The Art of Manliness - #394： The Incredible True Story of the Renegade WWII Pilots Who Helped Win the War in the Pacific

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00:01:32.200 purchase of a website or domain. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of

00:01:50.480 Manliness podcast. In 1942, the United States was fighting a war in two major theaters, Europe and

00:01:55.540 the Pacific. But in the early days of World War II, the U.S. and its allies had a Europe-first

00:01:58.820 strategy, which resulted in more troops, supplies and attention being funneled to that theater.

00:02:02.880 American forces in the Pacific were charged with protecting Australia from Japan and preventing

00:02:06.200 their spread, but given scant resources to fill that mandate. But a group of enterprising and

00:02:10.340 rebellious bomber airmen stationed in Papua New Guinea grew tired of playing defense against the

00:02:14.340 Japanese and decided to take the war to the enemy by going on daredevil near-suicide missions.

00:02:18.580 In his book, Lucky 666, Bob Drury shares the incredible story of these airmen and their

00:02:22.760 ringleader, Captain Jay Zemer. Bob walks through the history of the war in the Pacific, including

00:02:26.780 internal battles between U.S. commanders and the lack of logistical support American forces

00:02:30.900 in the Pacific received in the early days of the war. He then introduces us to Zemer, sharing

00:02:35.660 what set him apart from other airmen and why so many were drawn to his charismatic leadership.

00:02:39.600 Bob then shares how Jay and his renegade crew took an old dilapidated B-17 bomber and fixed

00:02:43.960 it up themselves so they could take the war to Japan. And how these men split their time between

00:02:48.200 landing in the brig and receiving awards for valor. It all leads up to a climatic dogfight,

00:02:52.760 the longest in U.S. aviation history that would help turn the tide of the war in the Pacific.

00:02:56.940 This is a story about friendship, leadership, and gritty boldness that's also incredibly moving.

00:03:01.500 Grab a tissue, you're going to need it by the end. After the show's over,

00:03:04.240 check out the show notes at aom.is slash lucky666.

00:03:08.240 Bob Drury, welcome to the show.

00:03:17.780 Thanks, Brett. Thanks for having me.

00:03:19.360 So you co-authored a book called Lucky 666. This is an incredible story. How did you learn

00:03:25.300 about this story of a bunch of ragtag airmen who flew an impossible mission during World

00:03:29.340 War II?

00:03:29.980 Believe it or not, Brett, it was from a friend of mine now, a grizzled old Marine,

00:03:35.520 Dick Bonnelli. And he was a protagonist in a previous book that Tom and I wrote together

00:03:40.920 called The Last. It was about the Chosen Reservoir during the Korean War, the last stand of Fox 0.84

00:03:45.540 Company. And Dick and I just became friends. Uncle Dickie told me to call him. And we still speak

00:03:51.140 every couple of weeks. He's in his 90s now. And Tom and I were working on a book about the 11 Marine

00:03:57.040 security guards who were mistakenly left on the embassy roof in Saigon in 1975. And Uncle

00:04:03.940 Dickie called me. He said, what are you working on next? That's how he spoke. That's how he still

00:04:07.440 speaks. And I said, I don't know, Dick, we're kind of searching around. We got a few ideas.

00:04:13.760 And as you probably can imagine, Marines are not very fond of the Army. But he said, I got a story

00:04:20.560 for you. I can't believe I'm saying this about the Army. But you ever hear about these guys,

00:04:25.000 the longest dogfight of World War II? And I said, no, Dick, what are you talking about? And he gave

00:04:29.900 me some information. And I started poking around into it. And this magnificent story just,

00:04:36.360 it appeared before us. And as we dug further into it, we realized it wasn't just about this dogfight.

00:04:43.740 It was about the entire Southwest Pacific Theater, how ignored it was, the infighting between the Army

00:04:50.660 and the Navy, between MacArthur and Chester Nimitz. And we just knew we had something. And to this day,

00:04:56.520 I thank Uncle Dickie for turning me on to Lucky 666.

00:05:00.340 Well, so before we get to the two characters, the main characters you follow in this book,

00:05:04.860 there's a whole bunch of, there's a whole host of characters. But two is Jay Zeemer and Joe

00:05:08.280 Sarnowski. Let's get some background of the book. Because as you said, this theater of war is often

00:05:13.540 overlooked when people think about World War II. I mean, there's, everyone always talks about Normandy

00:05:17.400 and Europe, and then, you know, certain parts of the Pacific, Guadalcanal, Midway. Let's talk about

00:05:23.360 what was going on. Where did this book take place? And what role did it play in the war?

00:05:28.320 Well, let me give you a little background, Brett. Believe it or not, within months of Pearl Harbor,

00:05:35.380 the Japanese Empire controlled one-eighth of the Earth's surface. Now, granted, a lot of that was 0.99

00:05:41.620 ocean. But they were so ready to fight, and they just spread in the West. They were on the Burmese-Indian 1.00

00:05:51.100 border. And due south from there, they had taken the Dutch East Indies. If you went northwest,

00:05:58.400 they had a large chunk of China, and even briefly, a couple of the Aleutian Islands. And then,

00:06:03.340 if you curve south from there, they had the Solomons. And in other words, they were girding

00:06:09.480 Australia. And everybody expected Australia to be next. But our policy, President Roosevelt's policy

00:06:18.540 and the War Department's policy was Germany first. So what little resources we had in the Pacific,

00:06:26.620 and specifically in the Southwest Pacific, were basically MacArthur and Chester Nimitz, we're told,

00:06:34.560 hold off the Japanese until we take care of the Nazis. 85% of all material, men, grounds, 0.99

00:06:41.880 crews went to Europe, Germany first. And so these airmen who were in Australia and eventually made

00:06:50.360 it to Port Marsby in Papua New Guinea, they weren't content with just playing defense. And believe it

00:06:56.740 or not, Australia had a secret plan. They so expected to be invaded that they had a plan to cede the top

00:07:04.180 half the continent to the Japanese and hold out in Melbourne and Sydney. And so that's the background 0.99

00:07:10.260 of where our characters, this is the world our characters in Lucky 666 stepped into. Kind of

00:07:17.440 forgotten, half-assed. They didn't get the material they needed. And they were told, just try to put up

00:07:24.260 a good fight until we can help you out after we defeat Hitler.

