The episode I watched last night had a bunch of guys in B-17 that were kinda like black sheep. They never got new planes, I don't remember why. I think the commander was on someones Sh-t list. Anyway, they scavenged an old B-17 from the scrap yard, added a bunch of guns from their presious B-17 (now wore out), making the heaviest armed recon aircraft in the pacific. They added a nose gun for the pilot as well. 17 machine guns I think. As luck would have it they flew into a flight of about 20 Zero's took out a bunch of them, lost some very heroic gunners, who were still shooting their guns when they bled to death. The Capt had a wrist shot off and plexiglass in his thigh & still flew it home. Tail # was 666.
That was Old 666, which much to the surprise of the Japanese that day, was the most heavily armed B-17 in the Pacific with no less than 19 .50 cal machine guns, including a pair that was able to be fired by the pilot. They placed machine guns all over the place, including in spots where they didn't need any coverage. They also stored replacement machine guns in the plane so if one gun jammed they could dump it and replace it with one of the spares.
On a side note, for those that think that heavy bombers never flew NOE, Old 666 made a bomb run on a Japanese carrier and was only 50ft above the carriers deck when it flew over. In another raid, this time a day time raid over Rabuel, Old 666 was so low that it came home with branches from the tree tops it skimmed over stuck in various areas on the bomber's belly and the ball turret had one of the glass panes cracked from a tree strike on that mission. On a night time attack on Wewak, Old 666 dove on and strafed the searchlights the Japanese used to locate the attacking bombers.
Sadly, not even the book that I have about the 5th AF has any pictures of Old 666 and can't seem to locate any at all searching the Intertardnet.
One another interesting side note, no one wanted to fly with Lt. Col Zeamer, that's why before Old 666, he didn't have an assigned plane or crew and was considered a "pilot at large" but was never actually a pilot. In fact, he was the most senior non pilot in the bomber group. He never passed the checks to move from the co-pilot seat to the pilot seat, he failed on each attempt when he was assigned to the 22nd BG flying B-26s. Pilots hated to have him in the co-pilot seat and was soon transferred out of the 22nd because of this. When he was transferred to the 43rd BG, he as given odd jobs, when a crew was short he'd fill in but never as pilot. It wasn't until a friend of his, Captain McCullar, took Zeamer under his wing and allowed him to join his crew sometimes as navigator and co-pilot. For some reason, flying with McCullar really clicked with Zeamer and studying what McCullar did in the cockpit during some pretty harrowing missions. After a handful of missions with McCullar's crew, Zeamer was finally ready to get a plane and crew of his own. It was also McCullar that inspired Zeamer to outfit his bomber with all of those guns and the pilot operated guns also came from McCullan who had his own B-17 outfitted the same way. After Zeamer got his own plane and crew and after the mission where he was attacked by all of those Zekes, he became widely known as one of the first and very few that would fly their heavy bombers like fighters.
ack-ack
