16/09/2021 01:14 Boyington’s Bastards: The Legendary Black Sheep Squadron
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Boyington’s Bastards: The Legendary
Black Sheep Squadron
Gregory “Pappy” Boyington maneuvers his Vought F4U-1A Corsair for position against a Japanese Zero over Rabaul on December
27, 1943. He and his “Black Sheep” downed six that day.
©2013 Jack Fellows, ASAA
Don Hollway
From Marine Corps orphans to top-scoring f ighter pilots, the fabled Black Sheep
followed pugnacious “Pappy” Boyington to fame.
It was one of the biggest air raids in the entire campaign for the Solomon Islands.
More than a year after U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, Navy TBF Avengers
and SBD Dauntless dive bombers were to hit the Japanese base on Ballale, at the
far end of the island chain, on September 16, 1943. Navy F6F-3 Hellcats and Royal
New Zealand Air Force P-40 Kittyhawks flew cover. And way up over 20,000 feet—
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either for altitude advantage or their own protection—were some two-dozen
Marines. VMF-214 was a newly reorganized squadron on just its third mission, and
flying an ill-starred f ighter to boot: the Vought F4U-1 Corsair, or “Bent-Wing Bird.”
High atop the four-mile-tall array, squadron commander Major Gregory Boyington
was feeling sorry for himself. Without victories, his cobbled-together squadron of
shiny new lieutenants and disbanded-unit orphans would soon be washed back
into the replacement pool. In his 1958 memoir, Baa Baa Black Sheep , Boyington
admitted he almost didn’t notice when the rest of the massive U.S. formation
suddenly dived under a layer of stratus. “What in hell goes?” he muttered. “We
must be over the mission.”
Following him down, the other Corsair pilots found the bombers pounding Ballale
and dozens of Japanese f ighters coming up to do battle. Boyington was suddenly
amazed to see, not 30 feet away, a red-balled A6M Zero practically flying on his
wing. That’s when he realized he had completely forgotten to switch on his
gunsight and guns.
Most Americans think of “Pappy” Boyington as actor Robert Conrad portrayed him
in the TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep , yet even that nickname was invented by the
press. In the Solomons his pilots called the 30- year-old major “Gramps.” After
claiming six victories in China while piloting P-40s with the American Volunteer
Group—but only being credited with two by the Flying Tigers—Boyington had
arrived in the Solomons just as the Marines replaced their Grumman F4F-4
Wildcats with new Corsairs.
Designed behind a bombersize prop more than 13 feet across (the inverted gull
wings and long nose were necessary to give it ground clearance), the F4U was the
f irst American single-engine plane to average more than 400 mph, but it was
prone to unrecoverable spins and landing stalls, and that “hose nose” blocked the
pilot’s vision on straight-in carrier approaches. The Navy judged it unf it for
shipboard ops, but good enough for the Marines. In Boyington’s opinion: “The
Corsair was a sweet-flying baby if I ever flew one. No longer would we have to f ight
the Nips’ f ight, for we could make our own rules.”
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Sporting caps and bats sent to them by the St. Louis Cardinals, VMF-214’s stellar lineup
of aces includes (front row, from left): Chris Magee (9 victories), Bob McClurg (7), Paul
Mullen (6 1/2), Boyington (24), John Bolt (6, plus 6 more in Korea) and Don Fisher (5).
(National Archives)
He made his own squadron, too. Later portrayed on TV as misf its and rejects
awaiting courts-martial, the “Black Sheep” (the f irst choice, “Boyington’s
Bastards,” was nixed as not press-f riendly) were in fact among the most
experienced pilots in the theater. Even the rookies had accumulated high flight
hours, and the outf it’s 10 veterans included several with more victories than
Boyington. Though they had flown together only briefly before September 16, the
results of that f irst day of combat were unequivocal.
At the debrief after the mission, Lieutenant Bob McClurg reported getting his f irst
kill in a head-on pass: “I just held the trigger down as we came at each other. I was
scared to death.” Boyington’s wingman, Lieutenant Don Fisher, scored two,
including one that he shot off his leader’s tail. “I was right behind [the Zero], and
he blew,” Fisher recounted. “The wings went each way.” But he had lost sight of
Gramps, who was hours overdue returning to base. VMF- 214 had almost marked
Boyington MIA when his Corsair at last arrived and he climbed out of the cockpit,
claiming no fewer than f ive kills—even discounting his AVG victories, an ace in a
day.
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After reportedly maneuvering the f irst Zero into an overshoot (and charging his
guns), Boyington had sent it down in flames, then gunned down enemy f ighters
halfway back home, including one that “exploded completely when I was about 50
feet f rom him.” Too close to evade, he had flown directly through the explosion,
somehow dodging the pilot, engine and still-spinning prop.
