28. A Black Sheep of an Ace
United Sates Marine Corps aviator and fighter ace Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, one of WWII’s more quixotic figures, is as fascinating today as he was then. His combat career taking on and taking down Japanese airmen began even before America was thrust into the war, when he left the Corps to join the famous “Flying Tigers” volunteer outfit in 1941. He rejoined the Marines in 1942 and flew in the South Pacific. There, he led the legendary Black Sheep Squadron, shot down 26 Japanese airplanes, earned a Medal of Honor plus a Navy Cross, and was en route to become America’s highest scoring ace. Then he was shot down and given up for dead, only to reemerge at war’s end from a Japanese POW camp, emaciated but alive and still full of pep.
Gregory Boyington, who grew up Gregory Hallenbeck, was born from Sioux and Irish stock in Idaho, in 1912. He took his first flight at age six, and was hooked. After he graduated high school in 1930, he went to the University of Washington, where he joined the Army ROTC. He also made the swimming and wrestling teams. He took various jobs in college, from parking cars, to working road construction and in logging and mining camps in summer, before he graduated with an aeronautical engineering degree in 1934. He got a job with Boeing, and got married soon thereafter.
