuals who served in the military or civilian service from the late 19th century through the mid-1990s when the service branches and civilian agencies began transitioning to electronic personnel records. In addition, we also house over 140 record groups of what are considered personal data series records. These are records that can be linked to an individual. Our largest collection is the Official Military Personnel Files, or OMPFs. But we also have General Court's Martial Records, Selective Service System Records, World War I Burial Case Files, Chaplains Files, World War II Individual Deceased Personnel Files, and many more. We'll discuss some of these records in depth as they relate to researching our records later on in this presentation. Our current facility completed in 2011 boasts 473,000 square feet, including 250,000 of that being for record storage. Our shelving is 29 boxes high with two levels of catwalk separating the second and third floors. We have a capacity for 2.3 million cubic feet of records on 385,000 shelves and 15 separate climate-controlled storage bays. However, the story of this facility and how it came to be started almost 70 years ago. During the Second World War, the United States saw an unprecedented 16.1 million men and women enter service. For comparison, World War I saw about 4.7 million Americans in service. After the war, with no need to maintain troop levels, millions of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines found them discharged at the convenience of the government and for most, this was most welcome. The government recognized the immediate need for a central repository of service records, mainly for entitlement programs such as the GI Bill or VA Medical Treatment. In response, the newly formed Department of Defense began to build a facility to house all of the personnel files of individuals separated from military service. The six-story building was built by the Army Corps of Engineers. Its simple and economical design allowed for great flexibility in its primary purpose, housing records. The plan for the facility at 9700 Page Avenue called for the joint use by the Army, Navy, and Air Force, one building for three individual independent record centers. This facility, designated as the Department of Defense Military Personnel Records Center, DOD MPRC was completed in 1955 and the Army, Navy, and Air Force began moving in their records. At 11 minutes after midnight on Thursday, July 12, 1973, a local citizen driving home from work spotted flames on the building's sixth floor. He reported the fire to a security guard on duty. 19 minutes later, the first fire department arrived on scene and reported heavy smoke and extreme heat on the sixth floor. By 1.05 a.m., the smoke was reported to be so heavy that the source of the fire could not be located. Two hours later, the intense heat and heavy smoke drove firefighters from the building. They set up a perimeter and poured water from snorkel trucks onto the exterior and through broken windows. It took two days before firefighters were once again able to advance to the sixth floor. By that point, the roof had begun to collapse due to the intense heat and stress. When the fire was declared officially extinguished on July 16, over 40 fire districts had participated in battling the disaster. As soon as the fire was out and it was safe for personnel to enter the building, damage assessment began. Focus centered on two major areas, damage to the building and damage to the records. While the sixth floor was determined to be beyond repair, core samples revealed that the rest of the structure was sound. The decision was made to remove the sixth floor entirely and cap the remaining floors of the building. Damage to the records on the sixth floor was extensive with an estimated 79% lost. Some of the building's other holdings suffered minor water damage when water traveled between floors through electrical conduits, pipes, stairs, and escalators. An expert from the Library of Congress flew in to provide advice on countering the mold and mildew problem that would grow out of a water-soaked building during the hot and humid St. Louis summer. Despite preventative measures, mold infestation was first spotted on July 19 in the Air Force records. Shortly thereafter, mold was confirmed in an estimated 1200 other wet boxes throughout the building. Wet records were loaded into milk crates in an effort to stage them for drying. Here you can see workers retrieving records from the sixth floor. Notice the roof has collapsed and sections have already been removed. The millions of gallons of water used to extinguish the blaze had made its way to the lower levels of the facility and required immediate attention to prevent further damage to records. Crews continuously squeegeed water out of the building as it settled on the lower floors and corridors. Here you can see the wet records that were loaded into milk crates in an effort to stage them for drying. Crates were then sent to the Civilian Personnel Records Center on Winnebago Street in downtown St. Louis to be loaded into specially constructed racks for air drying. Some were sent to McDonald Douglas Aircraft Corporation to be vacuum dried and others were sent to a National Aeronautics and Space Administration Facility in Ohio. The remainder stayed on site to be dried in what became known as Tent City. This ad hoc drying operation was made up of nearly 30 Army tents set up on the lawn and parking lots of the Page Facility. Within two weeks of the building returning to government control, reference requests from the VA were being answered. Two weeks after that, requests from a few other government agencies were added. By October 15, three months after the fire, all incoming reference requests were being serviced. In the end, these figures represent the total estimated losses, over 