00:07:27.600 And I mean, also, they weren't getting the materials they needed, but like the material they

00:07:30.480 had, a lot of it was decimated at Pearl Harbor. Exactly. And the planes that they managed to get

00:07:36.200 out of the Philippines, the B-26 Marauders mostly, a couple of B-17 Flying Fortresses,

00:07:42.120 and any planes that they already had in Australia, that's all they were getting. I mean, it was

00:07:46.740 official policy. We cannot send you any more planes. So a fun part of the research of this book was just

00:07:54.000 talking to, there were still a few guys alive when we were researching the book, but their sons

00:08:00.380 and their nephews, they all had letters saying, these guys were going up and there was no troops

00:08:06.480 on the ground in Australia. There was not even any Australian troops. They were all fighting in North

00:08:10.420 Africa under Montgomery, the British general. And so it was just airmen. And the Navy was loathe

00:08:18.640 to give MacArthur any of their ships. He wanted them all, of course. So he had this ragtag group 1.00

00:08:24.460 of airmen and the planes they had were the only planes they were getting. They did not have grounds

00:08:29.620 crews. They had to act as their own grounds crews. And a lot of them became not only ace pilots and

00:08:35.920 bombardiers and turret gunners and tail gunners, but they became mechanics and maintenance men.

00:08:41.460 And they were going up, they were patched, they were hammering out soup cans to patch the bullet

00:08:46.780 holes in their bombers. They discovered that the Australian sixpence coin was, it fit perfectly in

00:08:54.540 the ignition's magneto of a B-17. Believe it or not, they even, when they ran out of air filters,

00:09:00.400 they would use women's sanitary napkins. I remember one letter we wrote, one guy preferred

00:09:07.120 Kotex over any other plan, over any other brand, because it works so well as an air filter. And

00:09:12.920 this is just, I say this by way of the Rube Goldberg-esque nature of the fifth air force,

00:09:22.140 the forgotten fifth, they were called. Of course, over in Europe, there was the mighty eighth air

00:09:26.820 force. And that got all the ink and all the reporters and all the maintenance crews and all the

00:09:31.000 backup parts. And the forgotten fifth down in Australia, they had to make do with whatever they

00:09:36.100 could find. And believe it or not, they did. And they did a very good job of it.

00:09:40.800 Right. Not only were their planes terrible and sort of the stuff that was left over,

00:09:46.540 but like the food, like I think one of the generals went over there to do an inspection and he saw

00:09:51.180 there's like maggots in the rice and like, just disgusting. They were eating it because that's all

00:09:55.720 they had.

00:09:56.520 That's all they had. There was a protein. That was their protein, lice and maggots. And then when they

00:10:01.100 finally, now people, I'll probably have to explain where Port Morrisby is. The Japanese were planning 1.00

00:10:06.760 to invade Australia from a base in New Guinea, Papua New Guinea. And they had landed and they

00:10:13.660 had set up a couple of bases in the north of the country. And it's a big country. In the south,

00:10:17.680 on a little peninsula, there was an air base. It was an old Australian air base. The US took it over

00:10:22.600 and it was a hell hole. It was surrounded by jungle. There were usually more people in sick

00:10:29.520 bay than there were air crews ready to go up. Dysentery ran rapid, malaria, the jungle itch,

00:10:36.280 they called it. And this is where our men, our boys, our fly boys were stationed. And the Japanese 0.94

00:10:44.000 bombed them every single day because in order to invade Australia, they had to drive the Americans out of 0.91

00:10:51.740 Port Morrisby. And finally, MacArthur and I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I just want to set up

00:10:58.460 the scene. MacArthur, of course, he wanted to be the Eastern Ike. He wanted, if Eisenhower was running

00:11:04.560 Europe, MacArthur and his gargantuan ego, he wanted to run the Pacific War. But the Navy, believe it or

00:11:12.240 not, had been planning, even though they were surprised at Pearl Harbor, they had been planning for a war

00:11:17.000 against Japan for decades. And they said, no, all this planning, we're not turning it over to MacArthur.

00:11:24.080 We're not turning it over to any other service. We know what we want to do. And of course, they

00:11:28.400 eventually carried it out. It was the famous island topping campaign led by Chester Nimitz and Bull

00:11:33.500 Halsey, where they took one island and then the next and the next and the next. But in order to

00:11:39.040 kind of solve the turf war between MacArthur and Nimitz, instead of making one man the Supreme

00:11:45.180 Commander in the Pacific, the War Department, George Marshall, FDR, they kind of drew a line,

00:11:50.800 almost went right down the Solomon Islands. Everything to the west was MacArthur. And that 0.52

00:11:55.600 would be Australia, New Guinea, and everything to the east, all the islands that we took, that the

00:12:01.600 Marines took. That was Nimitz. So MacArthur is chafing, A, that he does not have complete control

00:12:10.120 of the Pacific War, and B, that he has no troops. And at one point, he put forth a plan to dissolve

00:12:16.660 the Marine Corps and make those troops army under him. And of course, you can imagine how well that

00:12:22.360 went over with the Marine Corps and with the Navy. So this war within the war almost hampered the

00:12:28.520 efforts, the coordination efforts that we had against the Japanese at the time. Now this early

00:12:33.560 in the war, I might be, I might be overstating it when I say coordination effort, because as I said

00:12:39.560 before, it was just, the plan was hold Australia until we defeat Germany. Please hold Australia. But 0.92

00:12:47.360 these, these airmen, they weren't content to hold Australia. And in New Britain, at the top of the

00:12:54.020 Solomon Islands, the best harbor in the Pacific was at Rabul. New Britain was an island, Rabul was the

00:12:59.780 capital of the island. That's where the Japanese set up their air base. Now we could not reach that

00:13:05.940 Rabul to bomb it from Australia without refitting and refueling at Port Morrisby. It was 500 miles

00:13:13.000 from Port Morrisby, which is why we had to take over the base of Port Morrisby. So we could fly our,

00:13:18.560 at first, our B-26 Marauders. And finally, the one when they did get some shipments of the

