Flyover will honor World War II hero “Pappy” Boyington

A World War II aircraft will fly over Tacoma’s Lincoln High School on Friday to mark the placement of a memorial to one of the school’s most famous alumni: Medal of Honor recipient Col. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington.

Boyington, a 1930 Lincoln graduate who joined the Marine Corps during World War II, led a famous band of misfit pilots, dubbed the Black Sheep Squadron.

The got the nickname because many were inexperienced or had been rejected by other units. Boyington was older than most of his men, so they called him “Pappy.”

Boyington’s Corsair fighter, named Lulubelle, was shot down over the Pacific. He was captured by the Japanese and held prisoner for more than 18 months before he was released to a hero’s welcome at home.

He died in 1988 at age 75 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

On Thursday, a Corsair F4U — owned by the Erickson Aircraft Collection museum in Madras, Oregon — swooped into the Tacoma Narrows Airport in Gig Harbor in preparation for Friday’s ceremony.

For the occasion, the plane’s owner painted on the name of Boyington’s aircraft, along with 20 small emblems to represent the Japanese planes Boyington downed while flying a similar aircraft in combat.

A group of Army Junior ROTC students from Lincoln and Mount Tahoma high schools greeted the aircraft. They posed for selfies with the plane and its pilot, Jim Martinelli.

Students had learned about Boyington’s wartime exploits, and JROTC students from both schools joined Lincoln alumni, veterans groups and others to help raise the estimated $15,000 to support the installation of the memorial at Lincoln.

The students had done their homework on Boyington, who was a star athlete and a top student at Lincoln, where he was known as Greg Hallenbeck. He abandoned his stepfather’s surname in later life, adopting his birth father’s name of Boyington.

Leanna Esquivel, a Mount Tahoma student, said Boyington’s story paralleled those of many of her classmates.

“He came from nothing, and he made something of himself,” she said. “He gave of himself for his country.”

Boyington’s example shows “you don’t have to come from somewhere big to make a difference,” she said.

Omar Zamora, a Lincoln student who hopes to continue in ROTC in college, said he’s proud to see a Lincoln graduate is still inspiring cadets to pursue a military career.

Precious Omweri, also from Lincoln, added: “It’s cool that I go to a school that has a Medal of Honor recipient.”

Martinelli gave students a lesson on the history of the Corsair.

Before the plane, manufactured by Chance Vought, made its appearance in 1943, American fliers had been playing catch-up against Japanese aviators, Martinelli said.

The Corsair was fast, the first Navy fighter plane that could reach speeds of 400 mph. Its fold-up wings enabled more of the compact planes to fit on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

Once it took to the air, Martinelli said, “nothing could match it.”

The aircraft he’ll fly over Lincoln was built late in the war, around 1945. After the war, it was sold to the French military, and saw combat during the Suez Crisis of 1956.

A California collector bought the plane from the French, then sold it to someone in the United Kingdom. Erickson bought it in the 1990s. Martinelli estimates it’s worth more than $500,000.

The plane was used in several episodes of the 1970s TV show about Boyington and his men, called “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”

The Corsair is 100 percent original from the era, except for its radio, paint job and the dummy gun barrels on the leading edge of the wings.

Martinelli is a civilian aviator, not a military veteran. But he said that as he piloted the Corsair from Oregon to Gig Harbor, he thought about the history it represents.

Cruising along at 10,500 feet, he said, it was easy to imagine what it must have been like for Boyington, alone in his fighter, looking out over the vast Pacific.

“I never smelled gunsmoke,” Martinelli said. “But you do feel a bond.”

This story was originally published May 18, 2017 at 6:41 PM with the headline "Flyover will honor World War II hero “Pappy” Boyington."