22 million records. In archival terms, this is one of the greatest losses of information, not only in U.S. history, but modern world history. However, some good did come from this and as the saying goes, lessons were learned. The facility recovery and renovation began immediately and continued in the years that followed the fire. Construction of firewalls to break up the storage spaces began in September, the freight elevators were made operational that winter, and sprinkler installation began late the following year. The lack of sprinklers in the building was a focal point of criticism in the weeks and months following the fire. When the building was constructed, experts generally agreed that more damage could be done to records by water than by fire. Army fully concurred with this notion since their records were all housed within metal filing cabinets. Therefore, sprinklers had not been installed in their areas. The Navy, however, did not share this view and since many of their records were stored in cardboard boxes, sprinklers were installed in Navy storage areas. Over the next three decades, improvements to storage areas and an increased emphasis on solid archival principles ensured that the surviving records along with thousands of new records arriving yearly would remain safe. This is how the building at 9700 page appears today as it did after the sixth floor was removed. You can see the freight elevator shafts protruding through the roof where they used to open to the sixth floor. This image from Google Earth is taken from the same corner as the iconic photo of the snorkel trucks battling the blaze. You can see the fortress-shaped Previdale building, which was added later to accommodate Army Human Resources Command, which has since relocated to Fort Knox. At the time, it made perfect sense for the Army Human Resources Command to be where the OMPFs were. In 1995, over two decades after the fire, the National Archives appraisal team recommended that the official military personnel files become permanent, meaning that they would be transferred to the legal custody of the National Archives and kept for posterity in the public good. In an effort to expand access and to ensure the preservation of the records, NARA, together with the Department of Defense, developed a record schedule signed on the 8th of July 2004, making the official military personnel files permanent records of the United States. This schedule mandates the legal transfer of these files from DOD ownership to NARA ownership 62 years after the service member's separation from the military. As part of the initial transfer, the records of 1.2 million veterans who served with the United States Navy and Marine Corps were open to the public in July of 2005. In addition, 200 OMPFs of persons of exceptional prominence or PEP files such as presidents, members of Congress and the Supreme Court, famous military leaders, decorated heroes, celebrities, and other cultural figures who served in the military were also made available to the public for the first time. These actions resulted in the establishment of the National Archives at St. Louis. In November 2007, NARA opened to the public 6.3 million OMPFs of former military personnel who served in the United States Army, including the Army Air Corps and Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. In September of 2009, marking the 62nd anniversary of the creation of the United States Air Force, NARA accepted the first block of Air Force records into its custody. The opening of these records is part of the ongoing transfer of all military OMPFs from ownership of the military services to the legal custody of the National Archives 62 years after separation from service. Based on this rolling date of 62 years, all military personnel records will eventually become archival records held in NARA's legal custody and open to the general public. Also, in 2009, NARA signed an agreement with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management making the official personnel folders or OPFs of certain former federal civilian employees archival. As such, many personnel records of former federal civil servants whose employment ended prior to 1952 would now be open to the public. This unprecedented shift presented the National Archives with a new challenge, one that required drastic changes. It was determined that the facility at 9700 Page Avenue was too old and outdated. It could not be brought up to the regulatory standards imposed by the federal code of regulations for storing permanent records in a cost-effective manner. This is our facility today, which is located 1 Archives Drive in North St. Louis County. It is 100% climate controlled and equipped with state-of-the-art fire protection systems to ensure that the records of our veterans and civil servants are protected and their service and contribution are not forgotten. We're the largest archives outside of the D.C. area and the busiest of all the National Archives facilities. Besides storing and providing public access to our records, the National Personnel Records Center receives over 5,000 requests per day from veterans and their families for benefits or other service-related claims. Today, 50 years later, we are still working to clean and stabilize records damaged in the 1973 fire. Our new facility has a state-of-the-art preservation lab to assist in this endeavor. We have spent decades reconstructing records from alternate sources to verify service, character of discharge, and in some cases, awards and decorations so that veterans can get the benefits they rightly deserve. There is another very important part of this facility that differentiates it from the old location at 9700 Page Avenue, and that is that this building was purpose-built to have a public interface, complete with dedicated research space. The research room at