Baa Baa Black Sheep: VMF-214 and the Marine Corps’ Most Famous Aviators of WWII

Veterans Chronicles, the American Veterans Center’s weekly radio series, features the stories of America’s greatest military heroes, in their own words. The program is hosted by Gene Pell, former NBC Pentagon Correspondent and Moscow Bureau Chief, as well as Director for Voice of America and President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Each week, Gene talks to distinguished service members from World War II all the way through Operation Iraqi Freedom, allowing them to share their insights on the great and tragic moments in American military history. Veterans Chronicles airs nationwide on the Radio America network, downloaded via podcast, and heard online at www.americanveteranscenter.org.

In this issue of American Valor Quarterly, we print the excerpt from a recent episode focusing on the legendary Black Sheep Squadron of World War II. Led by “ace” pilot Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, the squadron was formed in 1943 and was in action over a half-dozen South Pacific islands. In less than three months, the Black Sheep pilots destroyed or damaged 273 Japanese aircraft, sank ships, destroyed ground facilities, and perhaps most remarkably produced eight “ace” fighter pilots from only a single squadron. Retired Brigadier General Bruce Matheson served in that squadron, and he recently sat down with Gene to talk of his experiences and how they came to be known as the “Black Sheep.”

Brigadier General Bruce Matheson: The “Black Sheep” name came from our first combat tour. We had a squadron which was comprised almost entirely of college students, and these college students came from colleges all over the country. These were the days before television and we didn’t have any radio out there and there was no entertainment. So our entertainment was comprised of singing, which sounds like an ancient thing to do. We had several good voices in the group and we sang four-part harmony. One of the songs that one of the Ivy Leaguers brought along was the “Black Sheep” or the “Whiffinpoof Song,” which is the Yale drinking song. And we dearly loved that song. We managed to sing it frequently and it was always the very last one in our repertoire.

Figuring the squadron should have a name, it was suggested that the name be “Boyington’s Bastards” because the squadron was kind of formed in a bastardly fashion. We had no ground echelon. We had no airplanes. The press people at the time said if you do anything noteworthy we can’t hardly go back and mention your name – in those days when you couldn’t use four letter words – so we had to do better than Boyington’s Bastards. So somebody said why don’t we make it the “Black Sheep”? We thought that was a pretty good idea, so we decided we were the Black Sheep, and referred to ourselves that way, as did the press. When we went to Sydney on our first R&R – rest and recuperation visit – in November of 1943, our squadron intelligence officer had patches made up, unknown to us. The patches featured a little hump-backed sheep, the words VMF14, and a corsair on the top. But across diagonally it had the bar sinister, which represents “bastardly.” We made our point, but we made it orally through our patch, and we have carried this bastard patch ever since. And the bastard patch is still proudly worn by 214’s pilots who are today in Yuma, Arizona, and I believe they have also made a deployment to Iraq.

Gene Pell: Well that’s a great history, though as a Harvard man I can say I might have preferred Boyington’s Bastards in the first place!

BG Matheson: I imagine you would!

Pell: How did you get involved in it?