00:13:23.920 B-17 Flying Fortress. So a thousand mile round trip, you couldn't have fighter escorts. Fighters

00:13:29.280 couldn't carry enough fuel to fly that far. And these guys started taking the war against Washington's

00:13:36.520 orders almost to the Japanese. They started looking for convoys to bomb. They started to see how many 0.94

00:13:42.720 planes they could get into Rabul and out of Rabul. Now, sometimes it wasn't worth it. They might,

00:13:48.560 they might send up a bombing run of, say, 12 B-17s and only eight would make it back. Two might've

00:13:54.720 been shot down and two more might've had to ditch into the sea. But they decided that they were going

00:14:00.200 to go on the offensive no matter what the War Department thought. And not only were they just

00:14:06.040 going to defend Australia, but they're going to strike back against the Japanese. I know that was 1.00

00:14:10.180 a long answer. I apologize. No, no, it's great. Well, and so we, the state of the U.S. military in the

00:14:16.340 Pacific was, okay, resources scarce because it's all going to Europe. Sort of the ragtag 0.99

00:14:21.700 of the military was sent to the Pacific. And there was this conflict between Nimitz and MacArthur.

00:14:29.040 What was the Japanese military like? What were their, I mean, were they really organized,

00:14:34.540 disciplined? Yes. Yeah. Give us. Yes. They knew. They knew from the very beginning, they said,

00:14:39.420 we, first of all, their first misstep was not taking out, not attacking parole. Our aircraft

00:14:47.460 carriers just happened to be out of the Harbor at the time. If our aircraft carriers had been in the

00:14:52.080 Harbor at the time, the war in the Pacific might've been over then and there. But once they realized,

00:14:57.820 damn, the U.S. still has its carriers. We have to make quick work of this. We cannot give the giant 0.99

00:15:04.200 United States time to refit all its factories and all its manufacturing base for a war footing.

00:15:11.180 And they knew this. So they needed to conquer as much as possible, as fast as possible. And that was

00:15:17.720 the whole Australia gambit. Once we take Australia, Pearl Harbor and the Hawaiian Islands are a hop,

00:15:25.920 skip and a jump away. The United States will be forced to sue for peace. That was the Japanese point 1.00

00:15:32.200 of view. And on the other hand, as I explained, our point of view is we cannot let Australia fall.

00:15:38.680 As long as Australia is a bulwark against Hawaii and the American West coast, we can go about our 0.93

00:15:46.780 business in Europe. So we got to hold off the Japanese at all costs. Right. And again, but again, 1.00

00:15:51.580 not only did they, these guys hold them off, they started taking the fight to the Japanese. 0.86

00:15:55.600 Well, I, you know, it sounds like such a cliche, but when you read the letters and the journals and

00:16:02.500 the diaries from the time, it was kind of good old American ingenuity. We're not going to take this

00:16:08.620 lying down. And let's face it, we got knocked, we got knocked pretty hard to the mat at Pearl Harbor.

00:16:15.000 But suddenly there's the battle of Coral Sea. Suddenly there's a battle of the Bismarck Sea and

00:16:20.480 of course, Midway. And we realized, Hey, these Japanese aren't the, the supermen. Yes, sure. 0.99

00:16:27.140 They're fighter planes. The zeros control the skies and we don't have fighters that can effectively go

00:16:32.540 up and dogfight these zeros. But you know what? Our bombers can fly further. Our bombers can carry more

00:16:38.820 of a payload. And yes, we're not content just to, to defend the territory they haven't, that we,

00:16:46.420 that we already have, which of course at the time consisted of Australia and a few islands like Guam

00:16:52.000 and New Caledonia. And once I think a spurring point might've been the invasion, the Japanese 0.88

00:16:57.060 invasion of Guadalcanal. Cause once the Japanese were on Guadalcanal, if they had established air bases 0.99

00:17:02.340 there, they would have been within easy bombing range of Melbourne and Sydney. And that's when we kind

00:17:08.660 of made the turnaround and it was Nimitz and Halsey said, we got to retake Guadalcanal. And while

00:17:14.120 we're retaking Guadalcanal, we want MacArthur to start putting pressure on the Japanese bases, 0.95

00:17:20.400 not only in New Guinea, but all the way up in New Britain. We were going to go after Rabool. 1.00

00:17:25.140 Fortress Rabool, it was called. I mean, it was, everybody remembers Fortress Singapore falling on

00:17:30.740 the first day, the same day, the day after Pearl Harbor fell, the British outfit in Singapore. But

00:17:35.920 Fortress Rabool was really the key to the, to the Pacific war. And we went after, and we went

00:17:41.340 after it. And it took us years, took us years and years, but we got it.

00:17:45.340 All right. So that's the background of this story. So kind of, it's, it's a classic underdog story,

00:17:50.680 I think. So let's get to these two characters. First is Jay Zeemer. Who was he and what was his

00:17:56.320 background like? And how did he end up in Port Moresby?

00:17:59.580 Well, it's like, you know what, you put it well, it, the story is almost like peeling an onion.

00:18:03.640 The big picture, the outside picture is what's going on in the Southwest Pacific theater.

00:18:08.860 The next is the forgotten fifth air force. And the next, you peel the next layer off and you come to

00:18:15.900 the men, the men who are actually flying these missions, these recon missions and these bombing

00:18:20.460 missions. And of course, the protagonist of Lucky 666 is Jay Zeemer, kind of a handsome blonde,

00:18:28.400 upper middle class. Think, I don't know if you've ever seen Stalag 17. Think Peter Graves,

00:18:33.620 he's in Stalag 17. He always wanted to be a pilot. He went to a military high school and then he

00:18:40.480 went to MIT where he was in the ROTC and he was in the flight club. He flew Piper Club. And then when

00:18:47.920 war broke out, he signed up with the army air force. Don't forget, there was no air force,

00:18:52.040 a separate service at the time. It was the army air force, but there was just something off about

00:18:57.400 Jay. He was affable. Everyone on the ground loved him. He was a great teammate. I think back then,

00:19:04.960 if they had had the diagnosis, he might've been diagnosed as some type of autistic because once

00:19:12.220 he got in the pilot seat, he just continued to screw up. He couldn't, he was, his first plane

00:19:18.360 was a B-26 Marauders. And these planes, these bombers, because their engines were so large,

00:19:23.380 they were notoriously hard to take off and land. And Jay just couldn't stick the landing. All his

00:19:30.400 flight instructors who loved him, who loved him as a man and who loved him as a friend and loved him

00:19:35.760 as an airman, but they would like grab the controls from him because he was going to crash land every

00:19:40.760 time he went up. So he could never get out of the co-pilot seat, the right seat, they called it.

