Скачать или смотреть Command BANNED His Frankenstein Bomber - Until 17 Zeros Attacked and He Killed 5 in 40 Minutes

#WW2 #WorldWar2 #WWII

187 bullet holes. Five cannon shell impacts. Seven wounds on the pilot. Forty minutes battling seventeen enemy fighters. One B-17 bomber nicknamed Old 666 rewrote Pacific Theater combat doctrine and became the most decorated aircraft in American aviation history.
The modified B-17E that nobody wanted to fly carried nineteen .50-caliber machine guns instead of regulation thirteen. Captain Jay Zeamer, a disciplined problem bounced between three squadrons, claimed the worn-out bomber scheduled for scrap and spent three months installing unauthorized modifications that engineering manuals said would destabilize the aircraft. The bombardier-controlled nose guns, extra waist positions, and overlapping defensive fields transformed a dying airframe into something Japanese pilots described as "unusually aggressive for a lone aircraft."
Port Moresby, New Guinea, June 1943. Intelligence needed reconnaissance photos of heavily defended Bougainville — Japan's strongest South Pacific fortress. The mission required flying alone, no fighter escort, straight into the most concentrated enemy air defenses in the theater. Zeamer and his crew, the self-named Eager Beavers, volunteered. Standard procedure said it was suicide. The results said doctrine was incomplete.
Twenty-five thousand feet over the Solomon Islands, seventeen Zeros scrambled to intercept. Standard engagement time for a single bomber: two to three minutes maximum. Old 666 fought for forty. The mathematical envelope of nineteen guns created defensive fire that covered every attack vector. Zeros attacked from front, sides, rear — every approach met concentrated .50-caliber fire from multiple positions. Two fighters disintegrated in the first five minutes. Three more followed as the battle evolved into the longest single-bomber engagement recorded in World War 2.
Second Lieutenant Joe Sarnoski took a direct hit from a 20mm cannon shell. Shrapnel tore through his abdomen and neck. Bleeding out on the bombardier compartment floor, he dragged himself back to the nose guns and destroyed one more Zero attacking Zeamer's cockpit. He died ensuring his crew survived. Zeamer, fighting with one functional arm and leg, flew the shredded bomber 600 miles back to base and landed without brakes or hydraulics.
The Army Air Forces investigated. Regulations said Old 666's modifications were illegal. Combat results said the modifications worked. Both Zeamer and Sarnoski received the Medal of Honor. Every surviving Eager Beaver received the Distinguished Flying Cross — the most decorated bomber crew in American history. Boeing incorporated Zeamer's nose gun concept into the B-17G model, factory-installing chin turrets on thousands of bombers. Doctrine changed because one misfit pilot proved assumptions about maximum defensive armament were fatally conservative.
The reconnaissance photos from that mission gave Allied command complete intelligence on Bougainville defenses. When Marines invaded three months later, they knew exact positions of every bunker, gun, and aircraft. Thousands of lives saved. Cost: one bombardier killed, one bomber destroyed, one pilot who spent a year in hospitals refusing leg amputation because he needed it to fly again.

#JayZeamer #B17Bomber #AviationHistory