the National Archives at St. Louis provides access to paper textual records, in addition to certain archival series there on microfilm. Earlier, I mentioned that the holdings at the National Archives at St. Louis are primarily composed of personal data series records. While at its creation, St. Louis's primary focus was on the official military personnel files, or OMPFs, we've added numerous record series to our holdings over the years. Some were due to the need for alternate documentary sources to reconstruct records in order to verify service and character of discharge for benefits. Others were needed to verify entitlements to awards and decorations, and still others were accessioned into our holdings due to their intrinsic value in relation to the other personnel records housed at this facility. Even though millions of personnel records were damaged or destroyed, along with the information contained within them, we have the capability in most cases to provide alternate avenues to research a veteran's service. While these alternate sources won't provide all of the information lost, they may be very helpful in filling in some crucial blanks. To begin, let's look at a few misconceptions that persist when it comes to researching these records. Earlier in the overview of the National Archives at St. Louis, we looked at some of the stats related to the 1973 fire and the records affected. Although this was almost 50 years ago, it's only been 18 years since these records were made permanent and open to the public. Still, many people still think that all of the World War II records were lost in the fire. Thinking back to those statistics on losses provided earlier, 75-80% losses of Army records is staggering. However, that leaves a 20-25% chance that the records you're seeking may still exist. While not great, those are not terrible odds, and we always encourage people to submit requests and see what's available. To drill down on those stats a little more and provide a better understanding of those numbers, that 80% of Army and Army Air Corps represents soldiers and airmen discharged between November 1, 1912 to January 1, 1960. The 75% of Air Force records affected pertains to personnel discharge September 25, 1947 to January 1, 1964 with names alphabetically after Hubbard James E. This is because Air Force records were filed alphabetically. This means that if a person you're trying to research was in the Air Force from 1947 on and their name comes before Hubbard James E, then their records were most likely not affected by the fire. Another common question we get is, aren't official military personnel records classified? While there may be some personally identifiable information or other sensitive material in OMPFs and other record series that must be redacted before being reviewed by the public, these records as a whole are not classified. In 2007, an agreement between the National Archives and the DOD was signed facilitating the transfer of OMPFs from DOD control to the National Archives. This agreement, known as Project 62, mandates that a veteran's record becomes archival or open to the public 62 years after the separation from service, including any reserve obligations. This means that any member of the public, not just the veteran or their next of kin, can access these records as long as it meets that criteria. So let's take a look at some of the most common types of records a researcher would encounter and examine some of the types of documents one could expect to find. While service members from the different branches will forever argue which branch is best, it would be difficult to argue with the fact that the Department of the Navy kept the best records when it came to their sailors and Marines. Fewer than 3,000 Navy and Marine Corps records were affected by the fire, so the collection is largely complete. The date range of the Navy OMPFs begins around 1900 and extends through World War I, World War II, and Korea right up until 1961 due to the 62 year rule. In these records, you'll often find photographs or photographic negatives such as the one shown in this slide. You'll also find enlistment and training records, duty stations or ships the sailor or Marine was assigned to, awards, disciplinary actions, and tons of other interesting information. This particular sailor is Ernest Thompson who went by Ernie. Ernie was what is referred to as a plank holder on the USS Missouri. He was stationed aboard her at the Brooklyn Naval Yard during her final fitting and commissioning. He was also aboard in Tokyo Bay during the Japanese surrender. Ernie's rating was water tender first class and he worked to keep Missouri's boilers online and battle ready. If you ever visit the USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor, you'll find a plaque at the entrance to the port side engine room in his honor. Until his passing in 2016, Ernie spends his days volunteering aboard the USS Iowa near his home in Long Beach Harbor. Mr. Thompson's record is a perfect example of what one could expect to find in a Navy OMPF. This is the official military personnel file of Charlie Lockett. Lockett was born in 1926 in Indianola, Mississippi. In 1944, Lockett enlisted in the Marine Corps, a relatively new opportunity for African Americans since the Marine Corps only began integration in 1941 after an executive order forced them to do so. Besides the usual military administrative remarks, it's not uncommon to find interesting personal information contained in these records. I'm not sure if you can make it out but in the lower left corner of the document on the right side, there's a small section that asks which sports he was qualified for and Lockett checked baseball. And then added sandlot when asked for school or team affiliation. Lockett and others trained at a segregated camp just outside of Camp Lejeune known