Growing up, it seemed like Jay Zeamer could do almost anything. He made his own rowboats; he was an Eagle Scout, an expert marksman, and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. The one thing he seemed to be unable to do was what he'd dreamed of since childhood: being an aircraft pilot for the military.
After some work and a few twists of fate, Zeamer would not only get his chance to become a first pilot with the Army Air Forces; he would go down as one of the most storied pilots to fly in World War II.
Ever since he was a small boy, Zeamer had been interested in aviation. While at MIT, he joined a local flying club and earned his pilot's license. Even before he graduated, he joined the Army Air Forces in 1939 to go to flight school. By March 1941, he had finally earned his commission.
In the Summer of 1941, he was sent to Patterson Field in Ohio to get experience with a new bomber, the B-26 Marauder. While there, he met his future friend Joe Sarnoski. Zeamer didn't know it at the time, but he and Sarnoski would make military history together.
When Zeamer finally earned his flight wings, he watched as other students got their wings but also received planes and flight crews. Zeamer, it seems, was not good enough to pilot his own plane. He was made a co-pilot and sent to Australia after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
As the war dragged on, Zeamer showed his ability by volunteering for every kind of position in the plane, from co-pilot to navigator to aerial gunner. He just couldn't perform well enough as a pilot for his own aircraft.
Sarnoski, meanwhile, was having much of the same problems. He was an enlisted pilot but was not being promoted to fly in combat. After the summer of 1941, he was also sent to Australia, but he was sent to train commissioned pilots. After a promotion to Master Sergeant in 1942, he was sent to the Solomon Islands.
Around that time, Zeamer finally got the chance to fly his first mission as a pilot in command, flying a photo reconnaissance mission over Rabaul. He not only completed the mission but was awarded the Silver Star and finally the position of first pilot. It changed everything for Zeamer and his crew, which soon included his old friend Joe Sarnoski.
Intent on getting airborne and staying airborne, Zeamer and his crew unearthed an abandoned B-17 Bomber that had been abandoned at Port Moresby Airport. Nicknamed "Old 666," because of its tail number 41-2666 and the fact that it got shot up every time it went on a mission, aircrews had abandoned the wreck at the Papua New Guinea airfield.
Since no one would fly it anymore, Zeamer decided to make some modifications to the fuselage that were worthy of his engineering background. He stripped down the plane, replaced the engines, and added more machine guns to the plane, including a fixed position that could be fired by the pilot in-flight. Old 666 carried 19 heavy guns, while most B-17 Flying Fortresses carried around 13.
With their heavily-armed and agile new B-17 bomber, they volunteered for anything that came their way, no matter how crazy it might have sounded. Their willingness to put themselves in harm's way earned them the nickname the "Eager Beavers," along with a handful of Silver Stars, Air Medals, and a battlefield commission for Sarnoski.
That eagerness and tenacity put them on the most dangerous mission of their lives, a mission that would be remembered forever. With the Japanese advance halted at the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, Gen. Douglas MacArthur began planning to recapture the Philippines. But first, he needed the most up-to-date information on Bougainville, and some crazy pilot had to go take those photos.
The Eager Beavers of Old 666 were ready for what they believed would be a suicide mission. The Army knew the island was heavily defended, but they had no idea just how heavily. On June 15, 1943, Zeamer and his crew went up to get the photo evidence. On their way, they got secondary orders: the Army also wanted pictures of nearby Buka.
Zeamer, believing he was pressing his luck with Bougainville, ignored the order for photos of Buka, but Old 666 was over its target while the sun was still down, and there wasn't enough light for photo-reconnaissance. So Zeamer flew to Buka, where there was plenty of light to take photos of 400 enemy fighters on the ground.
Seventeen of those were preparing to intercept Old 666, flying along across the Pacific Ocean. Zeamer took the plane to 25,000 feet and headed back to Bougainville. The Japanese Zeros caught up to the B-17, and the enemy pilots were shocked to find it didn't attempt to evade or flee - it had to fly level for 20 minutes to get good photos.
