Recent content by zeamerseagerbeavers

If you're interested in the Pacific theater, I can recommend the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum YouTube channel. They're not on YouTube—I think they should be—but just to alert people to them, if you're interested in the South and SW Pacific theaters, PacificWrecks.com and OzatWar.com are two...

That's a bit of a gut punch. Baugher's research—which didn't end at his Air Force serial numbers catalog—is simply incredible. I've relied on it extensively over the years as part of my research into this crew but especially the history of the B-17 and 2nd Bomb Group. Now I wish I had taken...

We'll see if he erases mine, which I just added:

I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for, but I can speak to what's in my very specific wheelhouse. The popular conception—"popular," of course, among the WWII/aviation crowd who knows about it—that Jay Zeamer's Eager Beavers were a ragtag bunch of screw-off misfits and renegades...

I'd also recommend FLIGHT TO ARRAS, by Saint-Exupery, but do yourself the favor and buy the anthology AIRMAN'S ODYSSEY, which also contains WIND, SAND, AND STARS and NIGHT FLIGHT. (non-affiliate link) It's one of my favorite books, of any kind, and cemented Saint-Exupery in a tie for my...

If I'm allowed, I'd like to recommend my dad's book, AD ASTRA. (non-affiliate Amazon link) It's drawn from his experience as a private and professional pilot through most of his life; his lifelong love of World War II aviation (his dual dreams—both now fulfilled—were to fly on a B-17 and to...

This can be deleted. I somehow missed "eBay" in the headline and thought these were just photos of WW2 pilots. I've tried to find a way to delete the post, but to no avail. The resources seem to indicate there is no easy way, so moderators, feel free to delete this. A perfect illustration of...

The Japanese routinely attacked bombers from the front since that was their least defended point. Walter Krell, originally of the 19/22, described in a letter to me how the 22nd pilots (who first took the B-26 into combat in April '42) discovered fairly quickly that the best way to engage the...

Completely agree. The Eager Beavers' experience on that mission was indeed an outlier in that sense, even by Zeamer's account. One of his stated reasons for going ahead and doing the Buka recon that day was because they'd done another two weeks prior and found little to report. He reported that...

Yours wasn't, no. I meant I didn't want my response to do that, i.e. spark a lot of conversation about that crew/plane in a post about this book.

Don't want to hijack the thread, but yes, Old 666/"Lucy." "Old 666" specifically was mostly Zeamer in his post-service accounts. The crew members I interviewed said they mostly just referred to it as "666" or simply "the plane." Zeamer renamed it "Lucy" for a former girlfriend at Langley...

Outstanding summary. Thanks for taking the time. I've spent almost 30 years now researching Jay Zeamer's "Eager Beavers," the most highly decorated air crew in U.S. history, whose members separately and together served in the 19th and 43rd BG in 1942/43. What you detail here was very much their...

My understanding is that the 22nd BG Association sued Hickey and IHRA years ago over the decades-long delay in producing the Red Raiders history, to the effect that after Hickey's death, the copyright for Red Raiders passed to the 22nd BG Association. I saw that they're going to be selling them...

I'll see the Caidin caveat crowd—he was an effective novelist who used WWII aircraft as his protagonists—and raise you a LUCKY 666 by Drury and Clavin. As I say in my Amazon review, it's well-written, a page-turner even, and certainly ends up doing solid honor to an historic crew. But it would...

Lucky 666 is a good read but its mangled history makes it borderline fiction. I expand on that more here: A good start veers into confused, alternative history