On June 16, 1943, Captain Jay Zeamer climbed into a B-17 that already looked as though it had survived one war too many.
The aircraft's serial number ended in 666, which was enough to give it a memorable name.
The men who flew it called it Old 666.
It was a B-17E Flying Fortress that had already absorbed the kind of punishment that usually pushed an aircraft toward the maintenance line, spare-parts pool, or scrapyard.
Its skin carried repairs.
Its equipment had been altered.
Its reputation was less glamorous than that of the newer bombers arriving in the Southwest Pacific.
Yet Zeamer's crew had taken possession of the unwanted Fortress and turned it into something personal.
They repaired what they could.
They modified what they could.
They added defensive firepower wherever experience told them Japanese fighters were most likely to appear.
By the time they were finished, Old 666 was no ordinary reconnaissance aircraft.
It was still an aging B-17.
It was also one of the most heavily armed Flying Fortresses in the theater.
That morning, however, extra machine guns would not solve the most important problem.
Old 666 was going out alone.
There would be no formation of B-17s around it.
There would be no protective box of overlapping defensive fire.
There would be no fighter escort circling overhead.
The mission required Zeamer and his crew to fly hundreds of miles across open ocean toward Buka and Bougainville, photograph Japanese positions that Allied planners urgently needed to study, and then return to New Guinea.
The photographs were not optional intelligence.
The Allies were planning future operations in the northern Solomon Islands.
They needed accurate information about coastlines, airfields, roads, defensive positions, terrain, and possible landing areas.
Bad photographs could become bad maps.
Bad maps could send landing craft toward the wrong beaches.
They could place artillery where terrain made movement impossible.
They could leave invasion troops approaching positions planners had failed to see.
A reconnaissance crew might never fire a bomb at the enemy and still influence thousands of men who would arrive months later.
That was why the photographic run had to be straight.
That was why it had to be level.
That was why Zeamer could not simply throw the B-17 into evasive turns whenever an enemy aircraft appeared.
The cameras below needed stable geometry.
The navigator needed the aircraft exactly where the mission plan required it.
The photographic crew needed enough uninterrupted time to capture overlapping images that intelligence specialists could later turn into useful maps.
A reconnaissance aircraft that survived but returned without the required photographs could still have failed.
That distinction would become terrifyingly important over Bougainville.
As Old 666 approached the photographic run, somebody aboard spotted activity far below.
Aircraft were moving on a Japanese field.
Not one or two.
Fighters.
Japanese pilots were taking off.
More followed.
Soon the crew could see enough aircraft climbing toward them that the threat could no longer be mistaken for routine defensive activity.
Approximately twenty Japanese fighters were coming up.
Old 666 was alone at altitude.
The fighters had a long climb, but they also knew exactly where the B-17 was going.
The obvious survival decision was to turn away.
The photographs could be attempted another day.
The crew had not yet been surrounded.
Zeamer still had time to make the aircraft difficult to intercept.
He could abandon the photographic track and use altitude, speed, cloud, and distance to increase the odds of reaching home.
Instead, he kept Old 666 on the planned course.
The cameras continued working.
The Japanese fighters continued climbing.
And during approximately the next three-quarters of an hour, one battered American bomber would be attacked so violently that two men aboard would eventually receive the Medal of Honor.
One of them would not survive to wear it.
The other would continue flying after wounds severe enough that people later wondered how he had remained conscious.
Around them, the rest of the crew would keep shooting, treating wounds, calling threats, and holding together an aircraft that the enemy was systematically trying to tear apart.
The photographs would survive.
Old 666 would survive.
Most of the men aboard would survive.
But none of that was guaranteed when the first Japanese fighters leveled out and began closing.
At that moment, Zeamer's crew possessed only three advantages.
They knew their aircraft.
They had rebuilt it around the lessons of previous combat.
And they had already decided that the mission mattered enough to continue.
Everything else belonged to the enemy.
The Southwest Pacific Was an Air War Fought Over Enormous Distances
The map looked deceptively simple.
New Guinea lay to the west.
The Solomon Islands stretched southeast in a long broken chain.
Bougainville formed one of the largest islands in the northern Solomons.
Buka sat just beyond its northern tip.
To people looking at a modern map, the islands can appear close together.
To a wartime aircrew, they were separated by immense areas of ocean, jungle, mountains, cloud, and enemy-controlled airspace.
Distance defined operations.
A bomber that suffered engine trouble might have nowhere to land.
A fighter running low on fuel could not simply divert to a friendly airfield if none existed nearby.