Unfortunately for the Japanese, this particular B-17 was packing more heat than the enemy pilots were used to. The B-17 exploded with .50-caliber machine gun fire, aiming at any Japanese aircraft it could. The Zeros maneuvered to get in front of the B-17's flight path and strafe it where it was weakest. It took them 15 minutes to get there, but the two sides were soon on a collision course.
The enemy fighters fired a burst of machine-gun fire into the nose of the plane, hitting Sarnoski in the side and catapulting him back into the plane's fuselage. Zeamer, though attempting to fire forward with the pilot's nose-mounted .50-cal, had his legs torn apart when the nose glass shattered with the incoming fire.
Zeamer, though shot and torn to shreds, managed to get the photos he came for, then take the plane down to 2,000 feet. He flew the plane all the way back to New Guinea, losing just one crew member: his bombardier, Joe Sarnoski.
Sarnoski had gotten up and fought one of the plane's machine guns. Zeamer had repeatedly flown right into the Japanese planes' flight path to keep the Zeros off of him. They never managed to bring it down because they were all either too damaged or they ran out of fuel or ammunition.
Zeamer, believed dead upon landing due to blood loss, had flown the plane home at 2,000 feet without instruments, hydraulics, or oxygen. Sarnoski and Zeamer were both awarded the Medal of Honor, only the third time that two people on the same mission earned the medal.
After surviving the war, Zeamer returned to MIT and became an aeronautical engineer. When he died in 2007, he was the last living Medal of Honor recipient of the U.S. Army Air Forces.
In the early years of the U.S. War in Afghanistan, an anti-American militia leader named Ahmad Shah threatened to disrupt the elections for the newly-formed National Assembly of Afghanistan. Shah was just one of many Afghan nationals who sought power by bringing Islamic fundamentalists to his militia.
In a mission called Operation Red Wings, a team of U.S. Navy SEALs was dispatched to reconnoiter the area where Shah and his men operated. But the SEALs were compromised and forced to fight Shah's men in overwhelming odds. The resulting battle led to Operation Red Wings II, the search and rescue operation for the initial SEAL team.
It was a dark day for the U.S. military's special operations community, and it all started with a single goat herder.
Operation Red Wings was supposed to go down in five phases. The first phase was the insertion of a SEAL reconnaissance team to confirm Shah was in the area and assess the tactical situation. The second phase was for the first team to then direct a SEAL action team, followed by a team of U.S. Marines.
Phase three was to deploy Marines and Afghan National Army forces to protect the area's perimeter from outside insurgent forces. Those forces would then go out into local communities to provide medical care and assess the area's infrastructure needs in phase four.
The final phase would be extracting all friendly forces after insurgent activity was cleaned up, which planners determined could take as much as a month. On June 27, 2005, two MH-47 Chinook helicopters inserted the SEAL reconnaissance team. Lt. Michael Murphy led the team with Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny Dietz, Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew Axelson, and Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Marcus Luttrell.
They were landed far from any areas of interest, walking more than a mile to their first overwatch position. Almost immediately upon arrival, things began to go wrong. A team of local Afghan goat herders accidentally stumbled upon the SEALs in their overwatch position. Knowing they were civilian noncombatants, Lt. Murphy decided to let them go.
Now the SEALs believed it wouldn't be long before they came under attack, so they moved to a predetermined fallback position some distance away. They were right. In less than an hour, insurgent forces began to assault their position with small arms, RPGs, and mortars from three sides. Unable to raise their command on the radio or satellite phone, the group was wiped out.
Except for Hospital Corpsman Marcus Luttrell.
Luttrell was knocked unconscious and sustained numerous wounds and injuries. When he came to, he was in danger of being killed or captured by the Taliban. Back at their base, the operation became Red Wings II, a mission to find and extract the SEAL team.
Another SEAL team was organized on to two more MH-47 Chinooks, along with two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters flown by the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment - the Nightstalkers. However, when they tried to insert the SEAL team, the Chinook carrying the SEALs came under heavy small arms and RPG fire.
