Who were the Black Sheep Squadron? The real pilots of VMF-214, and how 27 Marine orphans got the name
The Black Sheep Squadron was Marine Fighting Squadron 214 (VMF-214) — 27 pilots pulled together in the South Pacific in 1943 under Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington. In just 84 days of combat, they became the most famous Marine squadron of World War II.
Here's the real story, including the name they wanted first.
27 pilots nobody had claimed
The unit itself was commissioned on July 1, 1942, at Ewa on Oahu, originally nicknamed the "Swashbucklers." But the famous version was born in August 1943 at Turtle Bay airfield on Espiritu Santo, when Boyington — a former Flying Tiger — and Major Stan Bailey got permission to build a squadron out of unassigned replacement pilots. That's the "orphans" part.
The 27 weren't the misfits and washouts of legend; they ranged from combat veterans to brand-new arrivals from the States. What they lacked was a squadron — and Boyington had less than four weeks to make them combat-ready.
Why "Black Sheep"?
The pilots' own choice, settled in their commander's hut on the night of September 13, 1943, was "Boyington's Bastards" — a nod to their orphan status, their unreliable planes, and the man himself.
Marine public information officer Captain Jack DeChant killed it the next day: no newspaper would print the word. He suggested "Black Sheep," which meant roughly the same thing politely. The squadron's insignia kept the joke anyway — a black shield with a bar sinister, heraldry's mark of illegitimacy, plus a black sheep, twelve stars, and a Corsair.
The record: 84 days
Flying F4U Corsairs from forward bases in the Solomon Islands, the Black Sheep fought two combat tours totaling 84 days. The tally:
- 203 enemy aircraft destroyed or damaged
- 97 confirmed air-to-air kills
- 9 fighter aces produced from a single squadron
- A Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary heroism
They fought with style, too. In October 1943 they offered to shoot down a Japanese plane for every baseball cap a big-league club sent them. The St. Louis Cardinals mailed 20 caps. The Black Sheep sent back 20 kill stickers.
What happened to Pappy Boyington?
On January 3, 1944, over the Japanese stronghold of Rabaul, Boyington shot down his final enemy planes — bringing his official tally to 28, counting his Flying Tigers claims — and was then shot down himself. Picked up by a Japanese submarine, he spent the last 20 months of the war as a POW while America presumed him dead; President Roosevelt awarded him the Medal of Honor "posthumously."
Boyington came home in 1945 to collect it in person, along with a Navy Cross.
The original Black Sheep's tour ended on January 8, 1944, five days after he went down, and the squadron was disbanded. He died on January 11, 1988, at 75.
The legend outlived them all. The 1976–78 NBC series Baa Baa Black Sheep (later syndicated as Black Sheep Squadron) starred Robert Conrad as Boyington and freely fictionalized the record. And the real squadron never went away: today, as VMFA-214, the Black Sheep fly F-35B stealth fighters out of Yuma, Arizona — with the bar of bastardy still on the patch.