Something like this would suffice (using the unpack method as mentioned above):

sub Read_file {
  ## we assume CLAIMS is a valid filehandle
  ## and @array is a global
  while (<CLAIMS>) {
    push @array,[unpack("a8a6a2",$_)];
  }
}
[download]

Then you can access the information via $array[$linenumber]->[$itemnumber].

(untested, btw, but it should work).