00:19:45.680 So he's on all these bombing missions and he's in the right seat and weird things are happening.

00:19:50.900 He's falling asleep as they're approaching their target. He just didn't feel, he might've been one

00:19:57.060 of those, like those kids who are too smart for their grades. That might've been Jay, but he just

00:20:02.120 was not happy with the B-26 Marauders. And eventually his squadron became very unhappy with him. They

00:20:08.240 didn't trust him anymore. I said, I can't have this guy sitting next to me. He's going to fall asleep.

00:20:11.540 So they managed to get him to kind of transfer him out. And he went into a unit that was flying B-17

00:20:19.380 flying fortresses. And it was almost the symbiosis between the flying fortress and Jay Zemer.

00:20:26.780 Something kicked in. He started as a co-pilot and he learned that the B-17 was almost as maneuverable

00:20:35.280 as a fighter plane. And he started to go. And once again, crewmen didn't want to fly with him

00:20:40.300 because he was an aggressive, he'd do a bombing run and then he'd start attacking zeros.

00:20:45.180 And the crews he was with was like, Hey, wait a minute. Hold on. We did our bombing run. Let's

00:20:49.340 get the hell out of here. And he said, no, I got, I'm going after that guy down there.

00:20:52.800 So finally, even the B-17 crew said, this guy's crazy. I'm not flying with him anymore.

00:20:58.340 So what did he do? He had no options. If he wanted to get up and fly, he had to go out and find his

00:21:02.300 own crew. And he did.

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00:23:19.080 domain. And now back to the show. And we'll get to how he found his own crew and his own plane here

00:23:23.900 in a bit, but he had a good friend that he met when he signed up with the military and they reunited.

00:23:28.280 It's Joe. Tell us about Joe and Joe Sarnos. Couldn't have been a bombardier, bombardier by

00:23:34.300 trade, probably the best, one of the best in the fifth air force. Joe and Jay had been before they

00:23:39.640 were shipped overseas. They had been stationed together at Langley air base in Virginia, and

00:23:45.600 they did not know each other. Although they were both born in Pennsylvania, unlike kind of upper

00:23:50.400 middle-class J, Joe was one of 16 children of Polish immigrants. His father was a coal miner

00:23:56.800 who was diagnosed with black lung. He bought a small farm. Joe grew up dirt poor. In fact,

00:24:03.860 Joe's first paycheck, he came home at Christmas with gifts for his younger sisters, and it was the

00:24:09.000 first Christmas gifts any of the Sarnoski children had ever gotten. So anyway, at Langley air base,

00:24:14.900 the brass hats from Washington are coming down. They're putting on an exhibition, a bombing exhibition.

00:24:19.000 They're dropping duds, of course, and they have targets laid out, and Jay's watching, and of

00:24:23.780 course, the brass at Langley picked out their best crews to put on this exhibition, and the lead

00:24:29.480 bombardier was Joe Sarnoski, and Jay Zemer's watching. This guy hit the target from 10,000 feet from 12,000

00:24:38.000 feet, and he said, who is this guy? I'm a pilot. I'm supposed to know everything about any plane I fly.

00:24:43.700 If I ever get a B-17, I want to know what makes this bombardier so good. So he sought out. He was

00:24:49.680 an officer. Joe was a staff sergeant at the time. He sought out Joe Sarnoski, and he said, hey,

00:24:55.740 listen, can I buy you a beer? And Joe was a little taken aback. Who's this officer coming up to me and

00:25:00.360 asking me to buy a beer? Is this a joke? Is somebody pulling a prank on me? But as it turns out,

00:25:05.160 they became not best friends quite yet, but they became very good acquaintances, and Jay,

00:25:11.340 the superior officer, picked Joe's brain about everything he knew about bomb sites, about targeting,

00:25:19.460 about lead time. So then they separate. They both are shipped to Australia, but with different units.

00:25:26.400 Joe spent some time in the North Atlantic. He thought he was going to end up in Europe. He was kind of

00:25:30.700 surprised when he found out that he was going to Australia. He's based in Australia. One day,

00:25:36.680 Jay flies in with his B-17, and here comes his new bombardier in a jeep. He said, you're Joe

00:25:41.880 Sarnoski. And he said, yes, I am, Captain Ziemer. How are you? What have you been doing here? So I've

00:25:46.220 been in Australia for three months. And Sarnoski said, I have too, but they have me teaching in the

00:25:51.240 interior. I want to get up on a plane. And Jay said, let me see if I can do something about that.

00:25:55.500 And so Jay basically plucked Joe. Joe was such a good bombardier that they didn't

00:26:00.580 want him up there. They wanted him teaching. Jay plucked Joe and said, I need this man on my crew.

00:26:07.380 And Jay didn't even have a crew. That was the beauty of it. He said, I need this man on my crew.

00:26:12.000 And Jay didn't even have his own crew. So Joe was the first man. And just so happened that the next

00:26:17.520 day they were calling for volunteers for a recon mission over Lai, which was a Japanese base,

00:26:22.820 L-A-I, Lai. It was a Japanese base in Northern New Guinea. Jay said, I'll take that. And he said,

00:26:28.580 Joe, you want to go? And Joe said, I'd love to. Let's load up some bombs. Let's drop some bombs on

00:26:33.760 them while we're reconning. They did it. They hit the target. They came back. And Joe and Jay kind 1.00

00:26:38.860 of looked at each other and a light bulb went off over their head saying, you know, we work well

00:26:43.380 together. Let's find some other crewmen like us. I don't know where we're going to get a plane,

00:26:47.700 but let's get the crew first and then we'll worry about the plane.

