Appendix C – Part of Escape and Evasion Reports

Kept separate from the E&E Reports at the National Archives are what are known as the Appendix C’s.  An airman’s Appendix C is an excellent source of information on what happened to him after reaching the ground and avoiding immediate arrest by the Germans and up to when he reached Allied-controlled territory.  In a letter dated Sept. 28, 2010 from the Chief, Textual Records Reference Staff, I was informed that there are no plans to scan and make the Appendix C’s available online.  So researchers will have to either pay the National Archives II a visit, order a copy by mail,  or recruit someone else to locate and copy the document.  Sometimes, however, the Appendix C’s are to be found in the E&E Reports which are accessible on-line.  They may take the form of hard-to-read notes or a neatly typed reports which have been edited to include useful cross-references to other E&E reports.

To find the Appendix C for the airman in whom you are interested, you will need his E&E number.  If you have not found it from some other source (see discussion on the page of this website entitled Escape and Evasion Reports Available Online), you can use the E and E Card Index compiled by Allied Military Intelligence that is among the records at the National Archives.  The cards contain the the airman’s name, serial number, Bomb Squadron and Bomb Group, date Missing in Action (MIA), date cable sent from Spain, date of arrival in Spain or Gibraltar, date back in the UK, and which mission he was on when shot down.  Here is an example:

  • ALUKONIS, Stanley
  • 2nd Lt O-679013
  • 1st Div.
  • E&E 321
  • 305th Bomb Group
  • MIA 14 Oct. 1943
  • Schweinfurt
  • CIB 12-1-44
  • UK 17 -1 – 44
The full description on the boxes containing the index cards reads:
RG 0498 Headquarters, European Theatre of Operations, U.S. Army
Entry #UD 129: G-2 Section,
Military Intelligence Service,
Escape and Evasion Section (MIS-X);
E and E Card Index, 1943-1945
The card index consists of five boxes as follows:
  • Box 478, A-DR
  • Box 479, DU – KE
  • Box 480, KE – PO
  • Box 481, PO – WA
  • Box 482, WA – Z
Having found the index card for your airman, you now have his E&E number. Next you want to find the correct box containing his Appendix C.  There are two sets of the Appendix C’s.  One set appears to consist of Appendix C’s that were retyped and, for the most part, are more readable.  The full description on the boxes for this set is as follows:
  • Entry #UD140: G-2 Section, Military Intelligence Service; MIS-X Section; Narrative Sections (Appendix C’s) of Escape and Evasion Reports of American Airmen, Nov. 1942 – Nov. 1945.  Briefs of E (my description here is incomplete).
  • The box numbers for this set of Appendix C’s is:
  • Container #589: 1 thru 589
  • Container #590: 900 thru 2099
  • Container #591: 2100 thru 2986
  • Note that Appendix C numbers 590 thru 899 are not accounted for above. That probably is an error in my writing down the numbers.
The next set of Appendix C’s appears to be an earlier, often harder to read, set of Appendix C’s, but with the same information.  Some are badly deteriorated. The description on the box is as follows:
  • Entry # UD 141: G-2 Section; Military Intelligence Service; MIS-X Section; Annotated E (my description here appears to be incomplete).
  •  Container #592 – 11 thru 2814

Appendix Cs for the Royal Air Forces personnel are to be found in UD151: MI9 Reports & IS9 Questionnaires, Box 606, Location: 290/55/20/6.  They are in reverse alphabetical order and may not be complete but there are quite a lot of them.

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