Baa Baa Black Sheep (21 page)

In these few split seconds all concern, and, for that matter, all view of the dive bombers, left me again. All that stood out in my vision were burning and smoking aircraft. And all I could make out were Japanese having this trouble. Some were making out-of-control gyrations toward a watery grave.

A few pilots I had run into before, and some since, can
relate every minute detail about an enemy aircraft they came in contact with. But I’ll be damned if I can remember much more than round wing tips, square tips, liquid-cooled, air-cooled, and of course the horrifying Rising Sun markings.

After a few seconds of Fourth-of-July spectacle most of the Nip fighters cleared out. Then we streaked on down lower to the water, where the dive bombers were reforming for mutual protection after their dives prior to proceeding homeward. We found a number of Nip fighters making runs on our bombers while they were busy reforming their squadrons.

While traveling at quite an excessive rate of speed for making an approach on one of these Zeros I opened fire on his cockpit, expecting him to turn either right or left, or go up or down to evade my fire after he was struck by my burst. But this Zero didn’t do any of these things. It exploded. It exploded so close, right in front on my face, that I didn’t know which way to turn to miss the pieces. So I flew right through the center of the explosion, throwing up my arm in front of my face in a feeble attempt to ward off these pieces.

I didn’t know what happened to my plane at the time. Evidently my craft didn’t hit the Nip’s engine when his plane flew apart. But I did have dents all over my engine cowling and leading edges of my wings and empennage surfaces. With this unorthodox evasive action Moe and I were finally separated, as by this time, I guessed, everyone else was. Certainly this wasn’t the procedure we followed in the three-week training period.

Something else entered my mind after the initial surprise and fright were over, something I realized much more keenly than any of the pilots accompanying me on this mission. I am positive, for I had been involved in this deadly game with Mars for two long years. What I knew only too well was that the average pilot gets less than one chance in a hundred missions of being in a position to fire a killing burst. And furthermore, when this rare chance comes, the one in a hundred, nine out of ten times the pilot is outnumbered, which cuts down his chances still further. Insight into these odds came to me very vividly, for I had tried my best for over two years. Yet my score to date was six. A great number of my previous mistakes suddenly came before me. Realizing that there was meat on the table that might never be there
again, as far as I personally was concerned, I was determined to make hay while the sun shined.

Long after the bombing formation had gone on toward home, I found a Zero scooting along, hugging the water, returning to his base after chasing our bombers as far as he thought wise. This I had gotten from the past. When an aircraft is out of ammunition or low on fuel, the pilot will hug the terrain in order to present a very poor target.

I decided to make a run on this baby. He never changed his course much, but started an ever-so-gentle turn. My Corsair gradually closed the gap between us. I was thinking: “As long as he is turning, he knows he isn’t safe. It looks too easy.”

Then I happened to recall something I had experienced in Burma with the Flying Tigers, so I violently reversed my course. And sure enough, there was his little pal coming along behind. He was just waiting for the sucker, me, to commence my pass on his mate.

As I turned into this pal, I made a head-on run with him. Black puffs came slowly from his 20-millimeter cannons. His tracers were dropping way under my Corsair. I could see my tracers going all around this little Zero. When I got close enough to him, I could see rips in the bottom of his fuselage as I ducked underneath on my pass by. The little plane nosed down slowly, smoking, and crashed with a splash a couple seconds later, without burning or flaming.

Efforts to locate the other Zero, the intention of my initial run, proved to be futile. In turning east again, in the direction of our long-gone bombers, once more I happened on a Zero barreling homeward just off the water. This time there was no companion opponent with the plane. So I nosed over, right off the water, and made a head-on run from above on this Japanese fighter. I wondered whether the pilot didn’t see me or was so low on fuel he didn’t dare to change his direction from home.

A short burst of .50s, then smoke. While I was endeavoring to make a turn to give the
coup de grâce
, the plane landed in the ocean. When aircraft hit the water going at any speed like that, they don’t remain on the surface. They hit like a rock and sink out of sight immediately. For the first time I became conscious that I would never have enough fuel to get back to
home base in the Russell Islands, but I could make it to Munda New Georgia. Ammuniton—well, I figured that must be gone. Lord knows, the trigger had been held down long enough. Anyhow, there would be no need for more ammo.

