He was 31 years old — ancient by fighter-pilot standards — which is how a hard-drinking, twice-divorced Marine named Gregory Boyington got the nickname "Pappy." He was also, by 1943, something close to washed up: a former Flying Tiger with a reputation for brawling and debt. The Marines handed him a squadron of castoffs, replacements and green pilots that nobody else wanted.

In 84 days, Pappy Boyington turned those "Black Sheep" into the most famous fighter squadron of the Pacific war, ran his personal tally toward the top of the Marine Corps, won the Medal of Honor — and then vanished so completely that his own country presumed him dead.

From the Flying Tigers to the Marines

Before America entered the war, Boyington had left the Marines to fly P-40s with the American Volunteer Group — the legendary Flying Tigers — over Burma and China. Exactly how many aircraft he shot down there has been argued over ever since; the number on his own account is higher than the one some historians accept. Either way, he rejoined the Marines in 1942 with combat behind him and a chip on his shoulder.

The Black Sheep

In August 1943, in the Solomons, Boyington was given command of a scratch unit of spare pilots — men between assignments, replacements, and rookies. He built them into Marine Fighting Squadron 214, and the name "Black Sheep" fit both the pilots and their commander. Flying the big, powerful F4U Corsair, they went to work over some of the most heavily defended airspace in the Pacific. In 84 days of combat the squadron was credited with 100 enemy aircraft shot down.

Medal of Honor over Kahili

On 17 October 1943, Boyington led 24 Corsairs over the Japanese airfield at Kahili, where some 60 enemy fighters sat on the ground. Rather than strike and run, he circled the field and taunted the Japanese to come up and fight. They did. In the swirling battle that followed, the Black Sheep shot down 20 of them and lost not one of their own. It was the kind of audacity that wins medals — and it did.

Shot down and given up for dead

On 3 January 1944, over the great Japanese base at Rabaul, Boyington shot down what was recorded as his final kill — and was then shot down himself, into the sea. His squadron saw no parachute. As far as America knew, Pappy Boyington was dead, and the Medal of Honor was awarded in the belief that it would be posthumous.

He was not dead. A Japanese submarine had pulled him from the water, and he spent the last 20 months of the war in captivity, beaten and half-starved, his survival unknown to the outside world. He learned he had been awarded the Medal of Honor only after his liberation at war's end — a dead man collecting his own decoration.

The legend and the man

Boyington came home a hero and struggled with the role for the rest of his life. In 1958 he told his own story in Baa Baa Pecora Nera, an unvarnished memoir that later inspired a hit 1970s television series. He was, by every account including his own, a difficult, flawed man — which is precisely why the "hero and a bum" line stuck to him. He died in 1988 and is buried at Arlington.

What is not in dispute is the flying. For 84 days, an over-the-hill Marine and a squadron of misfits owned a piece of the Pacific sky — and then their commander walked out of a prison camp two years later, alive, to find out he was a legend.

Sources: U.S. Medal of Honor citation (Congressional Medal of Honor Society); Pacific Wrecks; HistoryNet; Baa Baa Black Sheep (Boyington, 1958).