Once They Were Eagles Read online

  Sunday, the 26th, the boys ranged over New Ireland without opposition.

  On the 27th a fighter sweep was scheduled, the type of flight Boyington had originated in the Solomons. Fittingly, Pappy was assigned as tactical commander of the formation of 44 Marine Corsairs and 20 Navy Hellcats.

  Although it was customary for our pilots to take any plane on the line, in order, as they were dropped off, Pappy chose the “Lady Carol W.,” a plane I’d named after my wife.

  In a masterful job of tactical leadership, Boyington took his formation up over Rabaul and circled Lakunai, putting his flight in a long column behind him, and then let down on the climbing Japanese in a huge tilted Lufbery circle. Sixty Zeros gave battle; in spite of the odds, the Black Sheep completely broke up the Nip formation and shot down six without a loss. The Black Sheep score was now 82. Boyington, Avey, Harper, and Mullen made one kill each; Fisher downed two.

  It was Fisher’s fifth and sixth, to make him the squadron’s sixth ace. Mullen’s single brought his score to five and a half, and he became the Black Sheep’s seventh ace. Boyington’s score was now 25—just one short of the record, but he wasn’t satisfied.

  “I was pressing up there,” he said. “God, I should have had four or five—there were plenty of them.”

  That night, Fred Hampson, an Associated Press correspondent, dropped in at our island base. He wanted to interview Boyington.

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll bring him over and you can interview him just once. But you’ve got to remember he’s under a hell of a strain, so after this interview, you’ve got to leave him alone until after he breaks the record.”

  The three of us and Bus Holt, Marine Public Information Officer at Vella Lavella, talked until late.

  “Sure, I’d like to break the record,” said Boyington, in response to Hampson’s question. “Who wouldn’t? I’d like to get 40 if I could. The more we can shoot down here, the fewer there’ll be up the line to stop us.”

  But the questioning didn’t end with Hampson’s interview. In the mess hall, in the ready room, in the revetments, even in our tent, a steady stream of well-wishers kept Boyington’s mind continually on the specter of that 26th plane: Could he do it? Would he do it? Did he want to do it? When would he do it? How did it feel to be so close? Was it tough? What did he think?

  The rest of the Black Sheep realized the strain he was under and never mentioned that other plane, but hundreds of others did.

  “Christ, I don’t care if I break the record or not, if they’d just leave me alone,” Boyington told me.

  “You’ve got to stay with it, Greg,” I said. “The whole squadron is pulling for you and you can do it—you’ll never have another chance. It’s now or never.”

  “Yes, I guess you’re right.”

  On the 28th of December, Boyington led 12 Black Sheep over Rabaul again as part of a 46-plane fighter sweep. Boyington was not in tactical command of the formation, and the inexperienced leader let the Japanese planes get altitude advantage on his flight.

  Suddenly, the 12 Black Sheep were engaged in a desperate battle, with 60 Zeros swarming all over them like flies on a dead carcass. The boys shot down four (one each for Magee, Matheson, McClurg, and Olander) to bring our score to 86, but at great cost: the lives of three more Black Sheep. It was the same story: no one saw the three in trouble; they just were not among those who winged their way back to Vella Lavella and taxied into the revetments.

  I wrote “MIA” beside the names of Dustin, Bartl, and Moore, and their tentmates gathered up their belongings for the sad duty of sending it home.

  We had a standard routine, both written and unwritten for this. Two officers segregated the belongings into three piles. One contained the man’s valuable belongings, such as his money and jewelry. In another were his nonvaluable personal belongings: his uniforms, his photographs, etc. These two piles were packaged and sent back to the States, where they eventually found their way to the family.

  The third pile consisted of his GI equipment—khaki shirts and trousers, pistol, flight gear, etc.—which was returned to the quartermaster for reissue.

  Any gear of use to the remaining boys in the squadron might be retained: rubber air mattresses, extra goggles and the like, writing pads, slippers. If the items had any value, the boys bought them and included the money with what was sent home.