There was no gun camera f ilm in those days; Boyington had only his word to back
up his claims. But he had stopped off at the recently captured forward air base at
Munda, on New Georgia, almost out of gas and ammo, with dents all over his
Corsair f rom flying debris. His kills—almost half the squadron score of 11 (plus
eight probables)— were conf irmed. Within a few weeks, propelled by the CO’s
Flying Tiger back story and the Marine Corps press machine, the Black Sheep were
a household name. And they were just getting started.
Beneath the palms at Turtle Bay, Boyington briefs (from left) Rollie Rinabarger, Hank
“Boo” Bourgeois, John Begert and Stan Bailey. (National Archives)
Lieutenant Bill Case had only scored a probable over Ballale. One week later he
held his f ire to within 50 feet of a Zero’s tail—too close— and rounds f rom his
Corsair’s six wide-set wing guns straddled its fuselage. “I spent about 2,000
rounds f iguring that out,” said Case, as quoted in Bruce Gamble’s 1998 book The
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Black Sheep . “I f inally put the pipper up above his tail and about 6 to 8 feet to the
side…and hit him with three guns at a time.”
Lieutenant John Bolt had missed his f irst kill over Ballale. “The f irst time I saw a
meatball it was a full deflection shot, and he just zipped by,” he reported. “I was in
a state of shock.” Over Vella Lavella, however, Bolt got behind two Zeros in
succession, flaming both for a double kill.
Lieutenant Chris Magee had likewise been flummoxed by the speed of air combat:
“All I could do was keep spinning my neck and looking…everything was happening
so fast.” Called “Maggie” (though rarely to his face, as he was a dedicated
weightlifter and f itness fanatic), Magee plunged f rom 13,000 feet into a pack of
Aichi D3A2 “Val” dive bombers attacking a U.S. convoy. “The Japanese were going
into a straight dive, so I headed into the dive with them,” he recalled. “Of course,
by then the [American] antiaircraft was all around us, but you don’t even think of
that….The [Vals] kept going down, and I kept in there, f iring.” By the time they
pulled out above the water, he had splashed two, and a third probable, when he
heard bullets striking his plane “like a hail storm on a tin roof.” The Vals’ escort—
Zeros, always slow in a dive—had caught up. Magee made it back to base with 30
bullet holes in his Corsair. He was recommended for a Navy Cross, and his
nickname changed to “Wild Man.”
During the late 1943 island-hopping campaign up the Solomons,VMF-214 flew out
of bases so far forward that they were often behind Japanese lines. (Navy Seabees
had started the reconstruction of desolate, bomb-pocked Munda while the enemy
still held the far end of the strip.) On their f irst tour, the Black Sheep suffered an
almost 40 percent casualty rate, including one pilot shot down in a f riendly-f ire
duel with Navy PT-boats. Yet they overflew Bougainville so regularly that the
Japanese, via radio, dared Boyington by name to come down and brave the anti-
aircraft; instead he taunted Zero pilots that they should come up and f ight. John
Bolt even flew an unauthorized one-man air raid on Tonolei Harbor, making two
straf ing runs on troop transports and boat traff ic. “I was only taken under f ire
f rom one gun,” he reported to a furious Boyington on his return, adding that its
20mm tracers “just floated by.” Despite his CO’s ire, Bolt received a congratulatory
telegram f rom no less than Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, plus the Distinguished
Flying Cross. He would eventually earn a Navy Cross as well.
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During a simulated scramble at Turtle Bay on September 11, 1943, Bill Case leads
Rinabarger, Begert and Bourgeois to their F4U-1s. (National Archives)
In six weeks VMF-214 scored 57 kills, with 19 probables. Wild Man Magee claimed
seven. Bill Case f inished with eight. On his last mission, for no real reason Case
lowered his cockpit seat a notch; when a 7.7mm bullet pierced his canopy, instead
of drilling him through the skull, it merely creased his scalp.
Halsey visited VMF-214’s base to shake hands all around. Boyington was
nominated for the Medal of Honor. At a November photo op on Espiritu Santo, a
Corsair was dressed up with his name and 20 Japanese victory flags, though in
fact it was a point of pride in the squadron that they all shared airplanes; not even
Boyington flew a personal mount. Hero-hungry America couldn’t get enough of
the Black Sheep. Neither could the Marine Corps, which boosted squadron pilot
strength f rom 28 to 40.
