South Pacific, 1943.

The struggle for the Solomon Islands has become a grinding war of attrition.

It is a battle fought over vast stretches of open ocean and steaming jungle islands where the heat and malaria are enemies as deadly as the Japanese zeros.

In this theater, victory depends on air superiority, and the United States Marine Corps is throwing a new breed of fighter into the fray.

To conquer these skies, American industry produced a machine of terrifying power, the VA F4U Corsair.

To the enemy, it is the Whistling Death.

To the Marines who fly it, it is the Enen Eliminator, a beast that demands respect.

Its distinctive inverted gullwing design was born of necessity, not aesthetics.

The engineers needed to mount the largest propeller ever attached to a fighter plane and the bent wings provided the necessary ground clearance without requiring landing gear that was too long and fragile for carrier decks.

It is a paradox of aviation history that this very design feature intended for Navy carriers initially made the aircraft too difficult to land on a moving deck.

The long nose blocked the pilot’s view and the landing gear had a tendency to bounce.

Rejected by the Navy for carrier duty, the Corsair found its home with the land-based Marines.

Here, on crushed coral runways carved out of the jungle, the 2,000 horsepower double Wasp engine could finally be unleashed.

But a machine is only as good as the men who fly it.

And in the chaotic reinforcement shuffle of the Pacific War, a unique unit was forged.

Assembled from replacements, pool pilots, and veterans who had no squadron to call their own.

They were a scratch unit.

They did not fit the mold of the polished parade ground officers.

They were rugged, independent, and led by a commander who was decades older than most of his men.

A man who had already flown and fought with the Flying Tigers in China before America even entered the war.

These men lived in tents, fought in the air, and survived on sheer grit.

They developed tactics that utilized the Corsair’s blistering speed and dive performance to counter the agile Japanese fighters.

They flew long, exhausting fighter sweeps, often outnumbered, relying on teamwork and aggression to clear the skies from Rabbal to Bugenville.

What you are about to see is the record of that time.

It is a look at the machinery of war and the human spirit that drives it.

From the roar of the radial engines on a tropical morning to the desperate dog fights high above the clouds, this is the story of how a group of so-called misfits became one of the most effective fighting forces in the history of naval aviation.

From September 1943 to January 1944, the Black Sheep Squadron flew bold and highly successful operations in the skies above the Solomon Islands.

Under the leadership of the colorful Major Gregory Boington, the Black Sheep Squadron earned quite a reputation for their distinctive style and impressive record.

[Applause] [Music] Pilots live a different kind of a life.

They’re not on the beach Omaha beach with bodies all around them.

They go out on a mission and when they come home they count the people who come back and you got an empty bunk, but it’s it’s a lonely experience and uh it happens.

It’s hard to describe, you know, how close you are to your buddies out there.

And then when somebody didn’t come back, uh it it used to upset me that, you know, they go to his bunk and distribute his toothpaste and shaving gear and all that stuff like, “Oh, yeah, he’s gone.

By noon on January 3rd, 1944, he was missing in action.

As one report stated, the war stood still for 100 pilots and 500 crewmen.

Everybody, including the press, waited for the return of Marine Corps Major Gregory Boington.

Boington was only one kill away from tying the United States all-time ace record.

Could someone have bettered Boington? What would the black sheep do without Papy? He wasn’t uh a role model on the ground, but I thought he was a role model in the air.

Yeah.

He uh he made young men brave.

He was a real leader in the air.

How many How many pilots have you ever heard of who on their first combat mission in the Solomon Islands where we were shot down five planes on one mission? His leadership wasn’t wasn’t only morale but but tactically he was a very fine uh leader and inspiration with his own conduct in in combat.

He he had all these frailities that go with being an alcoholic, but uh he was a to us he was a fine squadron commander.

He even gave a talk to them one time and said, “Look, I’m just like coach and this is a big football team and we all got to work together to make this thing happen.

” And uh I think that was what inspired them most of all just because he was a downto-earth person and uh basically led by example in the airplane.