  Usually all of the man’s letters were burned.

  I had often read, in the pulp magazines, about the carryings-on of pilots in the First World War. In most of those stories, their names were listed on a blackboard, and when one was shot down or turned up missing, an officer would draw a line through the name. Then someone standing in front of the board would break down, and a sympathetic squadron commander would lead him off as he screamed, “When is it gonna be my turn?”

  Actually, it doesn’t work out that way. When you live, eat, sleep, and fight with someone 24 hours a day, you develop a deep respect and love for him. When he’s gone, you’re left with a feeling of emptiness, of loneliness. But you don’t scream about it. You just seal over that empty spot in your heart, and there it always remains.

  On the 30th on a bombing escort mission that was partially aborted because of bad weather, Olander scored one Zero to become our squadron’s eighth ace and bring our total to 87.

  Boyington was getting wound up tighter. He went off by himself and stared at the rain. He was jittery.

  When we went to chow, the newspaper correspondent sat down at the long table, across from us. “Well, Pappy, what do you think? Are you going to get another chance at the record?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, if you do, are you going to break it? Are you going to be satisfied with just one or two, or are you going after more?”

  Boyington blew up. “Goddamn it, why don’t you guys leave me alone? I don’t know if I’m going to break it or not. Just leave me alone till I do or go down trying.” He slammed his fist down on the table, catching the edge of his plate and splattering food into the face of the correspondent, and left the mess hall.

  “I told you to leave him alone,” I said. “You guys never learn.”

  That night, Doc and I talked it over and decided it would be better if Boyington didn’t fly on New Year’s Day. He was still asleep when the boys took off for Rabaul, and he was fit to be tied when he found they’d gone without him.

  However, he didn’t mind so much when they returned without having made contact with the enemy.

  In order to give him some exercise and get his mind off flying for a while, I got Doug White, a Marine combat correspondent, and Crocker, our jungle expert, to take him out in the jungle on a wild goose chase looking for a mythical Zero that was supposed to have crashed there. Doug and Crocker tramped what Boyington termed “a thousand miles” and brought him in about five o’clock, ready to go to bed.

  He took a shower, stretched out for a nap before dinner, and slept soundly until time to get up for the 2 January sweep over Rabaul.

  20 | Finale

  On 2 January 1944 the weather was good. Boyington led 36 Marines and 20 Navy fighters to Rabaul. Only three of our Black Sheep accompanied him.

  After they’d gone, Doc and I rubbed our hands. This, we thought, was the day when Pappy would break the record.

  It was not the day.

  When they got back, I found that the four Black Sheep had attacked 15 Zeros but shot down only one, and that score was made by Rope Trick Losch, bringing our squadron total to 88. Boyington never got a shot. His engine was throwing oil so badly that he was unable to see through his canopy.

  Everything appeared to be stacking up against Pappy: the weather, the people, and for the first time in 100 combat hours, his engine. When Pappy came in at five o’clock, all conversation ceased.

  “Had a little tough luck up there,” he said, quietly.

  “There’s another big hop tomorrow, Greg,” I told him. “If you’re not too tired, you ought to go.”

 
“No, I’m O.K.”

  “I’ve got some sandwiches on the way down. You’ll have to take off in 40 minutes to go back up tonight. The schedule calls for a 6:30 A.M. takeoff from Bougainville.”

  “O.K.”

  The last we saw of him, he was standing in the bed of the truck, munching a sandwich, as the truck pulled out to take him, Ashmun (who was to fly his wing the next day), Matheson, and Chatham down to their planes.

  We expected the flight back to Vella before noon, and long before that the ready tent was full of people wanting to know if he’d broken the record.

  At 7:00 A.M., Operations told me the flight got off on schedule, and that the weather was good.

  At 10:00 the first planes were back at Bougainville.

  At 11:30, Matheson landed and brought the first word. He’d seen Pappy and Ashmun attack 15 Zeros, and Pappy had shot one down!

  We all talked excitedly—that one tied the record. Were there any more?

