Old Six Sixty-Six and Jay Zeamer's crew, the most decorated bomber crew in American history

On June 16, 1943, a battered B-17 Flying Fortress nicknamed “Old 666” flew a photo-reconnaissance mission over Bougainville in the South Pacific and survived a running battle against roughly 20 Japanese fighters. That single flight earned two Medals of Honor and a Distinguished Service Cross for every other man aboard, making pilot Jay Zeamer’s crew the most decorated combat aircrew in American history. No single bomber flight has ever earned more.

The Airplane Nobody Wanted

In 1943, a worn-out Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress sat parked in the weeds at a forward airfield in the South Pacific. She was patched, beaten up, and left to rot—her engines couldn’t make rated power, and her tail number ended in 666. The crews took one look at those three sixes and called her “Old Six Sixty-Six.” She was the airplane a squadron commander assigns to nobody, because nobody wanted her.

That changed when a young pilot named Jay Zeamer came looking for an airplane to call his own.

Who Was Jay Zeamer?

Jay Zeamer was a West Point graduate and a trained engineer—sharp, capable, but stuck. He had come up flying the demanding B-26 Marauder and struggled to qualify as a first pilot, repeatedly getting passed over. He flew as a copilot, a fill-in, a spare part: a good officer always on the outside looking in.

So Zeamer found the airplane nobody else wanted and decided to make her his. He gathered a crew of men in the same position—volunteers and misfits, including navigator Joe Sarnoski—and on their own time they rebuilt the wrecked Fortress by hand, scrounging and trading through the nights.

How Old 666 Became the Most Heavily Armed Bomber in the Pacific

The crew didn’t just repair the airplane—they turned her into a flying arsenal. A standard B-17 of the era carried a fixed number of .50 caliber machine guns. Zeamer’s men weren’t interested in standard.

They up-gunned the nose so the bombardier and navigator each had heavy .50s they could fire straight ahead.
Zeamer rigged a fixed .50 caliber gun he could fire from the cockpit with a button, like a fighter pilot.
They packed her with so much firepower and ammunition that, by some accounts, Old 666 became the most heavily armed bomber in the entire Pacific theater.

She wasn’t pretty and she wasn’t fast, but she could shoot back from nearly every angle—and every man knew her intimately, because they had built her themselves.

The Mission Over Bougainville

As the Allies prepared to push up the Solomon Islands, they needed maps and photographs of the coastline, the reefs, and enemy positions. The target was the island of Bougainville, with a Japanese airfield at Buka on its northern tip.

This was a photo-reconnaissance mission—the cruelest kind of flying there is. To capture good mapping photographs, a crew cannot jink, weave, or take evasive action. They must fly straight, level, and steady for mile after mile while the cameras click, making themselves the easiest target in the sky on purpose. Zeamer’s crew volunteered, and tacked on an extra survey of the Buka airfield even though it added time and risk.

They took off in the dark. As the sun rose over Bougainville, they saw the airfield below—and roughly 20 enemy fighters climbing to meet one lone, unescorted, beat-up Fortress.

The Fight: One Bomber Against a Swarm

Zeamer had his photographs and could have run for home. Instead, he held the line to finish the mapping run.

What followed was, by the testimony of the men who lived it, somewhere between 15 and 40 minutes of the most savage air-to-air fighting a single bomber ever survived.

The first pass was the worst. A cannon shell tore through the nose, mortally wounding navigator Joe Sarnoski and blowing him back from his gun position. Wounded so badly he could not have survived, Sarnoski crawled back to his .50 caliber and kept firing, downing at least one more fighter before he died at his post.

Up front, Jay Zeamer was hit in both legs and both arms. The instrument panel was shot up, the hydraulics and oxygen systems were failing, and fires broke out that men beat down with their hands and jackets. Bleeding into the cockpit floor, Zeamer flew the four-engine bomber like a fighter—throwing it into slips and skids to spoil the fighters’ aim and bring his own guns to bear. When fighters lined up head-on, he fired back with the fixed gun he had rigged.

The whole crew fought every working gun. They knocked down several confirmed fighters and drove off the rest until the attackers finally broke away.

The Flight Home

Zeamer had been losing blood for nearly an hour, and at some point he passed out. The copilot and crew kept the airplane flying. When they needed a course home, they roused Zeamer—and the wounded pilot did the navigation himself, because his navigator lay dead in the nose and someone had to get them to a field.

It was roughly 580 miles to the nearest friendly strip: most of an afternoon in an airplane shot to pieces, with no working brakes worth speaking of, fuel leaking, men wounded and one man dead aboard. Zeamer drifted in and out of consciousness, refusing to leave the controls until he knew the crew could land her.

They made it. Ground crews counting the holes afterward reportedly doubted she’d ever fly again. Zeamer was so badly hurt that doctors weren’t sure he would live—he spent about 15 months in hospitals recovering. But he lived.

Why Old 666 Is the Most Decorated Crew in American History

For that single flight on June 16, 1943, Jay Zeamer received the Medal of Honor, and Joe Sarnoski received the Medal of Honor posthumously—two of the nation’s highest award for valor, earned on one airplane, on one mission.

It didn’t stop there. Every other man aboard received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award for combat valor the United States gives. Two Medals of Honor and a DSC for every remaining crewman is why the crew of Old 666 is remembered as the most decorated combat aircrew in American history.

What makes the story land is where it began: not with a new airplane and a hand-picked crew, but with the men nobody wanted, in the airplane nobody wanted, parked out in the weeds—and a tired old Fortress they loved enough to rebuild by hand.

The official citations are public record through the U.S. Army and Air Force historical offices, and Jay Zeamer recounted the story in interviews late in his life before his death in 2007. Those firsthand accounts are well worth seeking out.

Key Takeaways

Old 666 was a discarded, worn-out B-17 that Jay Zeamer’s crew of overlooked volunteers rebuilt by hand and turned into one of the most heavily armed bombers in the Pacific.
On June 16, 1943, the crew flew a photo-reconnaissance mission over Bougainville and survived a 15-to-40-minute battle against about 20 Japanese fighters.
Navigator Joe Sarnoski kept firing his gun after a mortal wound; pilot Jay Zeamer, wounded in all four limbs, flew and navigated the crippled bomber roughly 580 miles home.
The flight earned two Medals of Honor (Zeamer and Sarnoski) and a Distinguished Service Cross for every other crew member.
It remains the most decorated single combat flight in American history.