They came from everywhere from New England to New Orleans, from Florida to California.

They had never trained together.

In fact, no one planned to put them together.

These were Boyington’s bastards, Papy’s Black Sheep.

The Black Sheep Fighter Squadron and their speedy Corsaires tormented the Japanese in the Solomon Islands.

The squadron is credited with 126 destroyed with another 34 probable.

All of this in just 12 weeks.

The squadron success started at the top with their unusual squadron leader.

He was raised Gregory Halenbeck, born on December 4th, 1912.

His home was a small lumber town in western Idaho.

Living in a frontier community with alcoholic parents left Gregory with a lot of free time.

And he and his little buddies frequently would go on adventures climbing cliffs.

uh if there was a tree that he wanted to climb, he would invariably find the tallest tree and to that you would add the fact that it would be on the side of a cliff so he could climb as high as he could.

Uh he would do things like climb grain elevators and walk a beam from one grain elevator to the other over the railroad tracks just to challenge himself and make himself sort of a hero amongst his young friends.

[Music] In the fall of 1919, a barntormer in his surplus Jenny biplane flew into Gregory’s little town.

This was the first plane he had ever seen.

Gregory, with one of his fellow first graders, convinced the pilot to give them a ride.

Of all his flights, this one would always be remembered.

[Music] As a young man, Gregory moved to Seattle, got married, and began working as a draftsman for the Boeing Corporation.

He was quickly bored with his job, and began looking for a way out.

[Music] Ignoring the regulation that no Marine cadet could be married, Greg applied for training.

While looking for his birth certificate, he learned that there was no record of a Greg Halenbach being born on December 4th, 1912.

Finally, his mother confessed that he really was not Gregory Halenback.

She had divorced his father when he was very young.

His real name was Gregory Boington.

The new name worked in Greg’s favor.

Officially, Greg Boington was not married and therefore eligible for Marine cadet training in Pensacola, Florida.

Recruits who entered Pensacola in the 1930s received some of the finest flight training available.

For Boington, the flying was the only good part.

Hiding his wife and children turned out to be an expensive endeavor.

Cadets made little money.

His unofficial family expenses and ever growing bar tab proved too much to handle.

Boington was broke.

So that by the time World War II was starting to approach, he was financially very heavily in debt.

And by now he had three children and his marriage was on the rocks and the situation was fairly gloomy.

And he had been in some hot water with the Marine Corps to the point that he could see the handwriting on the wall that he would be furoughed or cashiered fairly soon.

One night in the summer of 1941, Boington went into the San Carlos Hotel in downtown Pensacola.

He cashed a bad check for $20 and proceeded to the bar.

Soon he learned that a recruiter upstairs was looking for fighter pilots for hire who would help defend the Burma road against the Japanese.

Boington met with the recruiter and immediately saw a way out of his gloomy financial situation.

Within a matter of days, Boington steamed to Burma with the American volunteer group, the Flying Tigers.

For Boington, the decision was easy.

The pay was three times his marine salary, and the Chinese government was giving a $500 bonus for each plane shot down.

Probably the Marine Corps were as glad to see him go as he was glad to be able to get away from his debts and other obligations.

[Music] In February 1940, Japan moved troops into Indo-China and began expanding into China.

Under the leadership of Shanghai-ishek, China desperately sought ways to halt the Japanese aggression.

The Chinese Air Force was not adequately equipped with modern aircraft, but it was fortunate to have serving as a military adviser, Claire Chenalt.

Chault, a retired army captain and stunt flying team member, moved to China and assembled the American volunteer group.

[Music] The American volunteer group was split into three squadrons.

One squadron was sent to defend Rangon and two others were sent to southern China to defend the Burma road.

Immediately the AVG successes stunned the Japanese and forced them to reinforce their squadrons operating in the Chinese theater.

Though he contributed to the Flying Tigers success, Boington really never fit in.

He was the man they left alone.

Boington’s reputation did precede him somewhat.

