at west point, his is a war story that deserves to be told. i'm oliver north. good night. er 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 solomons. >> you could 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. >> at the beginning, the pilots were asked if they wanted armor protection and all said no. they didn't want the extra weight. a lot of them, to minimize weight, they would actually get rid of the radio equipment and all sorts of unnecessary things in the cockpit. a typical japanese pilot wore a parachute harness and carried a small pistol tucked under their flight harness. it was called a suicide weapon. for the japanese pilot, top captured abroad brought disgrace and dishonor. so they would shot themselves to avoid getting captured. >> until early 1943, the only

allied aircraft to successfully oppose the zero was the lightning. that was about to change. >> it has plenty of guts in her engine. >> in february '43, the first corsairs began arriving in the solomons. this flying hot rod, nicknamed the hog nose, was powered by a 2,000 horsepower engine. >> it had an engine that was almost twice the horsepower of the zero. >> originally developed for navy carrier duty, oil coolers in the corsair's wings made a whistling sound in a dive earning it the nickname whistling death. what was the best plane you ever flew? >> corsair. >> no question about it. >> 25-year-old lieutenant henry mccartney from long island, new york, and 22-year-old first

lieutenant henry from new orleans first flew the corsair in guadalcanal. >> it was the airplane that really i could feel as part of me. >> with six .50 caliber machine guns, it was better armed. now halsey had the right weapon to bat it will zeros, but he needed pilots and a commanding officer to lead them to victory. bull halsey would soon find his can commander in greg "pappy" boyington. he had flown in combat with the flying tigers and now he was back in the solomons liberty mutual stood with me when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night.

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♪ by the summer of 1943, long range bombers had been pounding the heavily fortified japanese strong hold of rannal for more than a year. the lumbering aircraft lacked fighter support. >> bull halsey needed more corsair squadrons. there were few available because of the original eight squadrons, four had completed their obligation and were headed home. the idea was generated somewhere in the chain of command to take replacement pilots from the pool of guys who were just waiting for assignment and to take the corsairs that were available in fairly good quantity. >> many of these pilots were veterans. >> i came into the squadron with four kills to my credit. >> vmf-214 was the number

assigned to the new out fit. it originally belonged to another squadron known as the swashbucklers. >> they lost their co to a flight accident. so morale had sunk to a low level. >> to make things worse, the swashbucklers were on leave and wouldn't be available for combat duty for weeks. admiral halsey had a war to fight. >> we just lifted their number. when they came off r&r, they were not happy. >> but who would lead the squadron? in the number of 1943, a scrappy 30-year-old marine pilot named gregory boyington arrived. >> greg boyington was campaigning for squadron that he could put together using the available corsairs, and pilots from the replacement pool. >> boyington was already a skilled pilot who logged his first flight at just 7 years of age.

>> he and a buddy stood in the front cockpit of a jenny with no helmets and went flying with a barn stormer. >> young greg decided to become a pilot on the spot. born in idaho on december 4, 1912, boyington received his flight training as a marine cadet. but in august of 1941, he resigned his commission to join the american volunteer group in china. >> they were looking for 100 fighter pilots to defend the burma road against the japanese. >> the pay was good and the flying tigers, as they were called, also got a $500 bonus for each confirmed kill. with a growing family to support, he needed the money. >> he wanted to get out of debt and redeem himself. >> in his 1958 biography, boyington claimed to have shot

down six aircraft with the tigers. >> he only had two aerial victories that he was paid for. he felt he should have been paid for four planes he destroyed on the ground. >> boyington had more fights with his fellow pilots than he ever did with the japanese. >> he was a liability. he lost airplanes. he got lost. and finally, well, you know what pappy's problem was, he drank too much and he was sent back to the united states. >> he ended up getting a commission as a marine major in the reserves and was sent overseas in january of 1943. >> aboard that same ship -- >> he brought aboard a case of scotch he was taking out to his general's friend he had out there. i would say by the end of the first week, it was all gone.

