The Mapping Mission
The reconnaissance mission over Bougainville was simple in its concept:
Depart Port Moresby under cover of darkness.
Fly over 600 miles of open sea.
Arrive at the north end of the island shortly after dawn when there would be enough light to take photographs.
Slowly cruise southeast at an altitude of 25,000 feet while the camera clicked in the belly of the aircraft to record the terrain below.
Simple in concept perhaps, but the devil was in the details. Despite Allied air superiority over New Guinea and at Guadalcanal, Japan ruled the seas and the airspace from New Britain to Choisuel. A lone photo-recon aircraft might find itself hopelessly outnumbered and, for the mission to succeed not only did the photographs have to be taken, but the airplane carrying that camera had to be able to get that film safely home.
"That job had been hanging for months, and nobody else had been able to do it," Captain Zeamer wrote in a letter five months after the mission. "We just put extra guns all over our ship hoping to be able to fight our way clear. We had 19 machineguns which is more than any other Flying Fortress in the Southwest Pacific has ever thought of having."
By the time darkness fell over Port Moresby on June 15 Old 666 was armed to the teeth and ready for action. While the crew headed for their cots to get a good night's rest before their 4 a.m. takeoff, Captain Zeamer was given an additional last-minute order. While in the air over the coastline of Bougainville, he was instructed to fly over the smaller island of Buka which was separated by a thin waterway known as the Buka Passage. There he was to make a reconnaissance of the Japanese airfield there to determine logistics and enemy strength.
This new assignment changed the mission from being one of immense danger to one of sheer suicide. Captain Zeamer was furious. His mission was to photograph Bougainville and then get the images back home. A side trip over Buka would almost surely doom his airplane and crew, making the entire mission a futile waste. As he turned in for the night Zeamer had already made up his mind that he would photograph Bougainville, but he would not risk his men or his B-17 over Buka.
Old 666 lifted off from Port Moresby right on schedule at 4 a.m. In the clear Plexiglas nose Lieutenant Johnson plotted a course over 600 miles of open waters of the Solomon Sea. Nearby, Joe Sarnoski checked and double-checked the vertical camera switches he would activate when the time came for Sergeant Kendrick to begin his all-important work of taking pictures from further back in the belly of the Flying Fortress.
For three hours Old 666's four, big engines churned the air as Jay Zeamer flew into the rising sun and one of Japan's most fortified islands. Shortly before 0700 the faint dawn revealed the distant outline of Bougainville Island. The B-17 was thirty minutes ahead of schedule. The sun had not yet risen high enough to illuminate the island's west coast sufficiently for photographic purposes.
"Aw, hell...." Zeamer thought as he considered his early arrival and pondered the suicidal last-minute order he had previously determined to ignore. "Navigator, plot a course for Buka," he announced.
Minutes later a thin slip of water passed 25,000 feet below the Fortress, and then the dense jungle of Buka appeared in the lens of Kendrick's camera. Carved in the foilage below was a honeycomb of small airplane revetments, all leading to a massive airstrip. With a sinking feeling Captain Zeamer suddenly realized why headquarters wanted this recon--more than 400 enemy fighters had been flown into the Buka aerodrome the previous day.