Shot down over the Pacific, pulled from the sea by a Japanese submarine, and hidden for 20 months in prison camps the Red Cross never knew about, Gregory Pappy Boyington later admitted that captivity may have saved his life. This episode uses Marine Corps mission logs, post-war interviews, and historical analysis to separate the real man from the sanitized television legend of Baa Baa Black Sheep. We trace his Idaho logging-town childhood, his aeronautical engineering degree and job at Boeing, and the birth-certificate loophole that let a married man enter the Marine aviation cadet program.

From punching a superior officer and escaping to China with the Flying Tigers, to taking command of Marine Fighter Squadron 214 at the ancient age of 31, Boyington's story is one of peacetime liabilities becoming wartime assets. We cover the Kahili raid  ...