Lucky 666

by Bob Drury

  He determined that one way to keep his mind working was to total up the crew’s kills. He counted five enemy fighters definitely destroyed—Joe’s two, two more by George Kendrick, and Johnnie Able’s one. There were at least two more probables, including the Zero he’d blasted, and perhaps another half dozen severely damaged. Later, he’d have to speak to Pugh and Dillman to see how they fared.I

  J. T. Britton implored Jay to move back to the catwalk, where he and George Kendrick could lie him down to better treat his multiple wounds. Jay shook his head.

  “I don’t move,” he said, “until the mission is ended.”

  PUDGE PUGH INCHED FORWARD THROUGH the tail section and into Willy Vaughan’s radio compartment. It was so much warmer in the center of the fuselage, and Pugh lingered to watch George Kendrick and Forrest Dillman re-bandage Vaughan’s neck. When Pugh judged that they had the task under control he continued forward, gripping the thick, waist-high ropes on either side of the slim catwalk that spanned the bomb bay. He squeezed past the landing gear and ducked into the crawl space that led to the nose.

  There was blood everywhere. He saw J. T. Britton tending to Ruby Johnston’s head, and farther up he spotted Joe. The bombardier was still slumped over one of his guns, his finger still curled around the trigger. Pugh scampered forward. Joe’s ammunition belts were empty, and one of the .50-cal barrels was burned out. It was colder in the Greenhouse than it had been in the tail, and small rivulets of frozen blood formed spidery lines flowing from Joe’s body.

  Pugh lifted the bombardier away from the jagged edges of the shattered glass and rolled him faceup into his lap. He removed the ever-present rosary from the pocket of Joe’s boilersuit and pressed it into his friend’s bloody hand. Pudge Pugh cradled Joe Sarnoski in that position for ten minutes, until his own body heat began to melt the frozen blood streaking Joe’s boilersuit. He saw Joe open his eyes once, lift the rosary to his lips, and kiss it. Then Joe closed his eyes for good—“wounded to the death,” as The New York Times phrased it—and breathed his last.

  Pudge Pugh was still cradling the corpse when Ruby Johnston crawled forward as far as his pockmarked navigator’s table to ask how Joe was.

  “He’s all right,” Pugh uttered in a barely audible voice. “He’s all right.”

  He didn’t know what else to say.

  * * *

  I Contrary to official U.S. Army Air Force records, postwar documents recovered from the Japanese indicated that no fighters sent up from Buka to intercept Old 666 were shot down. Piecemeal reports of planes sent up from Bougainville are incomplete. The differences between the American and Japanese versions are undoubtedly the result of a number of factors, not least the fog of war. Moreover, attacking aircrews on both sides were known to inflate the damage they inflicted, just as commanders on the ground were given to minimizing negative results. In any event, for our purposes we found it more prudent to rely on official American records, including Jay Zeamer’s Medal of Honor citation, and the papers of eyewitnesses, most notably Zeamer himself and the statements from his crew, than the documents of a defeated enemy proved time and again to have lied about its military losses.

  32

  DOBODURA

  THE SUN WAS ALMOST DIRECTLY overhead when Jay spotted the lush coastline. The green jungle canopy beyond the beach looked so far away that it seemed to be sprouting from below the earth’s curvature. Johnnie Able let out a soft, coughing whoop as J. T. Britton reentered the flight deck to take his place in the copilot’s seat. Despite his impaired vision, Jay recognized the familiar outline of the American PT Boat base at Oro Bay, and a few moments later the contours of Cape Endiaidere. Twenty-five miles beyond it lay the Dobodura strip.

  Jay remained semiconscious, as if discerning only shadows in fog, as Britton swung Old 666 wide over the water, banked, and pointed the plane’s nose inland. The copilot yanked back the throttles until the yoke was pressed into his gut, and approached the ground low and hot. There was no time to fly a field pattern, and Britton could only guess at the wind direction. Johnnie Able was kneeling between the two pilots, one hand on Britton’s shoulder and the other bracing Jay to keep him from tumbling out of his seat. Everyone else assumed ditch positions in the rear of the craft.

