Clavin Thomas - Lucky 666: the impossible mission

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Copyright 2016 by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition October 2016

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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui

Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward

Jacket Design by Jonathan Bush

Jacket Images: Plane: Haveblue/Getty Images; Clouds: Silver30/Shutterstock, Chiccododifc/Shutterstock

Author Photos Anne Drager

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Drury, Bob, author. | Clavin, Thomas, author.

Title: Lucky 666 : the impossible mission / by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin.

Description: New York : Simon & Schuster, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016017924| ISBN 9781476774855 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781476774862 (trade pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Zeamer, Jay, Jr., 19182007. | United States. Army Air Forces. Bombardment Group, 22ndBiography. | Bomber pilotsUnited StatesBiography. | B-17 bomber. | World War, 19391945Aerial operations, American. | World War, 19391945CampaignsPacific Area. | World War, 19391945Regimental historiesUnited States.

Classification: LCC D790.253 22nd .D78 2016 | DDC 940.54/4973092 [B]dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017924

ISBN 978-1-4767-7485-5

ISBN 978-1-4767-7487-9 (ebook)

For Susan Margaret Drury

B.D.

To the memory of

Nancy Clavin Bartolotta and

Jacquelyn Dayle Reingold

T.C.

THEY WERE CLOSE NOW, THE zeros. Running him down from behind.

Thirty minutes ago his belly gunner had counted over 20 on the Buka airstrip, close to a dozen kicking up dust as they taxied for takeoff. They would be on him soon; they should have been on him by now.

Give me forty-five more seconds.

It was Kendrick, over the interphone. The waist gunner and Photo Joe. Asking, begging, for just a little more time to get his pictures. The photographs, theyd said back at the base, that could change the course of the war. Almost four hours in the air and this is what it had come to. Forty-five seconds.

Below him the low sun caused the stunted eucalyptus trees to cast dappled shadows on the flowering frangipani of Japanese-held Bougainville Island. Far to the east the active volcano, Mount Bagana, spewed slender flutes of black smoke into the cloudless sky, like veins in blue granite. But it was neither the islands flora nor its topography that interested Captain Jay Zeamer and the anxious crew of his B-17 Flying Fortress this morning. It was the hidden reefs of Empress Augusta Bay. The reefs that lay submerged just beneath the breaking waves where the Marine landings would take place. The reefs waiting like bear traps to snag their LSTs.

The reefs, the airfields, the enemy defenses: these were the reasons why Jay and his men were here. A lonely B-17 600 miles from home. Soon to face the might of the Japanese Imperial Navys most elite fighter pilots, a desperate enemy determined to prevent the Americans from returning with their photos. The impossible mission, someone had called it. Now Jay Zeamer knew why.

Not that every recon flight wasnt a deadly gamble. No fighter escort. Not even a friendly formation to help ward off the swarms of bogeys. Jay knew too many recon crews who had never returned. That was the rub. Scouting enemy positions was only half the job. Getting the information back would be the impossible part. The Zero pilots knew it as well.

Jay scanned the bay again. Visibility was clear. Just a scrim of ground haze over the shore, which the infrared camera filters would cut through with ease.

Now the tail gunners voice crackling over the interphone. Another fighter squadron lifting off, this time from Bougainville. A dozen at least.

Jay thought about cutting and running. No one would blame him. No one could. He had volunteered for this job with the clear understanding that hed run the operation his way. His way meant any way any way he wanted. They had already reconnoitered Buka Island. The flight wouldnt be a total waste. Hell, Buka was where the wolves behind him had picked up his scent.

Why hadnt he trusted his gut, gone with his initial response? At first hed said no when theyd tacked on the Buka run at the last minute. Just Bougainville, hed told them. Forget Buka; Buka was suicide. He should have held firm. What could they have done? Grounded him? Hed been disciplined before, too many times to count. Washed out of one Bomb Group for being too flaky, nearly court-martialed by another for that stunt over Rabaul. A lot of people didnt like Jay. Aloof, they called him. A screwoff. No respect for authority.

And this was where it had gotten him.

When they wouldnt give him a plane hed foraged one, plucked from the boneyard at the rump end of the runway, and rebuilt it from the wheels up. When they wouldnt give him a crew hed recruited one, men like himself; misfits they called them at first, but each now an Airman with whom hed entrust his life. And when they wouldnt give him assignments hed volunteered for them, recon missions no one else wanted, missions they all had to be a little crazy to take on. Missions like this one, which right now his every good sense was screaming at him to abort.

But then Jay envisioned the Marines. It was the middle of June 1943, and the war in the Pacific hung by a thread. In the 18 months since Pearl Harbor the Japanese had controlled the game, spreading like algae across the vast, watery theater, securing far-flung bases with impunity. Yet now the tide just might be turning. First at Midway, then on Guadalcanal. Small steps. But steps. And the island below himBougainvillewas next. The key to unlocking the stranglehold of the Empire of the Rising Sun.

After Bougainville there would be New Guinea, and from New Guinea a return to the Philippines, until finally the ships of the U.S. Navy would be lapping at Japanese shores. Forget the great and grand strategies transmitted from Washington, pushpins on a map. The turnaround in this war would begin with boots on the ground at Bougainville. Marines depending on his photos in order to reach that beachhead. If he didnt do the job, if he throttled and fled, someone else would have to come back and do it all over again. He could not live with that.

Then another thought, creeping into his mind on cats paws. A mans character is his fate. He hadnt been much for philosophy back at M.I.T. He was an engineer, a maker, a builder, with little use for pious pronouncements. But he never forgot that line. A mans character is his fate. One of the Greeks. Heraclitus? He considered himself a man of character, a pilot of character. He was the captain of a United States Army Air Force bomber crew, a leader of men. Well, hed soon find out his fate. Their fate.