  Matheson didn’t know. He and Chatham had had their hands full with another 15 Zeros; he’d shot one down, and then Chatham’s electrical system had gone bad, and Matheson had to return with him to Bougainville. Our squadron total was now 90.

  As the time dragged by, other pilots came in. I talked to all of them. No, they hadn’t seen either Boyington or Ashmun. I asked Operations to check Munda, Ondonga, Treasury, to see if they’d landed. They had to be down somewhere; their gas would be gone by now.

  And then, gradually, it began to dawn on us. Fred Hampson’s report described it:

  The Skipper didn’t get back!

  The news spread like a chill wind from revetment, to the ready room, to the tent camp on the hill. The war stood still for a hundred pilots and 500 ground crewmen.

  It COULDN’T be true. The Japs didn’t have a man who could stay on the Skipper’s tail.

  But as the minutes rolled into hours and negative answers to our queries came in from all fields, we began to comprehend that Pappy and Ashmun were both missing.

  “Let’s go up and look for them. They may be down in their rubber boats,” suggested Mullen. Miller and I went to the Operations office and requested permission to send a flight up to scout for them.

  “No, the weather’s closed in. There’s no use looking,” the Operations officer told us. By this time, the Operations office was crowded with pilots. An angry murmur surged through them.

  “I think from the standpoint of morale, it would be a good idea to let us at least look,” said Miller. “These pilots all want to feel that every effort will be made to locate them if they go down.”

  “Oh, all right, go ahead.”

  In five minutes, eight Black Sheep took off in the only planes we had in commission. They gassed up at Bougainville and then were on instruments nearly all the way to Rabaul, finally climbing into the clear over a fleecy mattress that totally obscured the water below. Getting their bearings, they went down through the thick, soupy fog to the very surface of the water but had to give up because they couldn’t see a thing.

  That night, Doc and I sat alone in our tent. Pappy’s bunk was rumpled, just as he’d left it. A pair of trousers lay in a heap beside it. A shirt hung over the frame supporting the twisted mosquito net. We both remembered what Pappy had said about Pierre.

  “It’s sure lonesome in here now,” Doc said.

  I just nodded my head, and swallowed.

  For the remaining three days of our tour, every mission included a search for the Skipper and George.

  The Black Sheep raged like wild men, up and down the coasts of New Ireland and New Britain, shooting up barges, gun positions, buildings, bivouac areas; strafing airfields; killing Nip troops; cutting up supply dumps, trucks, small boats.

  They did wild things; dangerous things; foolish things—heroic things.

  Every rumor of a sighting of any kind—flares, smoke, markers, chutes, rubber boats—brought a horde of Black Sheep whistling down so close to the sea that their prop wash left white wakes in the water.

  Aerial combat was incidental; they wanted to get down to look for their Skipper and George. Nevertheless, they shot down four more Zeros to bring the squadron’s grand total to 94 planes destroyed, 35 probably destroyed, 50 damaged in aerial combat, and 21 destroyed on the ground.

  Mullen got his seventh plane, Bolt his sixth, and Groover and Harry Johnson each got his first.

  Those last few days of our tour pointed up an important factor of the Black Sheep performance that had been missed by many observers. The Black Sheep was a team; their record was a team effort. Although Boyington was the acknowledged combat leader and had shot down the most planes, he had had the benefit of fine protection by his teammates. On more than one occasion, they had shot Zeros off his tail.

  As for the record itself, the other Black Sheep had shot down 74 planes while Boyington was shooting down 20 (actually 75 and 22, as we learned later: see Appendix A). Everyone had made his contribution to the squadron performance, some by shooting down planes, others by providing protection for those who did the shooting. Some had given their lives in attempting to provide that protection.

  The squadron’s last score was made on 6 January 1944 by Skinny Johnson. He was all alone over Cape Gazelle because he’d taken off from Bougainville late after arguing the Air Officer into letting him join the flight. Suddenly, he was attacked by a swarm of Zeros. Twenty of them buzzed around him.