Navigational error over open water could be fatal.
A crew could fly for hours while seeing nothing beneath them except ocean.
Then, within minutes, the empty horizon could become a battlefield.
The Japanese had spent the early war building a defensive network across islands and airfields that allowed their aircraft to threaten Allied movement.
Rabaul, farther northwest, became one of the great Japanese bases in the region.
Other fields supported fighter and reconnaissance operations across the northern Solomons.
Buka and Bougainville therefore mattered for more than geography.
They were pieces of a wider defensive system.
By 1943, Allied strategy in the Southwest Pacific was shifting from survival toward sustained advance.
Guadalcanal had become a brutal proof that Japanese expansion could be stopped.
New Guinea remained a vast campaign of its own.
American and Australian forces were pushing against Japanese positions through some of the most difficult terrain in the world.
The next question was where to move after that.
Every advance required intelligence.
The islands were not empty shapes on a naval chart.
Coastlines hid reefs.
Jungle concealed roads.
Hills dominated beaches.
Airfields could be expanded or camouflaged.
Japanese defensive positions were constantly changing.
Aerial photography offered planners a way to see the battlefield before soldiers arrived.
But first, somebody had to fly close enough to take the photographs.
Photographic Reconnaissance Could Be More Dangerous Than Bombing
A bomber attacking a target usually wanted to approach, release its bombs, and leave.
The final bombing run required relative stability, but once the bombs were gone, the aircraft could turn away.
A photographic mission could be more demanding.
The cameras needed specific coverage.
To create useful mapping imagery, the aircraft often had to maintain a carefully planned altitude, heading, and speed while taking a sequence of overlapping photographs.
The pilot could not simply weave constantly.
A hard turn might ruin the alignment.
A climb or descent could change scale.
A deviation from the track might leave an unmapped gap exactly where planners most needed information.
The enemy understood this too.
A reconnaissance aircraft flying a straight line over a strategic area was predictable.
Predictability is dangerous in combat.
A fighter pilot does not need to guess where the target will turn if the target is required not to turn.
The mission over Buka and Bougainville therefore contained a contradiction.
The more perfectly Zeamer flew the photographic track, the easier he became to intercept.
The safer he made the airplane through maneuver, the less useful the photographs became.
There was no solution that maximized both.
The crew would eventually have to choose which risk mattered more.
They had volunteered because they already understood the answer command needed.
Get the pictures.
Jay Zeamer Was Not the Kind of Pilot Who Built His Reputation Easily
Jay Zeamer Jr. had not entered combat as the obvious model of a future Medal of Honor recipient.
Like many wartime airmen, his career contained frustration before it contained legend.
He had trained as a pilot before the United States entered the war and eventually reached the Pacific, where the realities of combat aviation proved very different from stateside flying.
Bomber pilots needed more than the ability to control a large aircraft.
They had to manage crews.
Maintain formation.
Navigate weather.
Handle engines damaged by combat.
Make decisions while machine-gun and cannon fire moved through the airplane.
The Southwest Pacific magnified every problem.
Aircraft were worn hard.
Maintenance conditions could be primitive compared with those in the United States.
Heat, humidity, mud, salt air, and constant operational demands aged machines quickly.
Combat crews developed reputations for improvisation because official procedures could not anticipate everything.
Zeamer's path gradually placed him among men who valued competence more than polish.
They wanted a pilot who would bring them home.
They wanted crewmen who would stay at their positions.
They wanted an aircraft they understood.
Old 666 became the physical center around which that trust formed.
The Crew Became Known for Wanting the Aircraft Nobody Else Wanted
There is something important in that fact.
A new bomber inspires confidence automatically.
Fresh engines.
Undamaged controls.
Clean electrical systems.
Turrets that have not been repaired repeatedly.
Old 666 offered none of that psychological comfort.
The B-17 had already been used heavily.
It had suffered damage.
Other crews did not regard it as desirable.
Zeamer's crew saw an opportunity.
If nobody else wanted the aircraft, they could make it theirs.
They could alter it according to experience rather than accept every factory arrangement unchanged.
Machine-gun positions mattered especially.
The B-17E had been designed with substantial defensive armament, including powered turrets and waist positions.
But combat in the Pacific revealed weaknesses.
Japanese pilots studied American bombers just as German pilots studied B-17s over Europe.
A fortress that looked heavily armed from one angle could still possess a vulnerable approach from another.
Zeamer's men wanted fewer vulnerabilities.
They added guns.
They changed positions.