One RPG hit the Chinook carrying the SEALs, knocking it right out of the sky. When it came to earth, the crash killed everyone aboard, including eight SEALs and eight Army crew members.
Villagers of nearby Sawtalo Sar had heard the initial firefight in the ridgelines near their village. They knew something was happening in the hills above. When Luttrell regained consciousness, he had a choice of valleys to flee to, the Korengal or the Shuryek. Luckily for Luttrell, the United States had just completed a humanitarian mission in the Shuryek Valley, and the Pashto of the area were sympathetic to him.
Luttrell fled into a gulch just under a mile from where the firefight with Shah's militia had taken place. It was there he encountered a man named Mohammed Gulab Khan. Because of the American goodwill mission in his village, Gulad took Luttrell in under the Pashto tradition of Pashtunwali, a kind of asylum to protect someone from their enemies.
Meanwhile, Shah tracked Luttrell to Gulab's village. He knew the village was protecting the Navy SEAL, but he was outnumbered by villagers who would die to protect the Pashtunwali in their care, so he backed off. The village contacted the closest American base and hid Luttrell until he could be extracted.
In the three weeks that followed Red Wings, the United States was able to recover all the remains of those killed in action during the operation. Dietz and Axelson were posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for their gallantry under fire. Lt. Michael Murphy posthumously received the Medal of Honor in 2007.
Shah survived his encounter with the SEALs and only lived long enough to survive an attack by U.S. Marines in August 2005. He was killed three years later by Pakistani forces while operating inside Pakistan.
Marcus Luttrell survived the ordeal and even went back into active service, deploying to Iraq in 2006. After further wounds ended his career, he was eventually medically retired from the military. He received a Navy Cross for Operation Red Wings. He documented his story in the book: "Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10."
Since the drawdown of American forces in South Korea began at the end of World War II, North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung wanted to invade the South and make Korea one country under communist rule. There was just one problem: Uncle Joe Stalin wasn't having any of it.
Stalin knew the Red Army was unable to take the fight to the Americans and that the United States, still the lone superpower, was ready and willing to bring war to all the communist countries if the need arose. With the Soviet Union still working on its nuclear weapons arsenal, Stalin refused to let any satellite state risk war with the United States.
So what led to North Korean troops crossing the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950? One former KGB spy says a U.S. Army NCO in the code room at the U.S. embassy in Moscow was to blame.
In the very early days of the Cold War, the KGB knew very little about American intelligence activity in Moscow, even though the CIA was very closely watched by their Russian counterparts. The KGB had no information about American ciphers, the code room in the U.S. embassy, or even who worked there.
That all changed when Soviet spy Sergei Kondrashev discovered a Russian citizen in Moscow who was in love with an American serviceman. After the fall of the USSR, Kondrashev met with former CIA operative Tennant Bagley and began to tell the American things the CIA never knew about previously.
One of the stories he relayed was that of "Jack," an American NCO working in the embassy code room in Moscow. Kondrashev had managed to turn one American into a KGB asset. Sgt. James "Mac" MacMillan gave the Soviets all the information he could in exchange for a large sum of money and a Moscow apartment for him and his Russian girlfriend. All Kondrashev learned from McMillan was that the KGB knew even less than they thought.
Then they uncovered another American and his Russian lover. This time, the KGB hit the jackpot. Jack was overweight, greedy, balding, and an alcoholic. His Russian lover, code-named "Nadya," just wanted to live away from Russia. Kondrashev offered Jack and Nadya $100,000 and a ticket home if they betrayed the U.S. codes. Jack gave them everything.
By the end of 1949, the Soviet Union was able to read American ciphers all over the world. For 60 years, only six people in the USSR would know this fact, and Kondrashev was one of them. As for the Korean War, the intelligence gleaned from the newly-cracked American codes led Stalin to believe the United States would abandon South Korea, and he gave his blessing to the North to invade.
As for Jack and Nadya, the KGB reneged on the deal to let Nadya leave the USSR. They thought she would be turned by American counterintelligence and tell the United States the Soviet Union was reading their mail. Jack returned to the United States and was never discovered, as Kondrashev was the only person that knew his true identity. He protected his asset's identity until the very end, even after collaborating with Bagley on a book.
