KILLED  IN  ACTION  -  USS  ARIZONA  (BB-39)

DECEMBER 7, 1941

Fred Zimmerman was born on May 10, 1921, in Cleveland, North Dakota, to Frank and Cynthia Zimmerman, immigrants from Canada.  On January 24, 1940, at Minneapolis, Minnesota, he enlisted in the Navy for a six-year term.  Following recruit training at Great Lakes, Illinois, he was assigned on March 26, 1940 to the battleship USS Arizona and by late 1941 had attained the rate of Coxswain.  When Japanese aircraft attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, “Zeke” as he was known to his shipmates, was caught in a shower.  Crewmembers report that although he rushed to his battle station, he was the last to arrive at the battle station and was in such a hurry that he was only partially dressed and his t-shirt was on inside out. 

His battle station was in the Portside Antiaircraft Fire Control Director, a metal box like compartment located on a mast about 70-feet above the water.  Here, eight crewmembers operated the equipment that directed antiaircraft guns against attacking planes.  Quickly, Zimmerman and his companions directed volley after volley of antiaircraft fire against the Japanese planes.  However, their guns were often ineffective as torpedo bombers were too low for the guns and almost two miles above, the dive bombers were higher than the Arizona’s antiaircraft guns could reach.  Everywhere around Arizona there was death and destruction, as if the whole world was collapsing in on itself, and they were right in the middle of the implosion with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. 

As bombs stuck Arizona, one detonated close to the Fire Control Director.  The blast concussion and fireball blew Zimmerman out of a hatch door near where he was standing and his crew members confirmed his death before escaping Arizona.  COX Fred Zimmerman is one of the 1,177 officers and crewmembers who died in the attack of the ship.  His body was not recovered and may be in one of the “unknown” gravesites at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his name is inscribed on the Courts of the Missing.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)