Gregory 'Pappy' Boyington Biography

Gregory "Pappy" Boyington won the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism in World War II, when he was credited with downing 28 Japanese aircraft. For 12 weeks in 1943-44 he led Marine Fighting Squadron #214, the so-called "Black Sheep Squadron," in the Solomon Islands. During that time the squadron was credited with 97 confirmed kills of enemy aircraft, 26 of them by Major Boyington himself. Boyington was shot down in a dogfight on January 3, 1944 (right after claiming his 26th kill). Captured by the Japanese, he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.  After the war ended in 1945 he returned to America as a war hero and was given the Congressional Medal of Honor he'd been awarded in 1944. Pappy Boyington's autobiography, titled Baa Baa Black Sheep, was a bestseller in 1958. In the 1970s a television series by the same name ran for two seasons on the NBC network, with actor Robert Conrad playing Boyington.