>> after the squadron is formed and you guys are part of that first combat tour with the squadron, did it become known that he had had a problem with booze, even back in china? >> yes. i think so. it was pretty obvious. he was always into the bottle. >> boyington had been a wrestler in college at the university of washington. and when he drank, that old fighting spirit would return with a vengeance. >> he wanted to wrestle anybody. he would take them on. >> he was belligerent, but belligerent in sort of a fun way. >> he just picked on the wrong boy at the o-club one night. >> he got thrown right out of the door and broke his ankle. >> lucky for him, the decision

on who should command the new squadron fell to the assistant commanding general, general james "nuts" moore. boyington got the job. >> boyington arrived back from the hospital. they gave him the number and he picks out all the replacement numbers. >> lieutenant emrick and ed harper were picked for the first group of 28 pilots assigned to vmf-214. when did you guys first meet each other? >> we were roommates in flight school. we went out on the same ship and ended up in the same squadron. >> and now that squadron needed a new name. >> we were not going to try squash bucklers. somebody said we should be called boyington's bastards. and the press people came around and said, you won't get the publicity you want. somehow it evolved that we would be called the black sheep unit.

>> and boyington got a new name, too. where did pappy boyington get the name pappy? >> we were calling him pappy and grandpa. all kinds of derogatory names and finally settled with pappy. >> in the next three months, under pappy boyington's adepress save leadership, the black sheep claimed 94 enemy aircraft shot down. >> he preached when you see a japanese, pick out one and kill it. that's our mission. next, the black sheep draw first blood

♪ what became the them sils of the japanese sow row, the corsair wasn't without its problems. with pappy and the men of the black sheep squadron had barely a month to learn to fly it. the first time you see the f-4-u. >> the i saw one once on an air station been i went overseaed. but i only saw one one time before i got to the south pacific. >> what did you think when you saw that gull wing shape out there? >> great. anxious to try it. >> with few actual planes available for training, you learn to fly the corsair by the book. >> they gave you the handbook. then you come back and they put you in the cockpit and blind fold you and say point out the throttle. point out the landing gear. and then they say, okay, you're

checked out. hop in and away you go. >> what they lacked in seat time, they made up for on the ground. >> he was a very aggressive guy. imaginative. loved to fight. wanted to get in a fight. he got all the paint taken off his aircraft so it was silver and easy to say. he said if i can't find them, maybe they can find me. >> the black sheep's first mission came on september 14, 1943. flying escort for a bombing run, a typical assignment at the beginning of their first tour. >> usually we flew two missions a day. most of them were boring as patrols and searches, things like that. >> it's very difficult to get a dill when you're escorting the bombers, because you're locked into this position right behind them. >> but on the third mission, all

hell broke loose. >> the bombers were going after the shipping in the harbor. and they were probably around 9,000, 10,000 feet and we were 16 corsairs, close cover. we got up there and the whole harbor was covered with a thunderstorm. >> and suddenly here's about 60 zeros take off and 30 or so of us from various squadrons. and airplanes are all around. >> it quickly broke into a fight air-to-air, and when you start fighting with the airplanes, pretty soon they're all over the sky. >> you look off to the left, there's an airplane going down in flames. planes crossing 20 feet in front of you. >> somebody was shooting at me, i go into a cloud, got shot at again, into a cloud and come out and try and stick with the bombers, if you could. >> there was so much traffic,

people screaming and yelling. the radio is popping and so forth. i just disregarded radio reception. >> i was really scared. i thought, what am i doing here and how did i get here? >> the pitched battle covers some 200 miles. 30 agonizing minutes later, it was over. 16 of the 24 black sheep had seen action for the first time. >> they claimed 11 victories for all, with boyington getting credit for five himself. that was their first actual engagement with the japanese in the solomons. >> the intelligence officer, first lieutenant frank walton, jr. he stood 6'4", so in addition to documenting the unit's missions, -- >> the only one he wouldn't wrestle was frank walton, an

olympic swimmer who came off the los angeles police force. a big man and nobody fooled with frank walton. >> walton kept careful notes of the pilot's after action reports in this war diary. >> a pilot would give him the information that he had witnessed during the fight. >> they didn't have any special rules on when you're going to come back and say, i have a kill. they just took your word for it. >> often times what he did see is two or three other pilots, maybe on his left or his right were shooting at the same airplane. >> matching japanese claims against actual allied losses shows that the other side exaggerated their kills, too. usually by some 300%. >> the top navy ace of the war was a chief petty officer iowmoto. at the end of the car, he claimed 202 victories, 142 at

rabbal and claimed shooting down 48 corsairs, which is an incredible figure. >> one thing about that day is for certain, formed by the fire of first combat, the black sheep had become a hardened fighting unit. but the first officer, 23-year-old captain ewing of lafayette, indiana was missing in action. that evening, the unit received new orders. they were to move up the slot at first slight. captain ewing's plane was never found. coming up, the squadron flies into an angry japanese hornet's nest.

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