  Someone had opened the bomb bay door in an attempt to catch some air to slow the aircraft down. It didn’t seem to work, and Britton swung the bomber over the strip so fast that it looked as if the tops of the palm trees were shooting up at them. Despite his pain Jay instinctively lifted his feet from the deck so they would not be clipped by the treetops. He saw the airfield’s rickety control tower flash by on his right and then they hit the dirt hard and bounced once, twice, three times. The old B-17 stuttered and croaked as if the rivets would pop.

  With no brakes they were approaching the end of the runway much too fast, and Britton spun the steering wheel with all his strength until the Fortress’s left wing dug into the dirt and its right wing caught air—what pilots called pulling a “Lufbery,” after Eddie Rickenbacker’s old World War I commander. Rocks and chunks of turf flew like sparks from a grindstone as the skidding, circular movement gradually tightened. Finally the bomber rolled to a stop in a cloud of dust, a yard from the end of the strip. Britton would later explain, “I just greased it in.”

  Someone noted that it was 12:15, more than eight hours since they’d lifted off from Port Moresby. When Britton cut the engines, Jay took a deep breath. Then his world turned to rust, sick and livid.

  JAY WAS NOT SURE WHERE he was, but he was in no pain. It was as if his body was numb from head to toe. He could smell the sizzling oil and fuel weeping from Old 666 onto the dusty airstrip, and he thought he heard men talking, shouting, though it sounded as if their voices were coming from underwater.

  Then, more clearly, a husky whisper, close, near his ear, beside his missing cockpit window: “Get the pilot last. He’s dead.”

  Jay wanted to shout, “The hell he is, you SOB!” But his world was dimming and he could not find the strength to move his mouth. He lay motionless as the hatch above him cracked open and two strong hands unbuckled his safety belt. He felt himself being lifted by his shoulders. The pain returned, unbearable. He passed out again.

  A fire brigade hosed down the engine, and the medics from the meat wagon that rushed out to evacuate Old 666 triaged and treated Ruby Johnston, Willy Vaughan, and Johnnie Able on the ground beside the wrecked aircraft. The remainder of the bomber crew walked the aircraft’s perimeter, astounded at the damage it had sustained. They counted upwards of 180 bullet holes and what looked to be at least five cannon blasts.

  Finally, two medics gingerly lifted Joe Sarnoski’s body from the blasted nose. His sister Matilda would graduate from high school the next day as class valedictorian. She would never receive her wristwatch.

  THE FINAL FLIGHT OF OLD 666 with Capt. Jay Zeamer at the helm commanding his crew of Eager Beavers was—and remains—the longest continuous dogfight in the annals of the United States Air Force.

  For the comrades in arms aboard the Flying Fortress on that day, the mission over Buka and Bougainville forged a brotherhood for whom distance and time meant nothing, compared with the love and friendship that continued to connect them by what Lincoln called the mystic chords of memory.

  For Jay, the born renegade, it was the culmination of a series of events that, in retrospect, appears almost preordained. But as any soldier who has ever faced an enemy knows, combat is never predetermined. It takes fortitude, training, insight, and luck to affect the outcome of an armed engagement. What Jay and Joe and the Eager Beavers accomplished that day was more than a contribution to America’s war effort. It was a feat above and beyond the call of duty.

  In their simple elegance, the words of Gen. George Churchill Kenney, written with the benefit of looking back on the horrors of a world war, perhaps say it best.

  “Jay Zeamer and his crew performed a mission that still stands out in my mind as an epic of courage unequaled in the annal
s of air warfare.”

  Not bad for a bunch of screwups and misfits.

  EPILOGUE

  WHEN JAY WAS PULLED FROM Old 666, the medical staff at Dobodura’s small field hospital determined that he had lost nearly half the blood in his body. An all-points call was put out seeking Type O volunteers, and scores of Airmen formed a line that stretched outside the door of the little building. Jay received constant transfusions over the next 72 hours, while doctors removed more than 120 ragged pieces of steel and rubber from his legs, arms, and torso.

  Twenty-four hours later he, Johnnie Able, Willy Vaughan, and Ruby Johnston were airlifted across the Owen Stanley Range and back to the larger base hospital near Jackson Field. There the medical staff prepared to amputate Jay’s left leg until it was decided that he had lost too much blood and would never survive the procedure. Jay was conscious for none of this. He did have a hazy memory of being lifted onto a stretcher and carried into the belly of a cargo plane. But he had no recollection of George Kendrick, J. T. Britton, Pudge Pugh, and Forrest Dillman accompanying him and the others to Port Moresby.