The Aleutian Islands are unknown to many Americans, and in 1941, upon entry of the US into WWII, even fewer. Remote volcanic islands (1200 miles from Alaska), barren and plagued by harsh weather and unforgiving winds, make them seemingly unlivable and bear little consideration except to the native Aleuts that call them home. Nonetheless, with US-Japanese tensions running high, as early as February 1941, efforts were underway to form the Alaskan Defense Command. Recognizing broad strategic value in the Alaskan territories, Colonel Lawrence Castner argued that ultimate success in these regions lay in creating an intelligence brigade, resources that knew the land, how to live off it unaided, and move about undetected-a perfect fit for spying on the Japanese. Given authorization only weeks prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, recruiting began to form the 1st Alaskan Combat Intelligence Platoon or Alaska Scouts. Shortly thereafter (February 1942), by authority of Executive Order 9066, the US military forcibly relocated the native Aleut population to internment camps, destroying their villages with a scorched-earth policy to undermine any invading Japanese troops. Then, on June 6th, 1942, Japanese troops quietly captured the two westernmost Aleutian Islands, Attu, and Kiska, with virtually no resistance. This was the world into which the Alaska Scouts were thrust, a unit whose exploits would cause them to become better known as "Castner's Cutthroats."
Despite acti
vities of the Alaskan Defense Command and the formation of the fledgling Alaska Scouts, US attention was firmly focused on interests in the South Pacific. Castner and others actively promoted the belief that "whoever holds Alaska holds the world" because of its strategic location—but following entry into WWII in December 1941 and reeling from ongoing Japanese aggression, the US had limited resources available in the Pacific. By late 1941, Marine Defense Battalions had already been deployed to US locations deemed to be the most strategic in the Pacific (Pearl Harbor, Wake, Midway, Johnston, and Palmyra Islands), and by early 1942 all assets that could be spared had been reassigned from the Atlantic to the Pacific Theatre. By amassing forces, in May 1942, the US was able to stand against the Japanese in the Battle of the Coral Sea and readied itself for ensuing action that would both turn the tide of war in the Pacific and shape the future of the Aleutians. Like Castner, Japan's General Higuchi Kiichiro believed that if he controlled the Aleutians, Kiska, and Attu specifically, he would control northern sea routes to prevent Allied actions against Japan, with air bases to launch offensive attacks. So, in league with Japan's final assault on Midway, a battle group was dispatched in early June against the Aleutian Islands, in part as a diversion, but taking Kiska on June 6th and Attu on June 7th, 1942.
Members of the Combat Intelligence Platoon were all volunteers, miners, trappers, prospectors, hunters. and Alaska Natives who had no combat training, hard men with skills as rugged outdoorsmen. Once authorized, Castner immediately summoned four soldiers who had served with him years earlier, Corporal Norton Olshausen, Privates James Redford, Donald Spaulding, and William "Sam" Bates.
Castner then began recruiting Alaskans, quickly adding ten men, one of whom had ten years of service in Alaska and another, a former park ranger at Mt. Rainier National Park. When the platoon was expanded to twenty-four members, Lieutenant Robert Thompson was added, promoted to Captain, and later made the unit's commander once the force reached a strength of sixty-six. Knowing they would be called upon for unusual duty, the men undertook fifteen-hour days of physical training devised for leg strength and endurance, alongside Morse code, surveying, and Commando skills. Operating in isolated groups of ten or fewer and given great latitude to accomplish their missions, the men had to live off the land and use stealth to avoid being discovered by the enemy. "The scouts were all very talented outdoorsmen; they could live and operate anywhere," according to Lt. Acuff. Already proficient in weapons use, there was little need for training. Standard issue for Castner's Cutthroats was a Trapper Nelson pack, hunting knife, .22LR caliber target pistol, and a sniper rifle, instead of the standard issue Springfield rifle or M1 Garand but the men were highly encouraged to carry what they were most comfortable with. Walker, for instance, preferred the Browning Automatic Rifle, capable of twenty rapid-fire rounds.
