The fire was NOT at the VA, it was at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, MO, on July 12, 1973. Nearly 450,000 cubic feet of records were destroyed when the top floor of the building was gutted. Personnel records of nearly 20 million former members, to include my father’s, records were destroyed.
The major groups of records destroyed were:
1. Army personnel who served between 1912 and 1959, and those who had been discharged between Jan. 1, 1973 and the date of the fire. Remember that USAAC & USAAF personnel were part of the Army, thus their records were included in the Army personnel records destroyed.
2. Air Force personnel discharged between 1947 and 1963.
Yes his records were destroyed in the St. Louis fire.