00:26:50.380 It's okay. So this partnership arises. And what's interesting is like, it's because that

00:26:54.500 no one really cares about this part of the Pacific, that these guys were able to basically

00:27:00.200 do what, I mean, in a way, do what they wanted, right?

00:27:03.440 Exactly. Exactly. This would have never flown. Half the antics we kind of write, Tom and I kind

00:27:10.000 of write about it at Lucky 666 would never have happened. You'd be in the brig if you did this

00:27:14.440 kind of stuff in the European theater of war. But the Pacific was such a vast theater of war

00:27:21.860 and our resources were so few that you could get away with a lot more in the Pacific.

00:27:29.080 You could get away. I mean, there were, I'll give you a perfect example. In the European theater

00:27:34.040 of war and the Pacific theater of war, every airman was required to wear the same uniform,

00:27:40.280 the long, the overall, the coveralls, the flak vest, the helmet. Jay would often go up in a long

00:27:47.580 pair of socks and Australian shorts and Bush boots. And he was not alone. It was a very loose and lax

00:27:55.040 atmosphere compared to the stiffer, more military regulations in the European theater. So when

00:28:02.640 someone like Jay can kind of scam a commanding officer at a teaching post into saying, listen,

00:28:10.620 I need this bombardier for my crew, when he really doesn't even have a crew that would never fly in

00:28:15.660 Europe. But a lot of that kind of stuff went on in the Pacific theater.

00:28:20.080 So how did Jay form this crew? Because like everyone didn't want to fly with, no one wanted

00:28:24.820 to fly with him because he was, he was, he's using a bomber. He's using a bomber to dogfight,

00:28:28.980 which was crazy.

00:28:30.000 Yeah. And he took too many chances. People would come down and say, I'm never flying with you again.

00:28:34.460 You're nuts. You're crazy. He said, that's fine. I'll find somebody else. And it's exactly what he did. 1.00

00:28:39.500 Jay was also a storyteller. Joe was a quiet guy. And Jay and Joe kind of started this

00:28:47.840 class in his tent and people and crewmen would, crewmen of like minds would drop by and they'd just

00:28:54.620 sit all night and they'd talk. They'd talk bombing. They'd talk recon. They'd talk wind shear. They

00:29:00.500 would talk anything that had to do with military flight. And gradually a circle formed around Jay and

00:29:07.200 Joe. And as you can well imagine, it was kind of an ultra circle. I mean, their, their, their

00:29:13.860 tail gunner, Pudge Pugh was a Jack LaLanne buff. They called him Pudge. Ironically. If you see,

00:29:18.880 we have photos of him in the book. He was, he's a big muscular guy. It looks like Schwarzenegger.

00:29:23.820 He can barely, he can barely fit back, get through the tailpipe to get to his, to get to his gun.

00:29:29.160 Their, their waist gunner. Most of the B 17s at the time had two waist gunners who stood back to back.

00:29:34.300 Uh-uh. This George, George Kendrick, their waist gunner said, these guns are all mine. I'm manning

00:29:40.260 both sides. No one else is coming in here. George had been, had, had worked his way through, had paid

00:29:45.940 his way through college on the West coast as a pool shark. So they got a pool shark. They got a Jack

00:29:50.940 LaLanne buff, the youngest staff sergeant in the Pacific theater, Johnny Abel, 19 years old,

00:29:56.100 great mechanic, but he wants to be a top turret gunner. But mechanics and maintenance crews were so

00:30:02.500 few and far between his superior was loathe to let Johnny Abel go up. He needed him. He needed

00:30:08.120 him to fix these rotors. So finally Jay pulled rank and he plucked Johnny Abel to become his top

00:30:13.160 turret gunner. I mean, Brett, their, their communications guy, their commo guy was an

00:30:18.620 expert knife fighter. Why they figured they needed a knife fighter at 30,000 feet. I never found out,

00:30:24.600 but these are the kind of men that gravitated towards Jay and Joe. And before you knew it,

00:30:30.480 they had a crew. Okay. We got a crew. Where's our plane? Well, there's not enough planes to go

00:30:36.520 around. Jay was still co-piloting at the time. Every once in a while, he'd get a pilot's assignment,

00:30:41.280 but for the most part, he was co-piloting. And someone, a colonel said to him, almost half

00:30:46.240 jokingly, sure. You want to go down the boneyard at the end of the runway. That's where they kept all

00:30:51.060 the shot up planes that weren't going up again. Want to fix one of them up? Sure. You can have it.

00:30:55.580 That's exactly what they did. So that was, that was old six, six, six.

00:30:58.660 That's the tail number. They found a shot up plane. And the first thing Jay did, Jay Ziemer

00:31:05.340 instructed the crew, he said, listen, we're going to make this plane the fastest in the Pacific

00:31:11.200 theater. So I want you to strip a thousand pounds out of this. I don't care where you find it, but

00:31:16.700 find a thousand pounds. So they just, they were everything from, well, you can imagine what a piss

00:31:22.880 pipe is. Everything from piss pipes to extra lockers to overhead bins, boom, out the door,

00:31:28.760 out the door. Next, they said, okay, we're going to scrounge every other plane in this boneyard

00:31:34.760 until we get tires, until we get four new engines. They weren't new engines, of course, but there were

00:31:39.360 four engines that worked. And finally, he said, now we're going to make this the most heavily armed

00:31:45.620 plane, not only in the Pacific theater, but perhaps in the world.

00:31:49.020 We're taking out all these little namby-pamby 30-cal machine guns, and we're putting 50-cal

00:31:54.440 machine guns in. And where every other B-17 has one, we're going to put two. And as it turns out,

00:32:00.760 old 666, they never got around to naming it. You know how you see the war movies and they were

00:32:05.860 with Tojo's Death Dream and Here Comes the Bomb. It's like, they never got around. They were so busy

00:32:12.960 building this plane, they never got around to naming it. And because the last three numbers of its tail

00:32:17.060 numbers were 666, they just took to calling it old 666. They put in 19 50-cal machine guns,

00:32:24.400 including one which Jay, he had Johnny Abel hook it up so he could fire it from the steering column

00:32:30.380 in the pilot seat. He called it his schnozzola gun. And when they finally passed their flight test,

00:32:36.260 they were indeed the most heavily armed. Most B-17s would carry 13 to 14 guns. Jay carried 19.