  When he awoke in the base hospital the first thing he said was, “Where is Joe?”

  Kendrick, Britton, Pugh, and Dillman, standing vigil at his bedside, exchanged glances. They knew that Joe’s body had also been brought back to Port Moresby on a separate flight. “In another ward,” one of them said. Then Jay asked after the wounded members of his crew. He received the same reply.

  Two weeks later, when his crew thought he was strong enough to bear the news, he was finally told that Joe had been killed on the mission.

  On June 18, 1943, two days after Old 666’s solitary flight over Bougainville Island, a Western Union telegram arrived at the Zeamer residence on Ridge Street in Orange, New Jersey. Jay’s mother, Marjorie, was home alone when she opened it. It stated that the War Department regretted to inform her and her husband that their oldest son, U.S. Army Air Force Capt. Jay Zeamer Jr., had been killed in action in the Southwest Pacific.

  Marjorie’s first instinct was to hide the bad news from the rest of the family. But she couldn’t. Jay’s brother Jere, who had recently joined the Army as a second lieutenant upon his graduation from M.I.T., was granted bereavement leave and rushed home from his posting at the General Motors Tank Proving Grounds in Michigan. Meanwhile Jay’s sisters Isabel and Anne, matriculating at Wellesley and Bryn Mawr respectively, also dropped everything and joined their parents in Orange.

  Three days later, as the mourning family made arrangements for a memorial service for Jay, another telegram arrived at the Zeamer home. It was from the Army’s Adjutant General’s office. It read:

  PLEASE DISREGARD TELEGRAM INFORMING YOU THAT YOUR SON CAPTAIN JAY ZEAMER WAS KILLED IN ACTION ON SIXTEEN JUNE IN SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA I AM HAPPY TO ADVISE THAT INFORMATION HAS JUST BEEN RECEIVED REPORTING HIM WOUNDED IN ACTION ON SIXTEEN JUNE WITH STATEMENT THAT FURTHER INFORMATION WILL BE FURNISHED WITHIN TEN DAYS THIS REPORT FURTHER STATES HE RECEIVED SHRAPNEL WOUNDS LEFT LEG YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY ADVISED AS REPORTS ARE RECEIVED

  Jay spent the next 15 months in a succession of hospitals recovering from his wounds.

  THOUGH JAY AND THE NAVIGATOR Ruby Johnston were not strong enough to be present, the rest of the Eager Beavers—including Johnnie Able and Willy Vaughan, who had begged permission to leave their hospital beds—stood at attention as a makeshift honor guard in front of fifty Airmen at the burial of Second Lt. Joseph Raymond Sarnoski beside a small, sun-kissed knoll in Port Moresby. Joe was one of over 40,000 United States Airmen killed in combat during World War II.

  A few weeks later, Pudge Pugh wrote to John and Josephine Sarnoski. “Even though you are both terribly upset,” he told Joe’s parents, “it might comfort you to know that your son was one of the finest, cleanest and bravest boys I have ever known or chummed with.

  “In trying to tell you how much he meant to me as a real buddy,” Pudge continued, “words are just too inadequate to describe. His character was the highest and finest of any young man I have ever known. If these few words ease the pain you feel, if only for a second, I will feel a little better also.”

  THE GROUND CREW THAT HAULED Old 666 off the Dobodura airstrip confirmed what the dazed aircrew had seen, counting 187 bullet holes and five gaping cannon holes in the shredded skin. But the K-17 trimetrogon cameras were undamaged. The film from them was flown to Port Moresby the day Old 666 landed. Once developed, the photos proved to be invaluable to Adm. Halsey and his invasion planners. Because of those images, Empress Augusta Bay’s perilous coral reefs were located, delineated, and charted, and the topography of Bougainville’s beachheads was revised for the LST craft that would carry the American landing force.

  On the last day of June 1943, fourteen days after Old 666’s photo-mapping mission of Buka and Bougainville, Gen. MacArthur and Adm. Halsey launched Operation Cartwheel, their grand Pacific strategy. MacArthur’s infantry landed at Nassau Bay on the north coast of New Guinea, and by September Lae was in Allied hands. Simultaneously, Halsey directed the 4th Marine Raider Battalion’s successful invasion and capture of New Georgia in the central Solomons.

