The Certification of Military Service (NA Form 13038) is a legally valid equivalent and a perfect legal substitute for DD214 – for all purposes. On July 12, 1973, a disastrous fire at NPRC (MPR) destroyed approximately 16-18 million Official Military Personnel Files. The affected record collections are described below. 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% 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. Nevertheless, NPRC (MPR) uses many alternate sources in its efforts to reconstruct basic service information to respond to requests. To read more about the fire, visit: http://www.dd214.us/nprc_73fire.html Your records may have been included in the affected group. NPRC will also issue a Certification of Military Service whenever the original record – for whatever reason – is unavailable or unusable and when the veteran’s basic service information can be verified through other official sources. In such circumstances, NPRC will issue the Certification of Military Service – the document which we provided.