They called it cursed. Tail number 666. A beat-up B-17 parked at the end of the runway as spare parts. No crew wanted it. No pilot would touch it.
Then Captain Jay Zeamer — a pilot who couldn't even pass his check ride — took it. He gathered a crew of misfits nobody else wanted and did something to that bomber that made every other pilot on the base laugh. On June 16, 1943, Zeamer and his nine-man crew took off from Port Moresby on a mission 600 miles over open ocean that three other crews had already refused. What was waiting for them over Bougainville would turn into 40 minutes of pure hell — and would make them the most decorated aircrew in American military history.
No escort. No backup. Just one bomber and one crew against everything the Japanese could throw at them. What they did that morning has never been matched.
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