Gerald Zinser; Last Surviving Crewman of Kennedy’s PT 109

Gerald Zinser, 82, last surviving crewman aboard President John F. Kennedy’s doomed PT 109 in the South Pacific in World War II, died Aug. 21 in Orange Park, Fla., of complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

Zinser, a machinist’s mate first class and the only career Navy man in the crew, was standing near the engine room hatch when a Japanese destroyer sliced the 80-foot patrol torpedo boat in two on Aug. 2, 1943. He was hurled into the air, knocked unconscious for several minutes and came to in the water.

Two crewmen died, Kennedy suffered a back injury, and Zinser and another crewman were burned. Kennedy, Zinser and the nine other survivors made a yeoman four-hour, 3 1/2-mile swim to safety on tiny Plum Pudding Island. They were stranded there and on another island for six days.

Zinser was an extra in the 1963 motion picture “PT 109,” which was based on former Times journalist Robert J. Donovan’s book of the same title that related the heroic story.