He had uh this reputation as a boisterous, rowdy, two-fisted drinker among some of the Navy pilots who had gone ahead of him, Navy and Marine Corps both.

And when he got there, a lot of that reputation played out.

First time I ever saw Papy, Moose Moss and I were in this little town of Tangu, which is about 8 miles out of where our base was there in central Burma.

And uh so we were in this little town there and we heard this racket.

We were rooting around somewhere there and and uh we heard this racket and we jumped back kind of off the side of the road in a little old kind of a path and here comes this damn rickshaw.

Papy’s pulling the rickshaw and got the in the sitting in it drunk as a ghost.

You know, at times he would report to work the next morning and he wasn’t capable of flying and I was in operation.

So I’d take him off the the scramble list and take him off alert.

Bob Neil finally got fed up with him and uh uh he things went from bad to worse.

Boington left the Flying Tigers abruptly and without permission angering Chault and his fellow Tigers.

He made his way to India.

Chault fired a message to the Air Force in India denying Boington air passage back to the United States.

in fact urging them to recruit Boington into the Air Force as a second lieutenant.

So Boington bought passage with the hard-earned money that he had been paid on an American ship, the SS Brazil.

Although the Allies gained an edge in the Battle of Midway, Bington learned upon his return home that it had been a disaster for the Marine Corps’s fighter squadrons.

The Marines had already lost a good number of their planes and top pilots at Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Wake Island.

Boington thought this critical need for Marine fighter pilots would guarantee his speedy return to service.

He was wrong.

In the meantime, he went back to his home state of Washington where his father and his mother lived.

I should say his his stepfather and his mother were living.

and he waited for the Marine Corps to call him back to service and he waited and he waited some more.

He had three children to feed and no work and he ended up going to Seattle and working in a parking garage during World War II.

While everybody else was training or going overseas to fight, he was parking cars.

One night, Bington took matters into his own hands.

After drinking a bottle of bourbon, he sat down and wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox.

Boington claimed he was an ace with the Flying Tigers and that all he wanted was to be reinstated in the Marine Corps so he could fight.

To expedite matters, Boington called Western Union and read his letter as a telegram to Washington, DC.

Remarkably, within a matter of days, Boington was reinstated in the Marine Corps, now as a major, and once again went off to war.

What his responsibilities would include, who knew? But at least he would be closer to the fight.

[Music] Boington soon found out flying was not part of his future.

He was passed from one group to another, usually as an administrator.

The few opportunities he had to command a squadron rarely involved flying time, and he did not encounter opposition from the enemy.

This was not what Boington had in mind.

[Music] Finally, in desperation, he went to see an old friend, a senior officer named Sandy Sanderson.

They came up with the idea of forming a fighter squadron by using pilots available in the replacement pool.

Somehow, the idea got approval.

Boington was allowed to assemble together fighter pilots, and what would become the Black Sheep Squadron was formed.

when they formed the 214 around Boington and we all got together, it it was a comradeship that it’s hard to describe.

We had a pretty good uh cross-section of experience so that you know we weren’t a bunch of new boys on the block and I think that made it possible to weld together very quickly.

We had a good record in that Solomon’s campaign, but I’m sure many of the other squadrons with whom we fought had comparable records.

And sometimes you might think we were that we won the war by ourselves.

We did.

[Music] The squadron fell under the leadership of Boington and Frank Walton, the intelligence officer.

Walton was the stabilizing force behind the squadron.

A police officer in Los Angeles, Walton was tough enough to keep Boington and the gang in line.

Walton was also a dedicated writer who committed himself to keeping the families back home informed.

Walton would after you were all there at night, he’d be in the office and he’d be writing press releases and he’d send press releases to the Times Pickyune where I lived in New Orleans.

Man, my parents thought I was the biggest hero in the war.

I think that uh that Frank was very compassionate and I I know that he agonized when a big flight would go off, 16 planes uh on a sweep over Bugenville or something like that.

He was concerned that every single one of us get back.