The Scouts saw their first action with the Japanese assault in June 1942. Anticipating the invasion, detachments were inserted on remote islands along the Aleutian chain to watch for enemy forces. When Japanese aircraft bombed Dutch Harbor as a distraction from the planned invasion of Kiska and Attu, a Scout detachment at Kodiak was able to report on the enemy tactics. Thereafter, the Scouts led reconnaissance missions to gather intelligence on troop movements and plan landing zones for eventual amphibious assaults against the Japanese-held islands.
Although Allied bombers could reach Kiska, fighter escort was impractical. In the face of the Japanese invasion, the need for an Aleutian base further west on Adak Island became urgent. So, on August 28th, 1942, the submarines USS Triton and USS Tuna disembarked a thirty-seven-man Scout detachment led by Colonel Castner. Paddling four miles in rubber boats to reach shore, reconnaissance found Adak uninhabited, clearing the way to land 4,500 men and tons of heavy equipment on August 30th. The mission of this Task Force was to build an airstrip and staging area in preparation to retake the Aleutian Islands; however, no suitable location for the runway could be found. Undeterred, the Scouts set about damming the entryway to a lagoon, then draining and leveling the sand bottom for the installation of perforated steel planking (Marston Mats). Later expanded and enhanced by engineers, construction began on September 1st, with the first bombers flying off the airstrip on September 14th.
The initial Japanese occupation force numbered only five hundred but was sufficient in the absence of US resistance and represented the first time an enemy landed on US soil since the War of 1812. The soldiers, who would eventually number 2,900 on Attu, were from Northern Japan and were accustomed to working in the cold and windblown Aleutian conditions, making them a formidable force. Following the landing, they took nine American prisoners at a Naval weather station on Kiska. The next day on Attu, they captured forty-three native Aleuts and an American couple from Ohio. These prisoners were transported to a prison camp at Otaru, Hokkaido, where sixteen of them would die.
Otherwise, the US military had forcibly evacuated indigenous people from their homes deemed to lay in a combat zone. The internment camps included "abandoned canneries, a herring saltery, and gold mine camp- rotting facilities with no plumbing, electricity or toilets." There, they reportedly had little potable water, no warm winter clothing, and sub-par food. Of the 880 moved, 75 died in the camps due to infectious disease during the two years of internment.
From September to October 1942, the Japanese moved all operations to Kiska, leaving Attu undefended. But at the end of October, the Japanese returned to Attu under the command of Lt. Col. Hiroshi Yanekawa. They established a base at Holtz Bay, preparing for the inevitable American assault.
Then, in March 1943, US intelligence identified a Japanese supply convoy intended to reinforce the Aleutian Islands. In response, the US dispatched an understrength fleet of ships to intercept the convoy. On March 27th, the two forces met in what has become known as the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, a naval surface battle that opened the sea lanes to enable a US response to the Japanese invasion of Kiska and Attu. Two months after Komandorski, the US was ready to act.
Operation Landgrab, the US campaign designed to retake the Aleutians, was launched May 11th, 1943, from Adak Island against the Japanese garrisoned on Attu. Comprised of 11,000 soldiers from the US 7th Infantry Division, the invasion force landed in a coordinated attack at the north and south ends of the island. Making their way to high ground that was further inland, US forces would pay a heavy toll, and the Battle of Attu would become the second deadliest battle in the Pacific Theatre, just behind Iwo Jima.
During the American counterattack, Castner's Cutthroats' main mission was to serve as guides and messengers for the army regulars. In some cases, Scouts like Lt. Acuff were placed alone on islands to give reports on aircraft sightings. Unfortunately, and despite guidance from the Scouts, the US Command believed this to be a simple in and out mission, so American units were not adequately provisioned- not even enough food. Much like the South Pacific, soldiers had to search every nook and cranny for their enemy, but here, in the rain, snow, and 120 miles per hour winds. Soldiers quickly began to suffer from trench foot and gangrene, losing morale and physical strength due to extreme cold and hunger. When they did find Japanese soldiers, they were forced to fight the hardier men in intense small battles. Leveraging their expertise, the Scouts set about instructing the Army regulars in survival skills, foraging off the land, and improvised shelters. Many men owed their lives to Castner's Cutthroats.
