eVetRecs — Requesting a DD 214 Online

The Nation­al Archives pro­vides the abil­i­ty to request vet­er­ans records (DD 214) for vet­er­ans who served in the US mil­i­tary between WWI and the present, using Stan­dard Form 180 (SF-180).

This can be done either online or entire­ly on paper. One can also request replace­ment medals and oth­er doc­u­ments. The online form is avail­able at:

http://archives.gov/veterans/military-service-records/#evetrecs.

For “online” requests, a paper copy must be print­ed (or a hand­writ­ten doc­u­ment must be pre­pared) in order to sign the affir­ma­tion that you are enti­tled to this infor­ma­tion.

To sub­mit the request, you will need to have a fair amount of infor­ma­tion handy, includ­ing the vet­er­an’s full name, social secu­ri­ty num­ber, ser­vice ID num­ber, birth date and place, and approx­i­mate date of sep­a­ra­tion from ser­vice.

A help­ful video on the process is avail­able on the site, as well as embed­ded on this page. 90% of requests are processed with­in 10 days, accord­ing to NARA.

eVetRecs Online submission form
eVet Recs Pop­up

You can also sim­ply write for the record. Is so, NARA requests the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion:

  • The vet­er­an’s com­plete name used while in ser­vice
  • Ser­vice num­ber or social secu­ri­ty num­ber
  • Branch of ser­vice
  • Dates of ser­vice
  • Date and place of birth may also be help­ful, espe­cial­ly if the ser­vice num­ber is not known
  • If the request per­tains to a record that may have been involved in the 1973 fire, also include:
  • Place of dis­charge
  • Last unit of assign­ment
  • Place of entry into the ser­vice, if known.

The ser­vice is free in most cas­es, and NARA will con­tact you if your request might have a fee. A fire in 1973 (Wikipedia | NARA) destroyed many records at the Nation­al Per­son­nel Records Cen­ter in St. Louis, Mis­souri, notably:

Branch Per­son­nel and Peri­od Affect­ed Esti­mat­ed Loss
Army Per­son­nel dis­charged Novem­ber 1, 1912, to Jan­u­ary 1, 1960 80%
Air Force Per­son­nel dis­charged, Sep­tem­ber 25, 1947, to Jan­u­ary 1, 1964
(with names alpha­bet­i­cal­ly after Hub­bard, James E.)
75%

How­ev­er, NARA con­tin­ues to recov­er and restore records, so do not get dis­cour­aged, and con­sid­er request­ing a cov­et­ed record again in a cou­ple of years, as it may yet be recov­ered.

Published

7 comments

  1. my name is dar­nell wright ssn#124486793. I need a copy dd214 from 1981 to 1986 navy.

  2. would like to get my DD214 copy and this is the place they said to check with

  3. I would like to get a copy of my DD ‑214 my name is shaun robert­son. I was in the navy june 1988-june 1994

  4. I was in the Texas Army Nation­al Guard, serv­ing at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas back in the 80’s due to a head injury I no longer remem­ber my ser­vice dates, how do I go about get­ting those & then a copy of my mil­i­tary records.

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