On November 1, the Allies f inally landed on Bougainville, capturing just enough
beachhead for a staging f ield at Torokina. For the f irst time Allied f ighters could
reach Rabaul, the “Pearl Harbor of the Southwest Pacif ic.” Within shooting
distance of 26 victories—the American record held since World War I by Eddie
Rickenbacker, only recently tied by Captain Joe Foss—Boyington led a f ighter
sweep, marking the f irst appearance by American single-engine planes over
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Simpson Harbor. (When a Navy squadron commander questioned his tactics,
Boyington snapped: “Tactics? Hell, you don’t need any tactics. When you see the
Zeros, you just shoot ’em down, that’s all.”) Against such an armada, however, the
Americans found few Zeros willing to fly. McClurg broke formation to dive after a
Nakajima A6M2-N “Rufe” floatplane, his fourth kill: “He was sitting there just flying
straight and level. Nothing to it….[Boyington] looked over at me shaking his f ist at
me for breaking formation.” But the CO himself went down alone to strafe the air
base at Lakunai. “We scared them,” he declared. “We ought to send up only about
24 planes, so they’d be sure to come up and f ight.”
A week later the Allies sent two dozen B-24 Liberators—but backed up by nearly
100 Corsairs, Hellcats, Kittyhawks and Army P-38 Lightnings. This time the
Japanese matched them f ighter for f ighter. In this titanic dogf ight over Rabaul
the Black Sheep lost three but claimed 12, Bolt and McClurg getting doubles to
become aces, Magee raising his total to eight. And Boyington got four, at one
point taking on a nine-plane formation all by himself: “I came down unknown to
the Zekes and picked off the tail-end man, and then ran like a sonof-a-gun.” He
even made a straf ing run on a Japanese sub he caught on the surface. It was his
second-best day ever as a Black Sheep.
Boyington climbs aboard F4U-1A 41-7883 in December 1943. (National Archives)
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The closer he came to the record, however, the more he seemed to feel the weight
of history bearing down on him. He gave reporters wave-offs and brusque replies:
“I didn’t come out here to make news. I came out here to f ight a war.” McClurg got
his seventh, Magee his ninth and Don Fisher got a double to become an ace, but
Boyington stalled. “The hunting was f ine,” he said of those last days of 1943, “…but
I’m doing some dumb things up there!” He scored one more Zeke over Rabaul, but
the next day was outflown by an enemy plane he reported as a Nakajima Ki-44
“Tojo” that got away, scored only as a probable. On a subsequent mission he had
to turn back with his windscreen covered in oil; at one point, as several fellow
pilots attested, he undid his straps and stood up into the slipstream to wipe it off.
“Don’t worry about me,” he told his men. “If you guys ever see me going down
with 30 Zeros on my tail, don’t give me up. Hell, I’ll meet you in a San Diego bar
and we’ll all have a drink for old times’ sake.” They celebrated New Year’s Eve Black
Sheep style, f iring so many pistol flares that the transport fleet offshore got
underway, fearing an air raid.
On January 3, 1944, Boyington led another sweep to Rabaul. The Japanese saw the
Americans coming and sent up some 70 f ighters to intercept. Boyington led the
charge down into them. “I poured a long burst into the f irst enemy plane that
approached,” he said. The Zero burst into flames, and several pilots saw it go down
—Boyington’s record-tying 26th victory. But they lost sight of Gramps in the low-
level haze, where he found some 20 enemy f ighters waiting. Word of his record kill
preceded him back to base. “There was a radio recording hookup,” remembered
one Black Sheep, “and the Marine Corps and Navy photo sections had cameramen
there.” Elation turned to shock when Boyington failed to return. “In the movies it
would be labeled pure corn,” wrote one correspondent. “Things like that don’t
happen.”
Bolt got his sixth the next day, but adding insult to grievous injury, with its tour
f inished, VMF-214 was broken up and scattered for reassignment. A reconstituted
unit did not fare so well on its return to combat. In August 1945, the survivors were
preparing to muster out when word came that Boyington was not only alive but
now considered the top-scoring Marine ace of the war, having claimed two more
Zeros on his last mission before going down in the ocean. (Today off icial sources
credit him variously with between 24 and 28 victories.) He’d been picked up by a
Japanese sub, and spent the rest of the war as a POW. That October on the White
House lawn, President Harry S. Truman awarded Boyington his “posthumous”
Medal of Honor, but not before Pappy had his promised reunion with the Black
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Sheep—one so legendary that it’s said to have been the f irst bender to rate a
photo feature in Life magazine.
What America knows as the Black Sheep Squadron flew together as a unit for only
about three months—less than one 13-week television season—but destroyed 97
enemy aircraft, with 35 probables and 50 damaged, plus almost 30 ships sunk. Of
the 28 pilots on their f irst tour, no fewer than nine became aces. Bolt went on to
score six kills in Korea for 12 total—the Marine Corps’ only jet ace and only ace in
two wars—while Magee flew Messerschmitts for the Israelis, bootlegged booze
and robbed banks. One of the few WWII-vintage squadrons still serving today,
VMF-214 flew Corsairs in Korea, A-4 Skyhawks in Vietnam and AV-8B Harrier jump
jets in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the years the forlorn black sheep on the
squadron insignia, which a bunch of orphan flyboys f irst scribbled up on
Guadalcanal, has become a proud, foot-stamping ram. And no matter what they
fly, their crest still bears a Bent-Wing Bird.