As the Americans closed on remaining Japanese at Attu, their commander decided to risk a Bonzai charge on US forces, planning to capture their artillery and return to cliffside caves until reinforced. Launching the attack in the early morning of May 29th, the Japanese were able to penetrate US lines in fierce hand-to-hand combat. However, the Americans responded with overwhelming fire support to quell the attack and, on May 30th, declare victory. It was then that many Japanese soldiers committed suicide, often using grenades. One doctor from a Japanese field hospital recorded in his journal that he killed all of the patients before taking his own life. Nonetheless, a few small groups of Japanese fought on into July, refusing to surrender. For their leadership in combat, two Scouts, Corporal Bagby and Private Conrad, were each awarded the Silver Star.
The ferocity of fighting on Attu and the need to reprovision caused the US to postpone its retaking of Kiska, where an estimated force of 5,200 Japanese troops were entrenched. However, on July 29th, 1943, Japanese forces executed a daring escape from the island. With US ships diverted by false radar signals, eight Japanese warships closed on Kiska and, in fifty-five minutes, boarded the total force undetected. So, when 35,000 US troops stormed ashore on August 15th, they found the island abandoned. But despite the absence of an enemy to fight, an estimated two hundred Allied soldiers died, victims of friendly fire, booby traps, a floating mine in the harbor, and other live ordnance.
The occupation of Kiska was the last major operation for the Alaska Scouts. Returning to Fort Richardson, the unit helped survey Western Alaska until the unit was deactivated in 1946. The "Cutthroats" were good men, tough as nails, strong in spirit, and loved the land they defended. Attu and Kiska are now much like they were when the Alaska Scouts navigated these islands, untouched battlefields, and artifacts of war that serve as portals back to an often-forgotten time.
Though the last surviving Alaska Scout, Lt. Earl Acuff, died in 2013, the Cutthroats' legacy, like the Aleutians, will endure.
When author Robert David Graham joined the Navy in 1988, the sea service was prepared for war with the Soviet Union. When Petty Officer Graham finally went to war, the USSR was a thing of the past. His war was the Gulf War, and he was stationed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ranger.
His book, "Gulf in the War Story: A U.S. Navy Personnel Manager Confides In You," is a diary of his time aboard the ship in the Persian Gulf. He welcomes you, the reader, aboard the Ranger and into Fighter Squadron One. "Top Gun" fans know it as the "World Famous Fighting Wolfpack," the Navy Fighter Weapons School adversary squadron.
However, readers of "Gulf in the War Story" won't be getting a story about competing naval aviators. This book is the diary of a closeted bisexual sailor at a time when "Don't Ask Don't Tell" is years away from being Defense Department policy - and serving openly seems like a pipe dream.
The book is definitely a war story, documenting the long days and the work sailors aboard a carrier put into running the ship and preparing fighter aircraft for sorties. Graham's book captures the ups and downs of life aboard a ship at sea and in wartime. It also reveals what life was like in the real-world "Top Gun."
"Gulf in the War Story" is a play-by-play documentary of history as it's being made. Not just the fighting history of the U.S. Navy in the Gulf War, but the personal accounts of real sailors and the history of the LGBT community in America, fighting its own war for recognition.
It is also the perspective of a sailor's emotional pain from the treatment received at the hands of his commanding officers. It's a look inside what really went on behind the scenes of a ship at war. The realism and truth between its covers has been confirmed by those who served aboard the Ranger at the time, including many who were a part of Graham's unit.
Graham could not write the book while still serving. Like Leonard Matlovich's battle with the Air Force, Graham purposely outs himself to protest the military's anti-homosexual policies. He wrote a letter to then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to voice his concerns, signing it as "a gay man" with two weeks left in service. Within five days, he was outed in his command and helped out of the Navy.
