World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseUSS Kimberly was commissioned in May 1943 and sent to the Pacific five months later. Her first mission was to escort other warships from Japanese submarines and to provide naval gunfire support for Marines on the ground during the Gilbert Islands invasion. Between Jan 1944 and Sep 1944, she was based in the Aleutian Islands, where she performed anti-submarine patrols, bombarded Japanese positions in the Aleutian Island and the Kurile Islands, and conducted training. After a brief time in San Francisco, California, United States, she sailed to Manus, Admiralty Islands, from where she escorted two supply convoys for American troops fighting in the Philippine Islands. During the campaign in the Philippine Islands, she provided gunfire support for troops fighting on the ground and she shot down several Japanese aircaft, some of which were on special attack suicide missions. In Mar 1945 Kimberly was assigned to radar picket duty during the invasion of Okinawa, Japan, where she was attacked by two special attack D3A aircraft, one of which successfully slammed into USS Kimberly. The resulting explosion killed 22 (4 officially listed as killed in action and 18 listed as missing as the direct result of the attack) and wounded 57. She spent two months at the Mare Island Navy Yard in Vallejo, California, United States for repairs after the suicide attacks. By the time she returned to the war zone, Japan had just surrendered.

ww2dbaseAfter the war, USS Kimberly escorted the battleship USS Missouri back to the United States. She was decommissioned at Charleston, South Carolina, United States and was placed in reserve. She was recommissioned for three years during the Korean War. Returning to the United States in Dec 1951, she operated along the US east coast and in the Caribbean Sea. After decommissioning for the second time in Jan 1954, she remained in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Charleston for the next 12 years. In Jul 1966, she set sail to Boston Naval Shipyard in preparation for being loaned to the Republic of China (Taiwan). The transfer to Taiwan took place in Jun 1967, where she served under the name An Yang. She was modernized in the mid-1980s. She was decommissioned by the Republic of China Navy in 1999 and was sunk as a target ship in Oct 2003.

Destroyer Kimberly (DD-521) Interactive Map

Photographs

Kimberly Operational Timeline

Visitor Submitted Comments

Show older comments

27.  David Stubblebine says:
2 Apr 2020 09:59:23 PM

Betty (above):
According to Kimberley’s war diary, none of the four sailors killed in the 26 Mar 1945 attack had the last name of Miller.

29.  David Stubblebine says:
10 Jan 2021 06:07:16 PM

Special thanks to Cathy Singleton (above) for posing this question (again). This sent me looking deeper into the records and I discovered a small but significant error in the US Navy’s official history of the USS Kimberly as recorded in the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS). The DANFS entry says four Kimberly sailors were killed in the special attack of 26 Mar 1945 but this is incomplete and ultimately incorrect. The Kimberly Muster Rolls list four were “Killed in Action” but also lists 18 sailors (including one officer) as “Missing” with notations that they were “Lost overboard in an explosion resulting from Japanese plane crash on deck.” The war diaries say that once the fires were out, the ship lowered a whaleboat to search the area for survivors but none were found. So the total death toll was actually 22 rather than four. The text above has been amended to reflect this.