No problem.
You should read the book Once Were Eagles by Frank Walton. Walton served with VMF-214 during their entire combat tour in the Solomans as their intelligence officer. In civilian life he had been a sergeant in the Los Angeles Police Department, and he returned to the LAPD after the war. In the 1980's, following his retirement from tbe State Department (where he'd been a diplomat after serving 20 years on the LAPD) he was prompted to write a book about the history of VMF-214. (A reason he was assigned to theat specific squadron was that Marine Corps brass knew both his background...and Boyington's personality. Boyington was a heavy boozer who liked to challenge people to wrestle when drunk. Walton was a big, strong man and had been a cop. The brass figured he was experienced in dealing with that type of behaviour -and told him that to his face. He had the unofficial extra duty of keeping Boyington out of trouble; with physical force, if necessary)
His motivation was the television show and how the pilots were portrayed. He'd kept in touch with many of them (as well as with Boyington) and knew how upset a lot of them were with how they were shown.
It's a very good book. It's quite concise with excellent descriptions of the aerial action. The last third consisted of interviews with former Black Sheep pilots in their postwar lives (c. 1985).
They were all unanimous in their condemnation of the show, if they even felt it was worthy of being mentioned.
One former pilot, who'd become a successful trial lawyer, said he was very tempted to file a libel suit against the show's producers. He almost did it, but changed his mind when he realized it would have just brought the show more publicity. Most of them felt a mix of anger and sympathy towards Boyington for allowing the show to be made. They were angry over how they were shown. But, they felt sorry that Boyington's personal problems caused him to require the money enough that he had to do it. (Boyington was a chronic alcoholic for years. It was the direct cause of most of his personal problems in his life. It wrecked most of the opportunities he'd had after the war when he'd received the Medal of Honour and become the Marine Corps' leading air ace. A happy footnote was that Boyington, with the help of AA, finally did get sober in his last years).
The book also explains just WHY the squadron's nickname was "The Black Sheep". It was due to how the squadron was formed. The normal procedure was for fighter squadrons to be formed in the United States. The squadron pilots would assigned, trained as a unit, assigned a number, and sent overseas.
VMF-214 was formed in a different manner. Boyington had been in hospital -due to a broken ankle received in a drunken wrestling match at a party. During that time, his old squadron had been shipped back to the United States. Boyington still hadn't enough time in the theatre to be sent back (as well as he simply didn't want to be sent home yet). So, Boyington was in need of a squadron assigment. He came up with the notion of forming a new squadron with pilots in similar situations to his -pilots whose squadrons had been rotated home, but didn't have enough time overseas to be sent home yet, thus were being sitting around waiting for assignments in the officers pools. The squadron was thus put together in the Solomans theatre, with pilots who were either waiting around for reassignment or were new replacements from the United States.
Because of the disjointed nature of the squadron's formation, it was nicknamed "Black Sheep" because it had pilots that were sort of cast offs from squadrons that had been sent home. None of the Black Sheep pilots had ever gotten into any type of trouble either before joining the squadron, during their time with VMF-214, or afterwards.
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VRSNIPER
19 years ago
as a combat veteran i would like thank all that have been said on these posts
1st Recon Battalion 8th Marine Regiment!!!!!
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Reality-Bites
19 years ago
Thanks for that post, TorontoJediMaster. I have wondered about the veracity of the whole setting of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" for many years (ever since I watched it back in the seventies when it first came out on TV). I was in the military myself shortly after that time period, and my experience with real military discipline told me that that show must have been largely bogus. There's just no way the U.S. Marine Corps would have had some squadron of what were essentially a bunch of renegade pilots running loose doing all those kinds of things. I know the military, and I know the Marines don't do things that way. So thanks for that very informative post, you cleared up a lot of my suspicions about this show from way back. (It was a fun show, though. You just have to take it all with one very large grain of salt.)
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TorontoJediMaster
18 years ago
No problem.
You should really check out Walton's book though if you would like to read more.
It's an excellent read. I noticed that in the series there was really no character standing in for Walton. I always thought it was interesting that when he was assigned to VMF-214, he was told by the brass -in just so many words- that he was expected to keep Boyington in line, by force if he had too. They actually said to him that with his size and police background, he was the perfect man for the job.
Also, the show made it look like the squadron lived on its own little island home, never moving. In reality, the squadron moved north up the Solomans as the front line advanced. They went -as I recall- from a base on Guadalcanal, to Vella Lavella, to Bougainville. They were flying off Bougainville the day Boyington was shot down and captured.
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