as Montford Point. Lockett and the pioneering men he trained with would come to be known as the Montford Point Marines. Many would go on to serve with distinction in the Pacific while paving the way for African Americans in the Corps. Marine Corps OMPFs available at the National Archives at St. Louis range from around 1900 to 1961 under that 62 year rule. Beginning the process of researching official military personnel files is the same, regardless of whether the subject of your research served during the period that was affected by the fire or which branch they served in. You simply submit a request with some basic information and we start the process of identifying and searching for records. The first step is to perform a search of our database that we refer to as the registry. As records are retired to the facility from the service branch, they are entered into the registry. This allows us to search for records in our system as well as provide a physical location for the record out in the storage base or the stacks as we call them. After the fire, all of the recovered records were meticulously cataloged and later entered into the registry. So with a name and a service number, we can instantly perform a preliminary search in order to see what we have. All of the records that survived the fire but suffered water or fire damage were entered into the registry with a B prefix. As you might guess that B stands for burned record or B file as we call them. While we're excited anytime that we get a registry hit for a B file, we're cautiously optimistic since we don't know exactly what is there until we physically inspect it. The B file could be anything from a pristine seemingly untouched record to a charred corner of a document with a service number or a name on it. Once we've verified that the record in question matches the information provided by the researcher, these records are sent to our preservation department to be clean, stabilized and digitized. Once this process is complete, a digitized copy of the record is provided to the researcher. This of course is a best case scenario. What if you don't know the service number of the veterinarian researching or you submitted a request and there were no records listed in the registry? In most cases, we can help with that too. Our collections of organizational records can be used to gain basic information such as a service number to more detailed unit information. For most researchers who request Army or Air Force records from World War I through the Korean era, the final pay voucher is the most common document available. The caveat to this rule is that the service member had to be discharged in order to receive one. Unfortunately, this means that anyone who is killed in service will not have a final pay voucher unless they had a break in service at some point before re-enlisting for the final time. While it's surely disappointing to only have a single document to tell the tale of someone's military service, it's often a great place to start. These documents were created upon separation from service and basically squared the service person's pay account with Uncle Sam. It was their last paycheck and the government's last chance to deduct anything from their pay that was still owed. These records were instrumental in reconstructing service records following the fire. The fact that the service person received a final pay voucher indicates that they had indeed served and were honorably discharged. It also provides a discharge date and the place they were discharged from. In some cases, it also provides the unit they were discharged from. Sometimes this unit info is helpful, but many times at least at the end of World War II, veterans were assigned to separation units for the sole purpose of discharging them. And it makes it extremely difficult to locate them on morning reports. It's the proverbial needle in the haystack. Some may recognize the individual listed on this pay voucher as William J. Garnier, better known as Wild Bill Garnier, who served with Easy Company 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment of Banda Brothers fame. If you are familiar with the HBO miniseries or the book upon which it's based, you may recall that Garnier was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge and lost a leg. In the top left, third row down, you'll see that he was discharged from Thomas England General Hospital in Atlantic City, New Jersey in December of 1945, a year after he was wounded. R files, like B files, are another type of record with a uniquely assigned prefix in our registry. Just as the B stands for burn, the R stands for reconstructed. In the decades since the fire, NARA has reconstructed a few million R files, primarily from the Army, Army Air Corps, Air Force, and the U.S. Coast Guard. While these records are never going to be complete like the original, they often contain some helpful information. It's also common for the final pay voucher or a copy of it to be inside an R file since it was one of the primary documents used for reconstruction purposes. There may also be documents that were provided by the veteran, the VA, or state offices that may have had documents related to a veteran's service because they registered for state benefits. The reconstruction process was usually initiated when the veteran or their dependents filed a claim for benefits. If it was determined that the record was lost in the fire, the reconstruction process began. In most cases, the R file will contain the request from the veteran that started the process, and those can also have some valuable information on them. They may even contain letters like this one from Bill Garnier who wrote in to get a certificate of awards and brushed over some of the highlights of his service. This R file also contains a copy of his discharge, a report of separation