  One came gliding down on him in a high head-on run. Johnson lifted his nose, opened fire, and raked the Zero from prop to tail. The Zero spiraled down and crashed into the water.

  “Hey, fellows,” called Johnson into his radio, “come over here, there’s lots of them over here.”

  “Where the hell are you?” asked one of the other Black Sheep.

  “Over here, over here; hurry before they get away,” shouted Skinny, figuring he had 20 Zeros cornered.

  He spotted one in a gentle turn slightly below and ahead of him, and immediately nosed over to attack. As he did, he remembered Boyington’s voice of experience: “When you have an easy shot, and they’re in a gentle turn, look for the catch.”

  Johnson looked around and saw two Zeros coming down on him in high stern runs. Without further fiddling, he pushed the throttle all the way forward, nosed down, and dived out and into a cloud, safely.

  That was the last activity of the Black Sheep.

  On 8 January we returned to Espiritu Santo, but it was more of a wake than a joyous homecoming. We’d lost eight pilots—and one of them was the Skipper.

  After we got squared away in huts at our group headquarters camp, Miller and I went over to see General Moore. When we told him about Pappy, tears ran down his cheeks. “He was the greatest combat pilot we ever had,” he said.

  “They’re talking about breaking up our squadron, sir,” said Miller. “We thought you’d understand why we want to stay together. We feel we’ve got a spirit built up in our squadron that will stay there if we’re together but will be destroyed if we are scattered as replacements in other squadrons. We only need 13 new pilots to bring us up to full strength.”

  “The kind of spirit the Black Sheep have is the kind of spirit that wins battles,” General Moore told us. “Certainly, you ought to stay together. Write me a letter outlining your request.”

  Miller and I went back to our camp to prepare the letter (its full text is in Appendix F). The letter received two very different endorsements. Lieutenant Colonel W.B. Steiner, Personnel Officer of Marine Air South Pacific, wrote: “Put these pilots in the pool … the VMF 214 number has already gone back to the States.” But General Moore insisted, in his own handwriting: “Keep this combat team intact. Do not split this group.”

  Waiting for action on the letter, we spent our time swimming and catching up on our mail; we were so sure of success that we discussed possibilities for our next combat tour.

  We knew the Black Sheep had done their share in turning the war around and putting the Japanese on the defensive. Although much ha
rd fighting remained, the result was clearly in sight. The Japanese had used up their skilled pilots and most of their aircraft. What was left were desperation efforts such as the ill-fated Kamikaze attacks.

  As Robert Sherrod reports in his History of Marine Corps Aviation in WW II, “The attrition of the Solomons was telling fatally on the Emperor’s stock of Wild Eagles.”

  By February 1944, only token Japenese aerial resistance was put up. Like a broken log jam, the drive toward Tokyo accelerated.

  Unfortunately, General Moore was transferred to another command, and we learned our fate from a news broadcast by the Associated Press in a story datelined “20 March 1944, An Advanced South Pacific Base”:

  The Black Sheep are no more.

  The famed Marine Corsair Squadron led by the missing 26 plane super ace, Major Gregory Boyington … has been broken up after shooting down 94 Japanese planes in 12 weeks of combat in the South Pacific.

  Its members are being scattered among other Marine Fighting Squadrons, the Solomons Air Headquarters announced.

  The Black Sheep long had been recognized as one of the hardest hitting and most eager teams of air fighters and a squadron which was nourished by the fighting competitive spirit of its lost skipper….

  The Black Sheep started as a squadron of nobodies, being formed from a collection of flyers and replacements on the spur of the moment…. Within a matter of weeks it became the best Japanese-killing outfit in the Solomons and, in some respects, the most unusual squadron ever to fly the South Pacific skies.

  Our squadron number went back to the States, and the new pilots assigned to it proudly adopted the famous Black Sheep name. But for us in the original Black Sheep Squadron, there were only 51 Black Sheep, the ones who lived and fought together—and died—during those 84 hectic days in the Solomons.