The exposé is cataloged in the U.S. Naval War College, the U.S. Naval Academy, and at Harvard University under its original title, "Military Secret," for a reason. It's a brave retelling of the experiences of a sailor who volunteered to serve but was unable to be himself and suffered for it.
"Gulf in the War Story" is not just a must-read for those interested in the history of minorities in military service; it's a chronicle of the life of a sailor serving in the military during a tumultuous time. When the book was first published in 1993, Graham moved to Germany, where he married a German woman and had three children. In his post-military life, he became an award-winning screenwriter, a career which he continues today.
Robert David Graham's "Gulf in the War Story: A US Navy Personnel Manager Confides in You" is available for purchase on Amazon for $18.95.
After some work and a few twists of fate, Zeamer would not only get his chance to become a first pilot with the Army Air Forces; he would go down as one of the most storied pilots to fly in World War II.
Around that time, Zeamer finally got the chance to fly his first mission as a pilot in command, flying a photo reconnaissance mission over Rabaul. He not only completed the mission but was awarded the Silver Star and finally the position of first pilot. It changed everything for Zeamer and his crew, which soon included his old friend Joe Sarnoski. 
The Eager Beavers of Old 666 were ready for what they believed would be a suicide mission. The Army knew the island was heavily defended, but they had no idea just how heavily. On June 15, 1943, Zeamer and his crew went up to get the photo evidence. On their way, they got secondary orders: the Army also wanted pictures of nearby Buka.
The enemy fighters fired a burst of machine-gun fire into the nose of the plane, hitting Sarnoski in the side and catapulting him back into the plane's fuselage. Zeamer, though attempting to fire forward with the pilot's nose-mounted .50-cal, had his legs torn apart when the nose glass shattered with the incoming fire. 
In a mission called Operation Red Wings, a team of U.S. Navy SEALs was dispatched to reconnoiter the area where Shah and his men operated. But the SEALs were compromised and forced to fight Shah's men in overwhelming odds. The resulting battle led to Operation Red Wings II, the search and rescue operation for the initial SEAL team.
They were landed far from any areas of interest, walking more than a mile to their first overwatch position. Almost immediately upon arrival, things began to go wrong. A team of local Afghan goat herders accidentally stumbled upon the SEALs in their overwatch position. Knowing they were civilian noncombatants, Lt. Murphy decided to let them go.
Another SEAL team was organized on to two more MH-47 Chinooks, along with two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters flown by the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment - the Nightstalkers. However, when they tried to insert the SEAL team, the Chinook carrying the SEALs came under heavy small arms and RPG fire.
Meanwhile, Shah tracked Luttrell to Gulab's village. He knew the village was protecting the Navy SEAL, but he was outnumbered by villagers who would die to protect the Pashtunwali in their care, so he backed off. The village contacted the closest American base and hid Luttrell until he could be extracted. 
Stalin knew the Red Army was unable to take the fight to the Americans and that the United States, still the lone superpower, was ready and willing to bring war to all the communist countries if the need arose. With the Soviet Union still working on its nuclear weapons arsenal, Stalin refused to let any satellite state risk war with the United States. 
One of the stories he relayed was that of "Jack," an American NCO working in the embassy code room in Moscow. Kondrashev had managed to turn one American into a KGB asset. Sgt. James "Mac" MacMillan gave the Soviets all the information he could in exchange for a large sum of money and a Moscow apartment for him and his Russian girlfriend. All Kondrashev learned from McMillan was that the KGB knew even less than they thought. 