Soon after the squadron was authorized and began their training, they decided that they needed their own identity and their own name.

And because of the nature of their formation that it was informal and that they had been brought from different units, some had experience, some didn’t.

The first name they hid on was Boington’s Bastard.

The day it was decided, we’re all in a tent or quite a few guys were in a tent and we played around with Boington’s Bastard and kind of liked it.

But then the PR guy that was with us said, “You might do some good.

” and that wouldn’t go too good in the press.

And so they compromised and made a bastard shield for us in order to keep the bastard but not have it in print.

And it ser served pretty well and we liked it in in Haroldry.

The the uh stripe the black stripe is called the bar sinister and it’s the symbol of illegitimacy.

Though the Solomon Islands only fill a small part of the Pacific Ocean, their strategic location became critical for both the Japanese and the Allied forces.

The United States Marines helped stop the Japanese advancement at Guadal Canal.

The Allied strategy was to take the offensive and island hop from Guadal Canal towards Tokyo.

When the Black Sheep arrived, the Japanese stronghold at Bogenville was under constant attack.

Once captured, Bogenville would serve as a staging area for attacks against the Japanese fortress at Rabal, which housed over 100,000 troops, four airirst strips, and over 400 aircraft.

Given the speed in which the squadron was put together, Boington spent what little time he had explaining tactics and strategy to his men.

Many of his pilots came with no combat experience and only a few had flown together.

Uh Papy’s explanation of how he wanted the squadrons to operate, how the divisions were to operate was standard.

Uh it was not strange.

Everybody fell into it uh very nicely.

Uh we’d brief each other before we go up so that my wingmen knew what I was going to be doing and how my hand signals and so forth were going to work.

And the same with the section.

so that I never had a feeling that we were um not a unit.

I think that was the great thing about 214.

Boington also spent time explaining the difference between the Marines F4U Corsair and the Japanese Zero.

You’re flying one of the sweetest fighters there is, Boington once told his squadron.

But there are certain things a Corsair won’t do.

Boington knew the Zero was nimble and could outturn the Corsair.

The only way to win was to attack from above.

Boington had learned fighter tactics while flying with the AVG where they had learned that none of the American planes could turn inside the fighters that the Japanese had.

The Zero and even the earlier predecessors to the Zero were incredibly nimble.

They had lightning quick response.

They could outclimb anything that the Americans could put in the sky.

So they quickly learned the tactics to use were to get above the Japanese, use the superior weight of the American fighter and come down on the enemy, open fire with a quick burst.

And this is where the American fighters had a distinct advantage.

With six heavy machine guns in the wings, they could just make a veritable buzz saw of lead that would tear apart those lightly built Japanese planes.

With the knowledge they had managed to gain from Boyington and others in the squadron with experience and with their corsairs, the Black Sheep squadron set out to leave their mark on history.

[Music] On September 16th, 1943, at 1:00 in the afternoon, Boington and 23 Black Sheep took off for their third combat mission.

This would be a day to remember.

The Black Sheep were escorting a bombing mission against a Japanese base on an island near southern Bogenville.

As they approached the target, they met a powerful force of Japanese fighters.

A dog fight ensued and for 30 minutes within 250 square miles of airspace, Zeros and Corsair’s maneuvered against each other.

On this day and many to come, the black sheep ruled the skies.

They claimed 11 victories and another eight probables.

Boington got five himself.

The Black Sheep’s success continued.

Day after day, the squadron scored kill after kill.

The fighting instincts of the squadron commander worked well with the pilots at hand.

Boington and his boys became known as one of the most aggressive and successful fighter squadrons in the region.

But with these victories came the sad reality of losing a colleague.

No one looked forward to the time when a death was officially recorded.

[Music] Like all others stationed in the Solomon Islands, the Black Sheep dealt with military life in a jungle.

Living on an undeveloped Pacific island was a difficult adjustment.

Conditions were sparse and as squadrons moved further up the islands and new bases were quickly established.

We just were always wet.

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