00:32:44.040 17, manned, and two, his motto was, anything doesn't work, throw it out. Your gun jams,

00:32:50.640 throw it out. We're carrying two extra. Just hook it in. Hook it into the ratchet. And so

00:32:55.260 once they passed their flight test, as you can imagine, well, maybe you can't imagine,

00:33:00.720 so I'll explain it to you. They just started volunteering for every crazy mission that came

00:33:05.680 down the pike. This crew, they were as regular as the Angela standing outside the operations hut 0.99

00:33:12.180 every morning. What do you got? What do you got? What do you got? Where are you going? You got

00:33:15.480 anything for us? And people were more than happy to say, yeah, we need somebody to lead a bombing

00:33:22.060 run or a boom. Or we need to see, we understand that there might have been reinforcements brought

00:33:27.940 into lay. We need a single recon mission up there. Can you do that? And as it happens,

00:33:33.580 they started to get a reputation. These are the go-to guys. These are the guys we want. When the

00:33:39.660 mission looks almost suicidal, let's get Ziemer and his crew of Eager Beavers. They got our nickname,

00:33:45.100 Eager Beavers. And that wasn't their only nickname. I mean, we found some magazine articles from the

00:33:51.820 time, magazine and newspaper articles from the time. And back then, the word screw was kind of a swear

00:33:57.360 word. And yet in every one of these guys were known as the screw-ups. These were the screw-ups that

00:34:01.920 would do any mission for you. But half the time, you'd have to bail them out of the brig because

00:34:05.720 that's where they'd be after a bar fight. So they volunteer for all these different missions,

00:34:09.740 some of them pretty much suicide missions. Tell us about the mission where it was definitely a

00:34:14.660 suicide mission and they engaged in this epic dogfight that's probably the longest that

00:34:19.720 happened in World War II. This was June 1943. And I wasn't kidding about the brig either. I mean,

00:34:27.640 Jay and Joe were always getting in trouble. Jay, at one point, he didn't like the way the crew was

00:34:33.020 eating. And we talked about it before. I mean, the food was just horrible. So he made a run. He knew

00:34:38.580 a farmer back in Australia where he had been stationed in Australia. He borrowed a B-17, made a run,

00:34:44.360 filled it up with meat and fresh vegetables, and came back and got caught. They threw him in jail.

00:34:49.280 On another point, he and Joe, there was a whorehouse on Rabool that intelligence, 0.97

00:34:55.520 American intelligence, had figured out the top Japanese admirals and generals were using the top 0.66

00:35:00.800 floor of this fancy old hotel as a whorehouse. And they were bringing in geisha girls from Japan 1.00

00:35:06.780 to service them. And so Jay and Joe were told, you got to bomb this hotel. But they went up twice and

00:35:13.200 twice Joe disobeyed order. Once he bombed a fuel dump and once he bombed an ammunition dump. And both

00:35:19.120 times he came back and he just said, you could throw me in jail, but I'm not bombing no geisha girls.

00:35:23.740 So they did. They threw him in jail until a reporter found out about it. A reporter for

00:35:29.300 the Associated Press wrote about it. And a general got all upset about it. No, a congressman,

00:35:33.940 a visiting congressman got all upset about it and got him out of jail.

00:35:36.960 Well, I was going to say to one interesting point with these guys, sometimes they do these

00:35:39.800 antics and it looked like they were thrown in jail, but then like later they would get some

00:35:43.920 sort of commendation for what they did.

00:35:46.840 They've won a silver star for something they'd been in the break for.

00:35:49.300 That's how kind of loose the rules were, especially in the Southwest Pacific. So in June of 1943,

00:35:58.400 Admiral Halsey, he's retaken, his Marines have retaken Guadalcanal and they're slowly making their

00:36:05.580 way. It's like the mini island hopping up the Solomon Islands and they're taking every Solomon

00:36:10.980 Island from South to North. The big one at the very top of the chain, Bougainville. It's just South of

00:36:17.860 New Britain, which again is the home to Rabul, Fortress Rabul. If they can, if the allies can 0.97

00:36:24.800 get Bougainville under their control and put airstrips in Bougainville, now they're close

00:36:30.960 enough to Rabul for fighter planes to give the bombers air escorts. So Bougainville is the next big,

00:36:38.920 I know we talk about Midway and we talk about, but Bougainville was one of the unsung fights of

00:36:45.980 World War II. But Halsey, A, he knows the Japanese control Bougainville, but he's not quite sure

00:36:52.320 where their strengths lie and what kind of defenses they have. And B, he wants to land his invasion

00:36:58.920 force in Empress Augusta Bay, which is known to have some of the worst and sharpest coral reefs

00:37:06.100 in the world. So he needs a recon flight. A fighter plane won't make it. It can't get that far. It doesn't

00:37:11.980 have enough fuel. They're not going to send up a flight of bombers. They need one bomber to fly

00:37:17.640 1,200 miles round trip and take pictures of Bougainville, both where the Japanese defenses are

00:37:25.960 and they had ultraviolet light cameras that would pierce the bay and show them where the reefs are.

00:37:32.960 So, of course, Jay and Joe, they hear about this and then they're down at the operations hut the next

00:37:37.440 morning and say, yeah, we'll do this. We'll do this. And I got to say for the first time,

00:37:41.400 Jay did go to the crew. And as I've been in a lot of, I've been around a lot of military people,

00:37:49.420 war is not a democracy. But for this, this was such a dangerous mission. Jay did go to his crew and

00:37:55.280 explained to every man, listen, I'm pegging our chances of making this at 25%. And if any one of

00:38:02.080 you doesn't want to go, I understand completely. Joe, just a week earlier, had already gotten his

00:38:07.920 papers shipped back to the States. He was going to be a bombardier instructor in the States. He didn't

00:38:13.300 have to go. And they weren't even carrying bombs. There was no sense having a bombardier. But Joe

00:38:18.200 said, no, I'm not sending you up there. There was going to be somebody in the nose. That's where

00:38:23.080 the bombardier was stationed. He said, I'm not sending you up there with somebody you don't know.

