Profiles in Courage: Jay Zeamer, Jr.

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.