54 Facts About Pappy Boyington

Gregory "Pappy" Boyington was an American combat pilot who was a United States Marine Corps fighter ace during World War II.

Pappy Boyington received the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross.

Pappy Boyington was captured by a Japanese submarine crew and was held as a prisoner of war for more than a year and a half.

Pappy Boyington was released shortly after the surrender of Japan.

Pappy Boyington then lived in Tacoma, Washington, where he was a wrestler at Lincoln High School.

Pappy Boyington took his first flight at St Maries when he was six years old, with Clyde Pangborn, who later became the first pilot to fly over the Pacific Ocean non-stop.

Pappy Boyington was on the Husky wrestling and swimming teams, and for a time he held the Pacific Northwest Intercollegiate middleweight wrestling title.

Pappy Boyington spent his summers working in Washington in a mining camp and at a logging camp and with the Coeur d'Alene Fire Protective Association in road construction.

Pappy Boyington graduated in 1934 with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering.

Pappy Boyington married shortly after graduation and worked as a draftsman and engineer for Boeing in Seattle.

Pappy Boyington began his military training in college as a member of Army ROTC and became a cadet captain.

Pappy Boyington was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Army Coast Artillery Reserve in June 1934, and then served two months of active duty with the 630th Coast Artillery at Fort Worden, Washington.

When he obtained a copy of his birth certificate, he learned that his father was actually Charles Pappy Boyington, a dentist, and that his parents had divorced when he was an infant.

On February 18,1936, Pappy Boyington accepted an appointment as an aviation cadet in the Marine Corps Reserve.

Pappy Boyington was assigned to Naval Air Station Pensacola for flight training.

Pappy Boyington was designated a Naval Aviator on March 11,1937, then transferred to Marine Corps Base Quantico for duty with Aircraft One, Fleet Marine Force.

Pappy Boyington was discharged from the Marine Corps Reserve on July 1,1937, in order to accept a second lieutenant's commission in the Marine Corps the following day.

Pappy Boyington attended The Basic School in Philadelphia from July 1938 to January 1939.

Pappy Boyington resigned his commission in the Marine Corps on August 26,1941, to accept a position with the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company, which was a civilian firm that contracted to staff a Special Air Unit to defend China and the Burma Road.

Pappy Boyington was frequently in trouble with the commander of the outfit, Claire Chennault.

Pappy Boyington was officially credited with two Japanese aircraft destroyed in the air and one and a half on the ground.

Pappy Boyington received the nickname "Gramps", because at age 31, he was a decade older than most of the Marines serving under him.

Pappy Boyington is best known for his exploits in the Vought F4U Corsair in VMF-214.

Pappy Boyington's squadron, flying from the island of Vella Lavella, offered to down a Japanese Zero for every baseball cap sent to them by major league players in the World Series.

Pappy Boyington was tactical commander of the flight and arrived over the target at 8:00 am.

Pappy Boyington was seen to shoot down his 26th plane, but he then became mixed in the general melee of dogfighting planes and was not seen or heard from during the battle, nor did he return with his squadron.

Pappy Boyington described the combat in two books and numerous public appearances, but this claim was eventually "disproven", though Kawato repeated his story until his death.

Kawato was present during the action in which Pappy Boyington was shot down, as one of 70 Japanese fighters which engaged about 30 American fighters.

Pappy Boyington had been picked up on 3 January 1944 by the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-181 and taken to Rabaul, becoming a prisoner of war.

Pappy Boyington spent the rest of the war, some 20 months, in Japanese prison camps.

At Ofuna, Pappy Boyington was interned with the former Olympic distance runner and downed aviator Lieutenant Louis Zamperini.

Pappy Boyington returned to the United States at Naval Air Station Alameda on September 12,1945, where he was met by 21 former squadron members from VMF-214.

On October 4,1945, Pappy Boyington received the Navy Cross from the Commandant of the Marine Corps for the Rabaul raid.

Pappy Boyington retired from the Marine Corps on August 1,1947, and because he was specially commended for the performance of duty in actual combat, he was promoted to colonel.

Pappy Boyington was a tough, hard-living character known for being unorthodox.

Pappy Boyington was a heavy drinker, which plagued him in the years after the war and possibly contributed to his multiple divorces.

Pappy Boyington freely admitted that during the two years he spent as a POW his health improved because of the enforced sobriety.

Pappy Boyington worked various civilian jobs, including refereeing and participating in professional wrestling matches.

Pappy Boyington wrote his autobiography, Baa Baa, Black Sheep, published in 1958.

Pappy Boyington wrote a novel about the American Volunteer Group.

Pappy Boyington had a short walk-on role as a visiting general for two episodes in the first season and one episode in the second season of the show.

Many of Pappy Boyington's men were irate over the show, charging it was mostly fiction and presented a glamorized portrayal of Pappy Boyington.

Pappy Boyington frequently told interviewers and audiences that the television series was fiction and only slightly related to fact, calling it "hogwash and Hollywood hokum".

Pappy Boyington was part of the 1981 Black Sheep reunion in Washington, DC, hosted by the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

In 1976, Pappy Boyington appeared on NBC's The Today Show with actor Robert Conrad and was interviewed about the drama Baa Baa Black Sheep.

Pappy Boyington had three children with his first wife Helen Clark.

Pappy Boyington married Frances Baker, 32, of Los Angeles on January 8,1946.

Pappy Boyington married Josephine Wilson Moseman of Fresno in 1978.

Consistently outnumbered throughout successive hazardous flights over heavily defended hostile territory, Major Pappy Boyington struck at the enemy with daring and courageous persistence, leading his squadron into combat with devastating results to Japanese shipping, shore installations and aerial forces.

An independent documentary film called Pappy Boyington Field was produced by filmmaker Kevin Gonzalez in 2008, chronicling the grassroots campaign to add the commemorative name.

The film showcases many of the local veterans who were involved with the campaign, as well as the personal insights into Pappy Boyington's life provided by his son, Gregory Pappy Boyington, Jr.

Pappy Boyington was inducted into the Naval Aviation Hall of Honor in 1994, located at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.

Pappy Boyington was the inspiration for the NROL-82 mission patch that launched in April 2021.

In 2019, Pappy Boyington was inducted into The National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.