vities of the Alaskan Defense Command and the formation of the fledgling Alaska Scouts, US attention was firmly focused on interests in the South Pacific. Castner and others actively promoted the belief that "whoever holds Alaska holds the world" because of its strategic location—but following entry into WWII in December 1941 and reeling from ongoing Japanese aggression, the US had limited resources available in the Pacific. By late 1941, Marine Defense Battalions had already been deployed to US locations deemed to be the most strategic in the Pacific (Pearl Harbor, Wake, Midway, Johnston, and Palmyra Islands), and by early 1942 all assets that could be spared had been reassigned from the Atlantic to the Pacific Theatre. By amassing forces, in May 1942, the US was able to stand against the Japanese in the Battle of the Coral Sea and readied itself for ensuing action that would both turn the tide of war in the Pacific and shape the future of the Aleutians. Like Castner, Japan's General Higuchi Kiichiro believed that if he controlled the Aleutians, Kiska, and Attu specifically, he would control northern sea routes to prevent Allied actions against Japan, with air bases to launch offensive attacks. So, in league with Japan's final assault on Midway, a battle group was dispatched in early June against the Aleutian Islands, in part as a diversion, but taking Kiska on June 6th and Attu on June 7th, 1942.
Castner then began recruiting Alaskans, quickly adding ten men, one of whom had ten years of service in Alaska and another, a former park ranger at Mt. Rainier National Park. When the platoon was expanded to twenty-four members, Lieutenant Robert Thompson was added, promoted to Captain, and later made the unit's commander once the force reached a strength of sixty-six. Knowing they would be called upon for unusual duty, the men undertook fifteen-hour days of physical training devised for leg strength and endurance, alongside Morse code, surveying, and Commando skills. Operating in isolated groups of ten or fewer and given great latitude to accomplish their missions, the men had to live off the land and use stealth to avoid being discovered by the enemy. "The scouts were all very talented outdoorsmen; they could live and operate anywhere," according to Lt. Acuff. Already proficient in weapons use, there was little need for training. Standard issue for Castner's Cutthroats was a Trapper Nelson pack, hunting knife, .22LR caliber target pistol, and a sniper rifle, instead of the standard issue Springfield rifle or M1 Garand but the men were highly encouraged to carry what they were most comfortable with. Walker, for instance, preferred the Browning Automatic Rifle, capable of twenty rapid-fire rounds.
Although Allied bombers could reach Kiska, fighter escort was impractical. In the face of the Japanese invasion, the need for an Aleutian base further west on Adak Island became urgent. So, on August 28th, 1942, the submarines USS Triton and USS Tuna disembarked a thirty-seven-man Scout detachment led by Colonel Castner. Paddling four miles in rubber boats to reach shore, reconnaissance found Adak uninhabited, clearing the way to land 4,500 men and tons of heavy equipment on August 30th. The mission of this Task Force was to build an airstrip and staging area in preparation to retake the Aleutian Islands; however, no suitable location for the runway could be found. Undeterred, the Scouts set about damming the entryway to a lagoon, then draining and leveling the sand bottom for the installation of perforated steel planking (Marston Mats). Later expanded and enhanced by engineers, construction began on September 1st, with the first bombers flying off the airstrip on September 14th.
Operation Landgrab, the US campaign designed to retake the Aleutians, was launched May 11th, 1943, from Adak Island against the Japanese garrisoned on Attu. Comprised of 11,000 soldiers from the US 7th Infantry Division, the invasion force landed in a coordinated attack at the north and south ends of the island. Making their way to high ground that was further inland, US forces would pay a heavy toll, and the Battle of Attu would become the second deadliest battle in the Pacific Theatre, just behind Iwo Jima.
The ferocity of fighting on Attu and the need to reprovision caused the US to postpone its retaking of Kiska, where an estimated force of 5,200 Japanese troops were entrenched. However, on July 29th, 1943, Japanese forces executed a daring escape from the island. With US ships diverted by false radar signals, eight Japanese warships closed on Kiska and, in fifty-five minutes, boarded the total force undetected. So, when 35,000 US troops stormed ashore on August 15th, they found the island abandoned. But despite the absence of an enemy to fight, an estimated two hundred Allied soldiers died, victims of friendly fire, booby traps, a floating mine in the harbor, and other live ordnance.
Graham could not write the book while still serving. Like Leonard Matlovich's battle with the Air Force, Graham purposely outs himself to protest the military's anti-homosexual policies. He wrote a letter to then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney to voice his concerns, signing it as "a gay man" with two weeks left in service. Within five days, he was outed in his command and helped out of the Navy.