Pappy Boyington was an American World War II flying ace who shot down 28 enemy Japanese planes, organized the legendary Black Sheep Squadron in the South Pacific in 1943, and was awarded the U.S. Medal of Honor.
Background
Born on December 4, 1912 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, he moved with his family to the logging town of St. Maries at age three and lived there until age twelve. He then lived in Tacoma, Washington, where he was a wrestler at Lincoln High School. He took his first flight at St. Maries when he was six years old, with Clyde Pangborn, who later flew the Pacific non-stop.
Education
Boyington, a 1934 graduate of the University of Washington, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1936 and became a pilot.
Career
He resigned from the Marines to join General Claire L. Chennault’s American Volunteer Group, the Flying Tigers, in China. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he rejoined the Marines in 1942 and organized Squadron 214, called the Black Sheep Squadron, one of the most renowned fighting units of the war, operating mostly in the Solomon Islands.
On his last mission, on January 3, 1944, he shot down three Japanese aircraft but was himself shot down in Rabaul harbour, New Britain, and was picked up by a Japanese submarine and transported to a prison camp in Japan. Though his fate was unknown, the U.S. government awarded Major Boyington the Medal of Honor in 1944. He was released from prison in 1945 and retired with the rank of colonel in 1947. His memoirs, Baa Baa Black Sheep, were published in 1958.
Connections
Boyington had three children with his first wife Helen Clark. They married after his graduation from the University of Washington in 1934. She was 17 years old; they had met at a university dance. One daughter (Janet Boyington) took her own life, one son (Gregory Boyington, Jr.) graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1960 and retired from the U.S. Air Force as a lieutenant colonel. His youngest child was Gloria Boyington.
During WWII, his three children were placed in the charge of their aunt and grandmother after Boyington divorced Helen when he returned to America in 1941 after serving with the Flying Tigers. He charged his ex-wife with neglecting the children. Boyington married Frances Baker, 32, of Los Angeles on January 8, 1946. Marriage records showed Boyington had been divorced in Seattle in 1941 and Baker won her freedom from a previous mate in San Francisco in 1932.
His third marriage was to Delores Tatum, 33, on October 28, 1959. It was the second marriage for Miss Tatum, and the third for the 46-year-old retired Marine Colonel. Boyington and Delores had one adopted child. He married Josephine Wilson Moseman of Fresno in 1978. This marriage was his fourth.