BY Gregory “Pappy” Boyington
A new generation of Americans learned of Gregory “Pappy” Boyington when his autobiography. Baa Baa Black Sheep, inspired a television series. The book was better.
Pappy was a unique character, an alcoholic from a troubled youth who sooner or later would have been booted out of the peacetime military. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine him today among the ranks of the technocrats who fly the hot jets — he wouldn’t make it through ground school.
World War II was Boyington’s salvation. He learned combat flying in Burma and China with the American Volunteer Group, the Flying Tigers, where he shot down six Japanese planes. In April of 1942 he decided to return to the States
And rejoin the Marines. Suave, tactful diplomat that he was, Boyington managed to orchestrate his departure in such a way that an infuriated Gen. Claire Chennault fired a dishonorable discharge into his wake and pulled strings to ensure he would not receive military transportation in India. Still bilious, Chennault also tried to induce the Army Air Corps in India to draft Boyington as a second lieutenant. This was the ultimate insult to a Marine fighter pilot. Somehow our hero avoided the Army’s tentacles and used his own money to buy passage on a ship.
Back in the States the Marines welcomed the prodigal son with open arms. Too old for fighters, Boyington wormed his way into one anyway and was ultimately credited with twenty-eight victories, two more than Rickenbacker. Yet on the January 3, 1944, flight in which he scored victories number twenty-seven and twenty-eight, he was himself shot down and miraculously survived a low-altitude bailout. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of the Japanese.
The story of Christmas Day, 1943, that follows is a little gem that lets us meet the man who flew the plane. And
We find that we like Pappy — like him a lot — a revelation that would come as no surprise to those who knew him as a comrade.
Don’t ask me why it had to be on a Christmas day, for he who can answer such a question can also answer why there have to be wars, and who starts them, and why men in machines kill other men in machines. I had not started this war, and if it were possible to write a different sort of Christmas story I would prefer to record it, or at least to have had it occur on a different day.
Come to think of it, there was undoubtedly some basis for my feelings this day, for as far back as I could remember, Christmas Day was repulsive to me. Ever since my childhood, it had always been the same. Relatives were forever coming to our house and kissing my brother and me with those real wet kisses children dread so much, and making a number of well-wishing compliments that none of them ever seemed to believe.
And then it started after everybody had a snoutful of firewater, fighting and speaking their true thoughts. All Christmases were alike, my brother Bill and I ending up by going to a movie. And even after I was old enough to protect myself, I did the same
Damn thing, leaving the house and celebrating the occasion with people I didn’t know, in some bar.
I was leading a fighter patrol that was intended to intercept any enemy fighters that followed our bombers, which had preceded us to Rabaul. We saw them returning firom their strike at a distance and saw that Maj. Marion Carl’s squadron was very capably warding off some Zeros, and before we got within range I witnessed three go up in flames from the.50-calibers triggered by Carl’s pilots.
We caught a dozen or so of these fighters that had been heckling our bombers, B-24s. The Nips dove away and ran for home, Rabaul, for they must have been short of gasoline. They had been fighting some distance from their base, with no extra fuel because they wore no belly tanks. They had not expected us to follow, but we were not escort planes and didn’t have to stay with our bombers.
Nosing over after one of these homebound Nips, I closed the distance between us gradually, keeping directly behind his tail, first a thousand yards, then five hundred, finally closing in directly behind to fifty feet. Knowing the little rascal couldn’t have any idea he was being followed, I was going to make
Certain this one didn’t get away. Never before had I been so deliberate and cold about what I was doing. He was on his way home, but already I knew he would not get there.
Nonchalantly I trimmed my rudder and stabilizer tabs. Nonchalantly I checked my gun chargers. As long as he could not see me, as long as he didn’t even know I was following him, I was going to take my time. I knew that my shot would be no-deflection and slowly wavered my gunsight until it rested directly upon the cross formed by his vertical tail and horizontal wings. The little Nip was a doomed man even before I fired. I knew it and could feel it, and it was I who condemned him from ever reaching home — and it was Christmas.
One short burst was all that was needed. With this short burst flames flew from the cockpit, a yellow chute opened, and down the pilot glided into the Pacific. I saw the splash.
Using my diving speed with additional power, I climbed, and as I climbed, I could see off to my right two more enemy planes heading for Rabaul. One was throwing smoke. I closed in on the wounded plane, and it dove. His mate pulled off to one side to maneuver against me, but I let the smoker have it — one burst that set the plane on fire
— and again the pilot bailed out.
His mate then dove in from above and to the side upon my own tail to get me, but it was simple to nose down and dive away temporarily from him. From a new position I watched the pilot from the burning plane drift slowly down to the water, the same as the other had done. This time his flying mate slowly circled him as he descended, possibly as a needless protection.
I remember the whole picture with a harsh distinction — and on Christmas — one Japanese pilot descending while his pal kept circling him. And then, after the pilot landed in the water, I went after the circling pal. I closed in on him from the sun side and nailed him about a hundred feet over the water. His Zero made a half-roll and plunked out of sight into the sea. No doubt his swimming comrade saw me coming but could only watch.
This low altitude certainly was no place for me to be in enemy territory, so I climbed, but after searching for a half hour I saw no more of the little fellows in this vicinity.
I next decided, since I was so close, to circle the harbor of Rabaul so that I could make a report on our recent bombings there. Smoke was coming from two ships. Another
Had only the bow protruding from the water, and there were numerous circles all around that had been created by exploding bombs.
While I was looking at all this, and preparing mental notes, I happened to see far below a nine-plane Nip patrol coming up in sections of threes. Maneuvering my plane so that I would be flying at them from the sun side again, I eased toward the rear and fired at the tail-end Charlie in the third V. The fire chopped him to bits, and apparently the surprise was so great in the rest of the patrol that the eight planes appeared to jump all over the sky. They happened to be Tonys, the only Nip planes that could outdive us. One of them started after my tail and began closing in on it slowly, but he gave up the chase after a few minutes. The others had gotten reorganized, and it was time for me to be getting home.
On the way back I saw something on the surface of the water that made me curious. At first I thought it was one boat towing another, but it wasn’t. It was a Japanese submarine surfacing. Nosing my Corsair over a little steeper, I made a run at the submarine and sent a long burst into her conning tower. Almost immediately it disappeared, but I saw no oil streaks or anything else that is supposed to happen when
One is destroyed, so L knew that I had not sunk her.
My only thought at this time was what a hell of a thing for one guy to do to another guy on Christmas.
World History
