Meet the real Black Sheep
Don't get them going on the TV show "Baa Baa Black Sheep."
They universally hated it. Some even thought of filing a class-action suit to get rid of one of the opening lines that said the squadron was made up of misfits and rookie pilots waiting for court-martial.
"We had the highest trained squadron that ever went into combat," said former Black Sheep pilot Fred Losch, 80.
At a rare public reunion, at least 10 of the surviving pilots from the famous World War II Black Sheep Squadron gathered at the Museum of Flight in Tukwila yesterday for a series of Memorial Day events.
The Black Sheep flew two six-week combat tours under the leadership of pugnacious, hard-drinking Maj. Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, and amassed one of the most impressive combat records during the war. Boyington, who graduated from Tacoma's Lincoln High School and the University of Washington, died of cancer in 1988.
Under Boyington's leadership, the pilots switched tactics and took an offensive posture with the Japanese, literally goading them into combat over the Solomon Islands and then shooting down their planes with their superior Corsair F4U propeller-driven planes.
At least eight of the 49 pilots under Boyington became flying aces, meaning they had shot down at least five enemy planes. Boyington had so many victories that he became an instant media darling. According to Bruce Gamble, author of two books on the Black Sheep, Boyington had 22 kills under the Black Sheep and six with his former squadron, the Flying Tigers, making him the top Marine ace of all time.
The pilots got the name Black Sheep because they were mostly replacement pilots that formed a squadron on the fly in 1943 and didn't really belong to a unit. In reality, the only person in the squadron with a disciplinary problem was their flamboyant leader, Boyington, according to Gamble.
But the men have been fighting the negative image for 25 years. The TV show, featuring Robert Conrad, first aired in 1976 and ran for two years. Today the reruns are aired on "The History Channel" with snippets from former Black Sheep pilots woven in. The TV series showed the renegade pilots pairing up with nurses and kicking back with beers at a cafe.
"That show had three things right," said former Black Sheep pilot Allan McCartney, 83. "We flew Corsairs, our squadron designation was VMF-214 and our commanding officer was Boyington. The rest was cut out of whole cloth."
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In reality, their living conditions were deplorable.
"We lived in tents with mud floors. The humidity was 100 percent and there was nothing but mud and mosquitoes," said Losch. He said the only woman he ever saw was when he went hunting for wild pigs and lizards and came across some natives from the other side of the island. He said the woman in the group had elephantiasis, a disfiguring disease.
McCartney said if the pilots had beer it was usually hot and smelled like formaldehyde. He said usually the only liquor they had came from torpedoes. Back then, torpedoes were fueled by ethyl alcohol and he said some of the guys would drain a little of the "joy juice" from the torpedo to make their bitter grapefruit juice palpable.
The men obviously had their renegade streak. Before they decided on the handle Black Sheep, they wanted to be called "Boyington's Bastards," said former Black Sheep pilot Bruce Matheson, 80. But politically speaking, the name wouldn't fly.
He said the men had tremendous respect for Boyington because he was older and had a great record. Most of the men were in their early 20s and Boyington was about 32 when they were making history.
Matheson said the group settled on the name Black Sheep because a lot of them were college-educated and liked to drink and sing. One of their favorites, the Whiffenpoof Song from Yale, went, "We're poor little lambs who have lost our way, Baa, baa, baa." The name Black Sheep stuck, he said.
"We were kind of illegitimate and we didn't belong to anyone," he said.
The squadron actually stole its designation VMF-214 from a squadron called the Swashbucklers that was in Australia for rest and relaxation when the Black Sheep squadron was formed. Thomas Tomlinson, 80, who was a Swashbuckler, joined the Black Sheep for yesterday's events.
Today they're all about camaraderie and ribbing.
"I saw your TV show with the beautiful girls and the drinking. We were jealous," Tomlinson joked to the pilots.
Bobbi Nodell can be reached at 206-464-2342 or bnodell@seattletimes.com.