  The climactic event in Operation Cartwheel took place on November 1, when the 3rd Marine Division and the Army’s 2nd Raider Regiment stormed ashore at Torokina Point on the west coast of Bougainville Island. Much of the credit for the successful landings was given to the drivers of the Marine landing craft who, using maps and charts developed by the Army Corps of Engineers from the photographs taken by the crew of Old 666, successfully avoided the deadly reefs lacing Empress Augusta Bay.I Those maps and charts were credited with saving countless American lives.

  Perhaps more important, persuasive revisionist historians such as John Prados at the University of Tennessee have recently begun to credit the Solomon Islands campaign, which culminated with the landings on Bougainville and the neutralization of Rabaul, as the true turning point of the Pacific war. “It seemed almost an entrenched interpretation among participants and historians that the Battle of Midway in June 1942 represented that decisive event,” Dr. Prados writes in Islands of Destiny. He argues, however, “My reading and research eventually supplied convincing evidence that the moment of decision occurred during the campaign for the Solomon Islands.”

  The eminent naval historian Bruce Gamble is even more specific regarding the importance of the capture of Bougainville, calling the primitive runway that American Seabees blasted and bulldozed out of the island’s swampland “the most important Allied airstrip of the South Pacific war.”

  Indeed, though the fighting on Bougainville would continue for over a year, the American landings on the island’s west coast for the first time truly put the Japanese on the defensive not just in the Southwest Pacific but across the entire Asian rim. Moreover, Halsey’s control of Bougainville combined with Nimitz’s advances in the Central Pacific served to make MacArthur’s long-desired invasion of Rabaul unnecessary. Instead, with Rabaul isolated and its lines of resupply ultimately severed, the Supreme Commander was free to concentrate on the successful American and Australian counteroffensive in western New Guinea. The capture of Bougainville led directly to MacArthur’s return to the Philippines, and Nimitz’s island-hopping campaigns weakened the Japanese military to the point where it no longer presented a viable fighting force.

  This is not to say that the capture of Bougainville completely eliminated Rabaul from the war’s calculations. The Japanese hung on in the town and, shortly after Halsey’s troops landed on Bougainville, even managed one major reinforcement consisting of hundreds of aircraft. But as the Allies had foreseen, with American single-engine fighters now based on Bougainville and available as screening escorts, U.S. bomber formations turned the skies over Rabaul black with near-daily air flotillas. In addition, with Bougainville in hand, Halsey was confident enough to conduct two carrier strikes against Rabaul. Within four months the once-vaunted enemy citadel that had sprung up around Simpson Harbour had been almost complet
ely razed. As the historian Gamble further notes, the Allied air attacks on Rabaul—which began in January 1942 and continued through the end of the war in August 1945—constituted the longest battle of World War II.

  While it continued to be overshadowed by the European-based 8th Air Force, Gen. Kenney’s 5th Air Force grew stronger as Allied forces crept inexorably closer to the Japanese homeland. The 5th was spearheaded by the 43rd Bomb Group—the “First Team,” as they came to call themselves—and the Group’s Airmen were able to cite a series of “firsts” to back up their claim. They were the first to make practical use of skip bombs, the first to operate out of New Guinea, the first to attack the seemingly impregnable “Fortress Rabaul,” the first to sight and smash the Japanese during the decisive Battle of the Bismarck Sea, and the first outfit in the Southwest Pacific Theater to lay mines from the air (dropping 18 from an altitude of 300 feet into the mouth of northeast New Guinea’s Sepik River in May 1943). Perhaps above all, the pilots of the 43rd Bomb Group were also the first to prove the deadly fighting qualities of the Flying Fortress against the Zero.

  As for Old 666, despite the beating it took over Bougainville, it was somehow patched up, made ready to fly again, and assigned to the 8th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron of the 6th Photographic Reconnaissance Group. Finally, in February 1944, with the E series of B-17s having been gradually rotated out of combat and replaced by the newer F and G Flying Fortress models, Old 666 was flown to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and, as the Bomb Group’s Official History sardonically notes, “farmed out to pasture like a good old fire horse.”