A third 20mm shell entered through the plexiglass nose combing, destroying Zeamer's rudder pedals and instrument panel, delivering grievous wounds to Zeamer's left leg, while also slicing his right wrist. Back in the B-17's nose, despite being blown to the floor with a horrible gash in his side and another in his neck, Sarnoski regained his machine gun in time to counter a twin-engine fighter (later confirmed to be a Nakajima J1N "Irving") pressing a new attack on their nose. Sarnoski drove the attacker off before it could inflict more damage, then collapsed from his wounds. Having finished the mapping run and now needing oxygen, Zeamer dove Old 666 down to about , estimating his altitude from a change in manifold pressure, as the altimeter had been destroyed. During or shortly after the dive, radio operator Sgt. William Vaughan was badly grazed in the neck by a round from a Zero following them down. After the long dive, both Johnston and Able extinguished the oxygen fire using only their hands and rags. Leveling out, Zeamer continued to pilot the B-17 despite excruciating pain and continued blood loss. Correctly assuming that the forward machine guns were now inoperable, the Japanese pilots began lining up on both sides of Old 666 to circle around, one by one in turn, to strafe from the front. Zeamer was now able to execute the technique that he had been unable to use against the coordinated first pass. By banking hard inside the firing angle of each approaching Zero, Zeamer both avoided the enemy's machine gun fire and allowed his rear gunners unfettered access to target the Zeros as they flew past. This continued until finally, low on ammunition and fuel, about forty minutes after the initial attack, the last of the remaining fighters returned to base. Once out of danger, Sgt. Able piloted Old 666 on a dead-reckoning return heading, determined by the badly wounded Zeamer, while the unscathed substitute copilot, Lt. John T. Britton, took stock of the damage to the aircrew and their aircraft. Zeamer, drifting in and out of consciousness, advised Able on keeping level and on course. Radio operator Vaughan, while nursing his neck wound, calculated a heading for Dobodura, an Allied airfield on the eastern coast of Papua, New Guinea, for an emergency landing (it was not expected that Zeamer could survive a return flight over the Owen-Stanley mountains to