Black Day for the Black Sheep
The Black Sheep who went to war in 1945 never got the chance to live up to their
legacy, but they lived up to their name. Mostly fresh out of flight school, they lost 11
Corsairs and seven airmen during training to collisions, disappearances and freak
accidents. One pilot’s life raft ballooned inside the plane, shoving him out of the
cockpit at 5,000 feet without his chute; another had a fatal tangle with an aerial
towed target banner; a third’s belly tank tore loose on a carrier landing, hit the prop
and exploded, immolating him in the cockpit. Even their mascot, a black lamb
named Midnite, was run over by a car and killed; Midnite II proved to be an ornery
ram with a penchant for butting heads with squadron mates.
The Corsair had changed too. Finally cleared for carrier ops, the new F4U-1D could
pack 1,000 pounds of high-explosive or napalm bombs, eight five-inch HVARs
(high-velocity aircraft rockets) or a centerline-mounted 11.75-inch “Tiny Tim” missile.
All these weapons were stocked when VMF-214 boarded the Essex-class carrier
Franklin. Sailing as part of Task Force 58 in support of the Okinawa invasion, “Big
Ben” would make the closest approach to the Japanese Home Islands of any U.S.
carrier in the entire war: just 50 miles, a mere 10-15 minutes’ flying time, off southern
Kyushu.
At dawn on March 19, Franklin had more than 30 aircraft on deck and 22 below,
readying for a strike into Japan’s Inland Sea. Many VMF-214 pilots were prepping for
their mission in the squadron ready room above the hangar deck when, at about
0705 hours, a single Japanese plane (usually described as a Yokosuka D4Y3 “Judy”)
dropped out of the low cloud cover, crossed the ship bow to stern at mast height
and pickled off its ordnance dead center. At least one 550-pounder punched
through the flight deck into the crowded, busy hangar space below and exploded.
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Listing heavily but still afloat after taking bomb hits on March 19, 1945, USS Franklin
burns as its crew gathers on the flight deck. (National Archives)
In the confined space, the blast redoubled. Burst tanks and lines spattered aviation
fuel. Bombs and rockets set each other off. The rippling explosion was so powerful it
heaved the entire 32-ton forward aircraft elevator clear up out of its well. The flight
crews in the hangar deck never knew what hit them. Concussion bucked the
overhead ready room so hard the floor broke pilots’ legs where they stood or hurled
them bodily against the ceiling. Some jumped or were blown overboard. Few
escaped uninjured as flames ravaged the listing carrier stem to stern, punctuated
by ordnance cooking off. More than 800 men died, with almost 500 wounded.
The tale of Franklin’s epic, and ultimately successful, battle for survival has passed
into U.S. Navy legend, but 32 men of VMF-214 never lived to fight it, let alone fight
the enemy. For both Big Ben and the Black Sheep, World War II was over.
For further reading, f requent contributor Don Hollway recommends Baa Baa
Black Sheep , by Gregory “Pappy” Boyington (“more for flavor than accuracy”);
Bruce Gamble’s The Black Sheep and Swashbucklers and Black Sheep ; and Once
They Were Eagles , by VMF-214 intelligence off icer Frank Walton. To view related
video and additional photographs, visit donhollway.com/blacksheep.
Originally published in the January 2014 issue of Aviation History . To subscribe,
click here.
Today in History: Born onSeptember 15
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1789 James Fenimore Cooper, novelist whose works include The Pioneers and Last of the Mohicans .
1857 William Howard Taft, 26th president of the United States (1909-1913).
1889 Robert Benchley, humorist.
1890 Claude McKay, poet and novelist, part of the Harlem Renaissance.
1890 Agatha Christie, English writer of mystery novels.
Artesania Latina
Artesania Latina Ouvrir
1894 Jean Renoir, French film director ( Grand Illusion , The Rules of the Game ).
Sir Howard Bailey, British engineer who gave his name to a prefabricated bridge used extensively during World
1901
War II.
1926 Bobby Short, singer and pianist.
1945 Jesse Norman, soprano.
1946 Oliver Stone, film director and screenwriter ( Platoon , JFK ).
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Artesania Latina
Artesania Latina Ouvrir
1958 Wendie Jo Sperber, actress ( I Wanna Hold Your Hand , Back to the Future ).
Dan Marino, American football pro quarterback who led Miami Dolphins to 10 playoffs in his 17-year career and set
1961
many NFL passing records.
1977 Tom Hardy, actor; won a BAFTA Rising Star Award for Inception .
1984 Prince Harry of Wales, Prince of Wales; currently fourth in line of succession to the British throne.
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