Lt. Col. Jay Zeamer's "Eager Beavers" were a World War II B-17 bomber crew stationed in Australia and New Guinea in 1943, their nickname inspired by Zeamer’s constant volunteering for missions and the crew's happiness to oblige him.
They were part of the early aerial effort first to stop a Japanese invasion of Australia, and then to take the offensive against Japan. It was a part of the war as primitive as it is unknown, literally and figuratively the polar opposite of the European air war:
Handfuls of beat-up bombers flying two-day missions, unescorted, out of nomadic, Civil War-style tent camps in jungles and prairies, across thousands of miles of ocean and through the most violent storms on Earth, to bomb the most fortified harbor in the Pacific. A war in which dust and disease are as much an enemy as the Japanese.
It was an incredible feat of ingenuity and perseverance—traits the Eager Beavers would combine with training and preparation above and beyond, helping them repeatedly to take the initiative and defy the odds. Helping them, ultimately, to make history.
They are the most highly decorated air crew in American history.
Above and Beyond
The Incredible True Story of Zeamer's Eager Beavers
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