A page dedicated to the most highly decorated air crew in American history, the Eager Beavers, and telling their story beyond their historic June 16, 1943, mapping mission to Bougainville/Buka islands, and the B-17 they made famous, "Old 666"/"Lucy." They both set challenges for themselves to do it, too, from childhood on. They liked each other immediately when they met before Pearl Harbor, but th
eir paths diverged, Zeamer with his B-26 bomb group, Sarnoski with a B-17 bomb group. They would cross again, though, fourteen months later in Australia, and when they did, Zeamer and Sarnoski put together an air crew to match their high standards. A crew that wouldn't mind flying every opportunity it could find, wouldn't mind training and planning more than other crews, a crew that wouldn't mind Zeamer's flying the B-17 the way his engineering mind knew it could be flown. The crew came to trust Zeamer to bring them back from anything, which in the end he did on June 16, 1943, in the skies over Bougainville Island. The crew whose goal it was to always go above and beyond did, with Zeamer and Sarnoski each being awarded the Medal of Honor, and the rest of the crew the second highest decoration for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross. Their final mission together became the most highly decorated in our history, and made Jay Zeamer's Eager Beavers the most highly decorated aircrew in American history.