00:38:26.520 I'm going. So Jay and Joe and the crew, they step forward. They go out, they take off. They're

00:38:32.480 taking off at three in the morning. Suddenly a Jeep comes out on the runway, stops, stops their

00:38:38.040 plane. Officer runs up to Jay, hands it, actually ran up to the waste gunner, hand him a note.

00:38:45.260 Waste gunner runs it up to Joe, to Jay in the cockpit. And it says, listen, while you're up there

00:38:49.820 reconning Bougainville, can you also take photos of this little island at the tip of Bougainville,

00:38:55.060 the northern tip? It's called Bougainville. We know there's an airstrip there. We just don't

00:38:59.480 know how big. We don't know how many enemy planes. What have they got there at Bougainville?

00:39:04.820 Jay says, no, I'm not doing that. Because in order for these cameras to work, he had to fly at a slow

00:39:12.220 and steady pace, 500 miles per hour at the same. He could, if he tipped a wing a couple of inches,

00:39:20.080 it would throw off the lat long, the latitude and longitude by miles. That's the only way these

00:39:26.440 cameras would work, especially when they were photographing the reefs beneath the water.

00:39:31.000 And he said, if I fly slow and low over Bougainville, there's an enemy airfield on Bougainville.

00:39:37.000 There's two on Bougainville. They're going to, why don't you just telegraph them and let me know,

00:39:41.960 let them know I'm coming. So they get there. But what they hadn't counted on is that because they're

00:39:47.100 flying with no bombs or just flying with cameras and they're big tailwind, they arrive an hour

00:39:52.140 early. It's too early for the cameras to work. And so Jay gets on the horn, the interplane radio,

00:39:59.740 and he says, okay, fellas, listen, we got an hour to kill. We can either vector out over the sea and

00:40:05.880 come back when the sun's right for taking pictures, or we can do this Bougainville thing that they want

00:40:12.180 us to do. And everybody voted for Bougainville. So they fly over Bougainville. Cameras can't work,

00:40:17.740 but they see, they take notes of how many planes are on Bougainville. Suddenly the tail gunner comes

00:40:22.300 up and says, they're coming up. 12 planes are coming up off Bougainville after them. But now Jay

00:40:26.960 is still hustled. He's got a choice. He can photograph low and slow Bougainville, and most especially

00:40:34.260 the Empress Augusta Bay, and let those Japanese planes catch him, or he can take off. He can run for home. 0.95

00:40:40.100 He's already done half his job. He's already found out what's on Bougainville. And he says,

00:40:44.480 no, if we don't get this film back to them, they're just going to send up another crew.

00:40:48.640 Why put another crew in danger? Let's do this. We're here. So they fly low and slow. And sure

00:40:53.580 enough, the planes from Bougainville, not only the planes from Bougainville catch him, but two flights

00:40:58.660 come up from Bougainville. Now they're surrounded. 44 minutes of a dogfight. They shot down six zeros.

00:41:05.480 Everybody, every crew member, except for Pudge Pugh in the tail and the bottom turret gunner

00:41:13.400 is wounded or bleeding out. The plane is shot to hell. Finally, they've been fighting for so long

00:41:20.520 that the Japanese zeros are running out of fuel. That's the only reason they make it back. But they 1.00

00:41:25.300 realize we don't have enough. We can't get enough lift to get over the mountains to get into Port

00:41:31.280 Morrisby. Plot us a course for Dobidora, which is on the East coast of New Guinea. He said, I don't

00:41:39.820 know if we're going to make it. We might have to ditch, but we got to get this. It was poignant.

00:41:44.500 And one of the letters to Jay sent to his, to his mother. Yes, it was his mother. And he said, mom,

00:41:51.560 I realized when I'm on a bombing run, when you drop your rocks, that's what they call the dropping

00:41:57.780 the rocks. When you drop your rocks, if you don't make it home, if you have to make a water landing

00:42:04.340 or even a crash landing before you reach the airfield, at least you have the satisfaction

00:42:08.800 of knowing that you've done your job. You dropped your rocks. But now Jay is saying,

00:42:13.920 if I don't get this film back, this entire mission will be for naught. And just sheer force of will,

00:42:21.340 he's sitting in the cockpit, the cockpit, the whole left side of the cockpit is torn off.

00:42:27.040 He has taken a rocket to the cockpit. The co-pilot is out cold. He doesn't know if the co-pilot is dead

00:42:31.840 or not. And he can look down and he can see that his left leg looks like hamburger. And he can feel

00:42:39.640 that he's bleeding out. He can feel his boot filling with blood. And suddenly he looks at his right wrist

00:42:45.740 and with each heartbeat, blood is spurting out of his right wrist. He's also taking shrapnel there.

00:42:52.000 He turns around, he looks up to Johnny Abel. Johnny Abel tries to drop down from the top turret to help

00:42:57.340 him. Johnny Abel drops down and he realizes he's been shot in both legs and he can't stand up.

00:43:02.440 Suddenly there's a fire. There's a fire back in the commo room. They go back to the commo room and

00:43:07.620 Willie Green, the commo guy, is out. He's taking shrapnel to the neck. He's laying on the ground trying to

00:43:12.700 stop the bleeding from his neck. Johnny Abel puts out the fire with his bare hands, burns his hands.

00:43:19.260 And all the while, because of the rocket that blew up their entire cockpit, now Jay can see down

00:43:26.640 right into the nose. And he sees Joe Sarnoski just leaning over his two machine guns, a puddle of blood

00:43:35.060 around him. He's figuring Joe is dead. He doesn't know for sure, but he's figuring Joe is dead. He's not

00:43:40.540 moving. But his main thought is, I got to get this film back or this entire flight will be for

00:43:46.120 nothing. And sure enough, they make Dobadura, crash land of Dobadura. They're being carried out

00:43:53.680 as the meat wagon boys. That's what they call the medics. The meat wagon guys come. They tear off

00:44:00.340 what's left of the glass around the cockpit. And Jay, who's out kind of, he looks like he's out cold,

00:44:05.220 but he, he hears a voice say, forget the pilot, get him last. He's dead. And he wants to scream.