But the day still wasn’t ended, even though this recital of the first day’s events may start seeming a little repetitious by now. And God knows I was certainly through for the day, in more ways than one. Yet when practically back to our closest allied territory, which was then Munda, I saw one of our Corsairs proceeding for home along the water. I tried to join up with him.

And just then, as if from nowhere, I saw that two Nip fighters were making runs on this Corsair at their leisure. The poor Corsair was so low it couldn’t dive or make a turn in either direction if he wanted to, with two on his tail. There was oil all over the plexiglass canopy and sides of the fuselage. Undoubtedly his speed had to be reduced in order to nurse the injured engine as far as possible.

In any event, if help didn’t arrive quickly, the pilot, whoever he was, would be a goner soon. I made a run from behind on the Zero closer to the Corsair. This Zero pulled straight up—for they can really maneuver—almost straight up in the air. I was hauling back on my stick so hard that my plane lost speed and began to fall into a spin. And as I started to spin, I saw the Zero break into flames. A spin at that low altitude is a pretty hairy thing in itself, and I no doubt would have been more concerned if so many other things weren’t happening at the same time.

It was impossible for me to see this flamer crash. By this time, I was too occupied getting my plane out of the spin before I hit the water too. I did, however, shoot a sizable burst into the second Zero a few seconds later. This Zero turned northward for Choiseul, a nearby enemy-held island but without an airstrip. The only thing I could figure was that his craft was acting up and he planned upon ditching as close to Choiseul as he could. Anyhow I didn’t have sufficient gas to verify my suspicions.

Also, I was unable to locate the oil-smeared Corsair again. Not that it would have helped any, or there was anything else one could do, but I believed Bob Ewing must have been in that Corsair. For Bob never showed up after the mission. And one thing for certain, that slowed-down, oil-smeared,
and shell-riddled Corsair couldn’t have gone much farther.

This first day of the new squadron had been a busy one, all right. It had been so busy I suddenly realized that my gas gauge was bouncing on empty. And I wanted so badly to stretch that gas registering zero to somewhere close to Munda I could taste it.

I leaned out fuel consumption as far as was possible, and the finish was one of those photo ones. I did reach the field at Munda, or rather one end of it, and was just starting to taxi down the field when my engine cut out. I was completely out of gas.

The armorers came out to rearm my plane and informed me that I had only thirty rounds of .50-caliber left, so I guess I did come back at the right time.

But I was to learn something else, too, in case I started to think that all my days were to be like his one, the first one. For this first day—when I got five planes to my credit—happened to be the best day I ever had in combat. However, this concerned us nought, for one would have thought we won the war then and there.

Opportunity knocks seldom. But one thing for certain, people can sense these opportunities if they are halfway capable of logical thinking, and, of course, are willing to take the consequences if things go dead wrong.

Lengthy delay in arrival of relief squadrons from the States plus my ability to con Colonel Sanderson into making a squadron out of thin air were the necessary ingredients—and bluff. This was the shady parentage of my new squadron. Born on speculation. An operation strictly on credit had been approved: Airplanes, pilots, and even our squadron number, 214, were borrowed.

That night, I recall vaguely, the quartet of Moe Fisher, Moon Mullin, George Ashmum, and Bruce Matheson harmonizing on the cot next to mine. Tomorrow, the future, meant little to me then. Not even the possibility of a hairy hangover bothered me the slightest. So I took aboard a load of issue brandy, which our flight surgeon, Jim Ream, had been so kind to supply. I took this load of brandy, along with yours truly, to another world.

Sandy couldn’t possibly have known that our first mission would work out this way—or could he?

Daylight was streaming through the Dallas-hut windows, and I could sleep in for a while, and I wanted to fall back to sleep, shutting out the world a little longer—but I couldn’t. There were many problems on my mind. But first I had to gather my boys together and wise them up to a few things that hadn’t been carried out to my satisfaction.