which may have been procured from a state office or other source. This is the most important document, the equivalent of today's DD 214, which provides a complete snapshot of a veteran's service. While not ideal in comparison to an original OMPF, an R file can be a great resource. The World War II VA index is another great resource for finding service information, especially in cases in which the service number is unknown or if the OMPF was destroyed in the fire. For those wondering, there is a World War I VA index that is available online at FamilySearch.org. An important caveat to the VA index is that the names can be a little misleading. The World War I VA index is not only claims filed from World War I, but in the period leading up to and through 1940. This index contains claims from the American Civil War and Spanish American War through 1940. The naming of the index is not about the conflict, but the time period in which a veteran or a dependent filed a claim with the VA. These records can be a great starting point. It's common for a researcher to not have a service number for an individual they would like to research. However, if they have a name, city where the person lived, dates of birth or death, or any combination of those pieces of information, we can use the VA index to cross-reference them to find a match. The VA index is on microfilm and has been used ever since the fire to provide some basic details of a veteran's service to begin the reconstruction process. This particular card belongs to an individual that served as a flight engineer and top turret gunner on a B-17 named Alexander Lambert. Lambert's bomber was shot down over Magdeburg, Germany in June of 1944, and he was the only member of his crew not accounted for. The other nine members of Lambert's crew were captured and sent to Stollegluft III. Lambert's service number is directly under his home address in Minnesota. It also lists his date of birth, death, and when he enlisted. Notice that his date of death is listed as 6-21-1945 over a month after VED. This is due to the fact that he was placed in MIA status on June 20, 1944 when his B-17 was shot down and could not be declared dead for one year. The second line shows his rank as tech sergeant in the Air Corps. The XC number in the top right hand corner is the identifier for his VA claim file. VA claim files for this time period are not in the custody of the National Archives, but can be requested under the Freedom of Information Act from the Veterans Administration. The Army and Air Force morning reports have been an invaluable tool in reconstruction efforts over the decades. The entire collection is on microfilm and survived the 1973 fire. Digitization efforts are currently underway for the 1940-43 portion of this collection, and digital images for this time period will be added to the National Archives catalog on a rolling basis. The World War I morning reports have been digitized and are currently available for free on fold3.com. These records proved invaluable to providing responses to requests following the blaze. While the morning reports are certainly no substitute for the OMPF, they do provide vital information about a veteran's service. You see, the morning reports provide a daily accounting of a unit's activities such as location of the unit, when they were there, personnel arrivals, departures, losses, and mission overviews. Each veteran assigned to a particular unit will not appear in every morning report. However, they will appear whenever there is a status change. The image on the left is dated May 16, 1944. This is the day that Alexander Lambrick arrived at the 339th Bombardment Squadron. The morning report lists Lambrick along with a handful of others noting that they were assigned the 10th of May by transfer from headquarters Army Air Force Station 112 by paragraph 1 special order number 69, headquarters, the 96th. Now, if we were researching Lambrick's service, we could request the morning reports for headquarters Army Air Force Station 112 for May 10 and that report would show Lambrick leaving that unit. You can effectively trace an individual unit by unit month by month throughout their service. It's easiest if you have a date to start with. In this instance, we know that Lambrick was shot down on June 20, 1944. So all one has to do is look at the morning reports for the 339th Bombardment Squadron for June 20th to find him. This could just as easily be done with the information on a discharge or any other document that ties the veteran to a unit at a specific time. The images in the center and on the right are the morning reports stated June 20, 1944, just over a month after Lambrick's arrival to the 339th when the B17G that Lambrick was on was shot down over Magdeburg. The mission report reads, 20th June, bombing mission performed on Magdeburg, Germany, 12 crews, 49 officers and 72 enlisted men took off at 0545. One crew, Lieutenant Horn, aborted as scheduled and returned to base. Approximately 20 enemy fighters encountered, flak heavy and accurate, battle damage to all ships, only two out of commission for more than 24 hours. Lieutenant DeBrandis crew, which included Lambrick accounts for four second lieutenants, two tech sergeants, four staff sergeants missing in action. Under their names, it reads from duty to missing in action and dropped from squadron roles. While Lambrick's time with the 339th was short, these morning reports verify a lot of information that was lost in the fire. We know his unit, when he was shot down, what campaigns he participated in, and after the war, this information would be used to verify the date that he died or was presumed dead. As a side note, the National Archives also holds missing aircrew reports, record group 92, which are available on the NARA online catalog. For Lambrick and the others who died in service, there