Jay Zeamer, the Eager Beavers, and Old 666 - The Definitive Resource http://zeamerseagerbeavers.com/
By Clint Hayes

Excerpts:

"Lt. Col. Jay Zeamer and his crew, the Eager Beavers, were
a B-17 bomber crew stationed in Australia and New Guinea in
1942-43. So named for Zeamer's constant volunteering for
missions, they served during the crucial early period in the
war in the southwest Pacific, defending Australia from
invasion by the Japanese before pivoting to take the
offensive against Japan.

They are the most highly decorated air crew in American
history.

This website is the outgrowth of over twenty years of
research for a feature film screenplay I've completed
and a forthcoming novel adaptation of that screenplay.
Its aim is to provide the most comprehensive,
authoritative resource online about this singular crew.

Many mistakes and myths created in early accounts of
the Eager Beavers have been passed down over the
decades. This site corrects the record to create a
more accurate portrait of Zeamer's crew and their
experiences."
......

Q: Were the crew members a bunch of "misfits,"
"renegades," "cast-offs," and "screw-offs"?
A: Unequivocally no. This is the most enduring and
pernicious myth of the entire story. If anything,
Jay's crew members were quite the opposite.

Finding its most recent manifestation in Bob Drury
and Tom Clavin's Lucky 666, the characterization
originally comes from "Mission Over Buka," the
first chapter of Martin Caidin's _Flying Forts:
The B-17 in World War II_. Caidin quotes extensively
from Walter Krell, a good friend of Zeamer's dating
back to their flight school days in Glenview, IL."
.......

SMK: I read that _Flying Forts_ account back in the
1970s. Sounds like Caidin has been criticized for a
whole bunch of myths and tales in his books.

Interestingly, he came and spoke at an assembly at
my junior high back in the late 1960s, to speak
about his WWII historical work.

Clint Hayes' website also criticizes a book that was
just published about Jay Zeamer's crew and missions.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)