Walker and Stender, then assistant archivist for the records centers, said the 1.6 million-square-foot building “reflected careful planning.' But “in actual function,” they concluded, “it was not a successful records center.” By the time of the fire, the military records center and a nearby one for civilian records had been merged into the National Personnel Records Center. “The building, 728 feet long, 282 feet wide, six stories high, presents an impassive façade to the world with its rather bland curtain wall of glass and aluminum.”īuilt for the Department of Defense in 1956, the facility was later turned over to the National Archives and Records Service, then part of the General Services Administration. Louis suburban community of Overland where the building rises on a seventy-acre site,” they wrote. “The sheer bulk alone makes a strong impression on the viewer, and the vast scale tends to overwhelm the quiet St. Stender and Evans Walker, who were with the Federal Records Centers, wrote in a 1974 article in The American Archivist titled, “The National Personnel Records Center: A Study in Disaster.” “Its size is difficult to comprehend, even when one is inside,” Walter W. If the records center was meant to inspire awe, mission accomplished. More than anything, it highlights the monumental, ongoing effort to reclaim the history that, at the time, seemed irretrievably lost. It echoes to this day - in the struggles of families seeking to document the achievements and sacrifices of loved ones, or to bury them with full military honors and in the efforts of conspiracy theorists, still searching for proof of a nefarious plot behind what government investigators long ago wrote off as most likely the careless act of a single man.

It is an event that dogged untold veterans, forcing them to fight once more - this time for benefits, medals and recognition they’d earned. It’s believed to be the largest loss of records in one catastrophe in U.S. The July 12, 1973, fire in Overland, Missouri, consumed an estimated 16 to 18 million personnel files, the vast majority covering the period just before World War I through 1963.

World war 2 navy records enlistments