For 535th Families

Finding Your Relative in the 535th

Very few resources cover the 535th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion. If you are a descendant researching a man who served in it, here is the path that worked for us, and where to look next.

Start with what the family holds

The single most valuable document is the discharge certificate (WD AGO Form 53-55). It records rank, unit, MOS, campaigns, decorations, and the dates of departure, arrival, and separation. Box 6 often names the specific firing battery (A, B, C, or D), the detail that lets you follow one man through the battalion’s daily records. Scan it at 600 dpi, and redact the Army serial number before publishing anything online.

Request the Official Military Personnel File (OMPF)

Next of kin can request the file from the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis, free of charge, via the National Archives (eVetRecs / SF-180). Note the 1973 NPRC fire destroyed roughly 80% of Army personnel records for men discharged 1912–1960, but don’t stop there. Files are often reconstructed from other sources below.

Get the morning reports

Daily unit personnel records, the morning reports at the National Archives in St. Louis, survived the fire and are searchable by name and unit. They can place an individual with his battery day by day: promotions, hospitalizations, transfers. This is how you reconstruct a service record the fire “destroyed.”

Pull the After Action Reports

For where the unit was, request the 535th’s After Action Reports and unit journals from Record Group 407 at the National Archives, College Park. These give month-by-month positions and operations from Normandy to V-E Day.

Find the unit history book

“Battalion from the Mojave,” Vols. 1 & 2 is the 535th’s own published history, often with rosters and photographs. Copies appear on Amazon, AbeBooks, and eBay; use WorldCat to find a library holding one near you.

Check the orders of battle & ABMC

Confirm attachments (the 535th served under the 99th Infantry Division from late 1944) via published orders of battle. For men who died overseas, search the American Battle Monuments Commission database for burial and memorial records.

Connect with the community

535th descendants and veterans’ families continue to share photographs and records online. The village of Cannington, Somerset, the battalion’s English camp, keeps its memory, with a memorial in the Church of St. Mary.

Key links

Researching the 535th? If you have photographs, a copy of “Battalion from the Mojave,” or records of your own relative in the battalion, they would help build the fuller picture this site hopes to become. See the Sources page for the full record trail.

Add to the archive

If you have photographs, documents, or records of Nels or another man of the 535th, you can send them here. Submissions go privately to the family, are reviewed by hand, and added only if they fit. Nothing is posted automatically.

JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, HEIC, TIFF, or PDF. Up to 10 files, 25 MB each.

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