00:44:11.120 I'm not dead. I'm alive. But they got him last. He lost half the blood in his body. They were lining

00:44:18.500 up for weeks to trans, to give him transfusions. And as you well know, Brett, this was the only flight in

00:44:26.760 the history of either the U.S. Army Air Force or the Air Force, where two members of the same flight

00:44:33.200 crew were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Jay Ziemer and Joe Sarnoski were both awarded the

00:44:40.640 armed military's highest honor. One of them was awarded posthumously. Now, I'm tempted to say to

00:44:47.060 your audience, if you want to find out which one, go buy the book. But if you want to know, I'll tell you.

00:44:51.860 No, we'll, we'll say, uh, you know, go buy, go buy the book. We'll leave it.

00:44:57.880 It was Joe. It was Joe who died because you know why I have a, I have a, a poignant story. I'm

00:45:03.300 jumping ahead a little bit. Jay went through many, many operations, but on the, oh my goodness,

00:45:09.820 I think I'm going to cry on the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Jay was invited back to Pearl Harbor.

00:45:16.200 He was living in Maine at the time and he was invited back to Pearl Harbor, uh, for a ceremony.

00:45:23.060 And at one point he was taken to the, the, the punch bowl, which is the giant graveyard there

00:45:29.540 in an old extinct volcano. And as far as Jay knew, Joe was buried back in New Guinea. They buried him

00:45:38.000 on the mound. Jay was in a hospital when they buried Joe. He couldn't even, you know, he wasn't

00:45:42.100 even conscious when they buried Joe, but the guys who could walk or could be wheeled out the crew

00:45:47.080 members who could be wheeled out, they attended the ceremony and they, they buried him under a mound

00:45:51.520 near, near, uh, Port Morrisby. And for all Jay knew, Joe was still there. And so he's being escorted

00:45:59.060 into the punch bowl and a communications officer. By this time he was retired. Colonel, Colonel

00:46:06.400 Zeemer, we have something we'd like you to see. And they led him to a grave and unknown

00:46:13.360 to Jay previously, 10 years earlier, Joe's body had been dug up and transferred back to

00:46:19.440 the punch bowl. And when Jay saw the headstone and the marker, it wasn't even a headstone.

00:46:25.500 It was a marker that it was, uh, Joe Sarnoski. Jay was on crutches by this point. He put his

00:46:32.400 crutches down and he knelt down and he started crying over the grave. And that's how we end

00:46:38.100 the book. And, uh, uh, I don't know. I'm a little speechless. So say something.

00:46:45.220 No, it's, it's a great story of friendship, of heroism, of grit, termination. I'm curious

00:46:52.720 as you wrote this book and you talk to the family members of these, these guys, what did,

00:46:59.740 I mean, this is the art of manliness podcast. What did you learn about being a man after

00:47:02.760 writing about these guys? You know, Brett, uh, I think you're familiar with my background. You

00:47:08.340 know, I've been, not only do I write military history, nonfiction books, but for a good 20

00:47:13.600 years, almost two decades, I was a, I was a foreign correspondent, a war correspondent. And

00:47:18.200 I was hell holes in Afghanistan to Iraq, to Darfur, to Sarajevo. And I think

00:47:26.380 what strikes me the most to answer your specific question is how little it takes, whether it's

00:47:37.360 World War II, whether it's Korea or whether it's Dashtikala in Afghanistan, how little it

00:47:43.500 takes for ordinary men like Jay Zimmer and Joe Sarnosky and, and hundreds and thousands

00:47:50.640 of, of war fighters, kids to me that I've met over the last 20 years, how little it takes

00:47:58.460 them to go from the ordinary men rising to extraordinary circumstances. Let me put it

00:48:04.820 that way. And I think we all have something in us that we don't know we have in us until

00:48:09.880 we're faced with that kind of situation and more times than not. And I've been in some hairy

00:48:14.460 situations. I mean, I took a bullet in my leg in Afghanistan, I got blown off a helicopter

00:48:19.260 in Iraq. I still have some shrapnel in my arms from Sarajevo. And more times than not, I've

00:48:25.820 seen people who could be your neighbor, your grocer, your local cop, your fireman, I've seen

00:48:33.020 them run towards the fighting and run away from the fighting. And it, it, it makes me, I

00:48:42.880 don't want to get all sloppy patriotic on you, but it makes me feel good when I see

00:48:48.200 whether it's older men, guys older than me, like Dick Benelli, the Marine at the Chosen

00:48:53.560 who gave me the idea for this book, or whether it's some 19 year old kid, if they have it

00:48:59.500 inside of you, then I think it's probably inside of me. And I think you could probably

00:49:04.040 say the same thing about yourself. And I think most of your listeners could probably say the

00:49:08.880 same thing about themselves. I don't know if that makes any sense or not.

00:49:12.880 No, it makes perfect sense. It's a great way to end. Bob, where can people go to learn

00:49:16.640 more about the book and your work?

00:49:18.280 You know what? I have an amazon.com page. If you just go to amazon.com and type in the

00:49:23.140 bar in the subject line, Bob Drury, all my books come up. In fact, I'm line editing. We

00:49:27.700 have to do this again, Brett, because I just last week we handed in our next one will be

00:49:32.300 out in October on Valley Forge. You want to talk about the art of manliness, what

00:49:37.540 those soldiers want you. My goodness gracious. But yes, Bob Drury on amazon.com and you'll

00:49:43.760 see my work and you'll even see a picture of me with my bald head.

00:49:48.340 Well, Bob Drury, thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.

00:49:51.080 Brett, thank you. Thank you for enjoying the book.

00:49:53.800 My guest today was Bob Drury. He's the co-author of the book, Lucky 666. It's available on amazon.com

00:49:58.820 and bookstores everywhere. Check out our show notes at aom.is slash lucky666. We can find

00:50:03.580 links to resources where we can delve deeper into this topic.

00:50:07.540 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and

00:50:22.020 advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy the

00:50:25.940 podcast, I've gotten something out of it. I'd appreciate it if you take time to give us a

00:50:28.980 review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done it already, thank you. Please share

00:50:32.920 the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always,

00:50:36.220 thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay

00:50:39.840 manly.

The Art of Manliness - April 06, 2018

#394： The Incredible True Story of the Renegade WWII Pilots Who Helped Win the War in the Pacific

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