for tomorrow. those are the "war stories" that deserve to be told. i'm oliver north. good night. they were a hastily assembled group of young pilots sent into combat against japan's young aces. >> i was really scared. >> their skipper, a charismatic loose cannon with a serious problem. >> if you're staying alive out there a period of mo you obviously did something right. >> tonight, the truth of the legend behind pappy and the black sheep squadron. that's next on "war stories." ♪

i'm oliver north. welcome to "war stories." we're at the national museum of naval aviation. and this is the flighter flown by vmf-214, the squadron known as the black sheep. for 84 days between september of 1943 and january of '44, the men of the black sheep squadron used this aircraft. in 1976, their exploits become a tv series called "ba ba black sheep." as you're about to discover, the only real things in it were the name of the squadron and the corsair that they flew. ♪ >> the bloody battle for

guadalcanal marked the beginning of a new strategy for allied forces in the pacific. the campaign was originally a defensive move to secure australia. but with a stunning defeat of japanese forces there, a bold new war plan began to develop. and the key to its success ran through the japanese strong hold of the island of new britain. >> this is where the first offensive is getting going for the war. >> historian bruce gamble is the author of the biography of pappy. >> the pacific was closed until this island would be liberated. >> southwest pacific area commander douglas macarthur was determined to take the war to tokyo via the philippines. in may of 1943, the joint chiefs

decided on a compromise. his forces would advance to new guinea, the navy was to beginning a westward push of an island hopping campaign through the sols. >> ulyou cod say that the solomon islands was the first step on the road to tokyo. >> each island being another rung closer to tokyo. he vowed to change the name of the ladder's top tongue, rubbal to rubble. but destroying it wouldn't be easy. for the first six months of the war, the zero fighter ruled the skies over the pacific. >> it could climb like an angel and was very nimble at most

speeds. the lower speed the better. so it could basically turn on a dime. >> the zero was battle tested over china more than a year before pearl harbor. it proved to be a lethal fighter. >> the place you got killed is when they were climbing out. when you got over their base before they had organized their squadrons into formation. >> 22-year-old lieutenant jack bolts saw his first zero in september of '43 and learned that dogfighting one on one in close quarters rarely ended well. >> most of the time you got in behind one, they would see you getting into that shooting position and they would break away and we didn't follow them. we never did. it was fatal to do so. >> japanese pilots favored a defensive technique. >> sometimes there would be a mess of planes making a big circle. so each person protected the

other person's year. >> he's a leading authority on japanese fighter pilots. >> if a plane tried to attack you, he would be attacked from the guy behind. >> the thing that made the zeros so lethal soon proved to be its down fall.