While I was pulling on my fatigue clothes, a two-piece jacket and trousers, I was thinking of things I would have to explain to the pilots. These fatigues were green cotton affairs I believed were the most comfortable clothing a fellow could wear after they had been laundered a few times, and very easy to shed if one were to have a forced landing in the water, which happened to be about the only place we could expect to have one.

The first man I saw this morning—or noticed, I should have said—was Major Stanley Bailey, my executive officer. Stan had been recently promoted to major, and what a proud one he was; I was positive he polished his gold leaves daily. There Stan was in fresh starched khaki with rank insignia on his collar and on his hat, which few of us ever bothered to wear. When I observed that he was also carrying a small swagger stick I thought I was seeing things, but no, I was not. He gave the impression he had just been waiting for the day he made major and would be entitled to pack this “riding crop” from there on in.

Stan was a swell person as well as a good pilot—naïve, yes, and a sincere-type lad with whom we could have a great deal of fun. The other pilots in the squadron remembered him from Pensacola, where he had taught instrument flying, as he had been stationed there after graduating from flight school. When my exec would get wound up a bit, the boys in the squadron would say:

“Now settle down, Major. All you have to remember is—needle—ball—air speed.”

Moon Mullin, who was our flight officer, called the boys at 9:00
A.M.
for our little get-together. The faces that surrounded me in the ready shack were of happy, joking boys, not the serious do-or-die-type lads we are accustomed to watching in the motion pictures of war. I started: “Before any compliments or corrective criticisms, there is something else I believe should be decided upon immediately. We are going to have to choose a squadron name that is fit to print, my friends.”

“Just what do you mean, Gramps?”

“I mean Boyington’s Bastards. In the first place, I don’t think a squadron should be named after a person. And in the second place, a correspondent said last night, they would balk at printing it back home.”

There was a great hassle following this, and some of the many suggestions followed:

“Outcasts?”

“Forgotten Freddies?”

“Bold Bums?”

“To hell with ’em, we’ll do such a job they’ll have to print it and like it.” So it appeared we were right back where we had started.

“No, Gramps. We have thought it over, suggested names, but we like the one we already have. Besides, we have been treated like bastards, and our name rhymes.”

I had an answer, but I didn’t tell the boys where it came from, for fear they would laugh me out of the ready shack.

Since my childhood the noises made by trains and motors of various types had played a little jingle with my thinking upon many an occasion. My recollection of these occasions when I had been pleasantly occupied with daydreams was most enjoyable. My childhood jingle was, “Baa Baa, Blacksheep, have you any wool, yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.”

So I said: “Say, fellows, I got an idea! Something we could use in polite society. Something society already accepts.”

“Okay, spill it, Gramps.”

“Try this for size. Black Sheep. Everybody knows that it stands for the same thing. And yet no personality is involved, and they can print Black Sheep.”

“By golly, we like that, Gramps. We can make up a
bastard coat of arms like they used to do in England. And we can put it on a shield and use it as our insignia.”

Several days passed before the boys obtained all the authentic dope they needed for drawing up the shield, or insignia. Someone explained that the bar on a bastard shield ran diagonally in the opposite direction from the legitimate. So we made ours this way. They also decided a black sheep was to be on the shield, but, search as we might, we could not locate a drawing to copy one from. Finally we came across an artist of sorts, and the sergeant promised to draw our sheep for the squadron.

I’ll never forget their delight when the boys saw the drawing the sergeant came up with, it was ideal, the most woebegone-looking black sheep anybody ever saw. It had taken him such a long time to bring our black sheep that my curiosity had been aroused, so I asked: “Where in hell did you get the idea to draw this from, Sarge?”

“I searched high and low, and was about ready to give up, when I happened to run across a cartoon in a magazine.”

The sergeant then handed me a worn sheet from the magazine he spoke about, and I immediately broke into laughter. The cartoon was two G.I.’s on their hands and knees camouflaging themselves in sheepskins, and one G.I., in a black skin, was watching a ram approach the flock where the two were hiding, and the face looking out from under the head was saying: “Look, Joe, I’m not so sure I wanna go through with this or not.”