is another avenue of research available in the IDPFs or individual deceased personnel files. The National Archives at St. Louis holds records pertaining to deceased personnel. These include World War I burial case files, World War II individual deceased personnel files, and Vietnam era mortuary files for individuals who died in service in Southeast Asia. For this presentation, we'll focus on the World War II era IDPFs, but these records share many similarities, regardless of time period. The Army individual deceased personnel files are a record group that is actually part of the records of the quartermaster general corps, since the quartermaster corps handled graves registration. Currently, World War II IDPFs for veterans with surnames A through L are in the custody of the National Archives. The records of veterans with surnames M through Z are still in the custody of the Department of Defense, but will be transferred in the future. The quartermaster corps performed this task after the war ended for all American personnel that were killed in action and interred overseas, regardless of service branch. They were charged with disinterring remains from temporary battlefield cemeteries and either bringing them home at the request of the family or interring them in an American cemetery abroad. These records were created anytime the Army had to handle remains, including searching for or identifying them. IDPFs are a tremendous resource when an OMPF was lost in the fire. In many cases, documents pertaining to the veteran's death or missing in action status that would have been in their OMPF will be found in the IDPF. These documents are from Alexander Lambrick's IDPF. The document on the left is the War Department's telegram informing his mother that Alex was missing in action in Germany 10 days after his B-17 was shot down. The letter on the right dated August 2, 1944 is a letter from the notification branch of the Army's personal affairs division, providing Miss Lambrick more information about the details surrounding the incident and a reassurance that a continuing search of land, sea, and air are being conducted to discover the whereabouts of missing personnel. The left and middle documents are pages from the Army's report of death for Alexander Lambrick dated January 24, 1950. It includes detailed information about the mission as well as statements from the crew that were conducted as part of the investigation. Most of the crew had come to the consensus that Lambrick had most likely been killed by German civilians upon reaching the ground due to how the surviving crew members were treated. Prior to giving the order to bail out, Lieutenant Brandis, the plane's pilot, said that Lambrick stated, the top turret guns are damaged, number two and three engines are on fire. He continued that he didn't think Lambrick was injured and that the waste gunners believed to have seen him leave the plane with a parachute. He finished by saying, due to the treatment we received from German civilians and German land watchers, which was brutal and hostile, we believe that Sergeant Lambrick had fallen into their hands and was killed. The final document on the right is dated January 31, 1950 and states that the attempted recovery of Lambrick's remains cannot be resolved until further investigation is conducted. Unfortunately, the crash site was in the Soviet zone of occupation and the letter goes on to state that due to the current political climate, further investigation at the time was impracticable. Alexander Lambrick is still missing in action and his case is still active with the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency. As we've seen, the National Archives at St. Louis has numerous record series that can assist genealogists in uncovering information about the past through the records of veterans and civil servants alike. While the effects of the 1973 fire will forever impact genealogical research, it's partially due to that catastrophe that all these alternative record sources are available. This is just a small sample of the types of personal data series records available to the public in our research room as well as through our reference branch. Even though so much was lost in the fire, the National Archives at St. Louis has a lot to offer the genealogical community. You never know what family treasures you might uncover, but you have to take the first step and see what's out there. We're happy to assist in any way we can. This concludes this presentation. If you would like more information about researching records at the National Archives at St. Louis, please visit our website at www.archives.gov forward slash St. Louis. Thank you again for watching. This ends the lecture portion of the broadcast, but we will continue to take your questions about today's topic in the chat. If we do not get to your question, please send us an email. Note that the presentation's video recording and handout will remain available on this YouTube page and our website. We plan future programs based on your feedback. Would you please take a minute to complete our short online evaluation form? At this time, I'd like to thank the genealogy series team who contributed to the success of this program. We are grateful for your work. And if you enjoyed this video, check out the Know Your Records program. We have over 100 educational videos on how to do research with us, including playlists for civilian service and U.S. veterans. In the autumn of 2023, the Know Your Records program is offering this schedule of sessions. We invite you to participate with the National Archives presenters and other audience members. Although this concludes the video portion of the broadcast, we will continue to take your questions in chat for another 10 minutes. Please stay if you have questions. Thank you for joining us for today's presentation.