[Laurent Rizzotti]

The other reason that ORB were not saved was that they were probably the least useful paperwork for the squadron's life. Pilot logbooks, payrolls, aircraft files, orders and instruction sheets were all more important to the everyday operational and non-operational activity than the ORB, that is useful only for us airwar historians.

I remember reading an ORB where the writer has written something like "I wonder if somebody will ever read this. If this is the case, thanks to you."

Also the content of the ORB tend to improve during the war, both in quality and quantity. Some of the 1939-1940 ORBs, even the ones of squadrons that remained in UK and so were not lost and recreated by memory, seem to record personal changes and officer visits and pay little interest to flying activities, even sometimes not reporting a fatal crash ! I'm quite sure that at this stage of the war, writing the ORB was the last thing the admin personal was doing during a workday, and it certainly was neglected during a hasty retreat like in France, Greece and so on.