Fred Avey: Flying with the Black Sheep Squadron in World War II

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Avey’s first kill with the Black Sheep happened on a Christmas Day sweep into Rabaul. In the early holiday morning Avey spotted a Japanese bomber above, situated between the squadron and heavy clouds. ‘I could see his silhouette against the clouds, and dashed over to be on his dark side. I wanted to come in out of the sun and get a good fix on him.

‘I climbed into position and made my first pass, peppering him from wingtip to wingtip with all six machine guns. I actually flew so close to him on this run that I almost ran into him. As the Japanese started down, I made a second run and again shot up his wings. He crashed into the water and started to get out of the ruined plane, but I got him.’

His second kill came just two days later when Boyington led 44 Corsairs and 20 Navy Hellcats against Rabaul. Sixty Zeros greeted them, and in a furious melee six enemy planes were downed without a loss for the Black Sheep.

‘A Zero jumped on my tail and started firing at me,’ said Avey. ‘I could actually see the tracers going by. I hit the throttle to veer down, and the Japanese pilot was going so fast he zoomed right by me. He was now in front of me, and I shot him down.

‘You always shot your guns in short bursts, never long ones, because those six .50-caliber machine guns really slowed down your plane. If you fired too long, you could also overheat the guns and cause them to malfunction. Air combat is so quick and targets are darting by so fast that you really only need about two-second bursts.’

Life on the ground could sometimes be a bit unusual for the Black Sheep because of the unit’s colorful characters. Boyington carried a reputation for getting into trouble, usually when he overimbibed in alcohol, and the husky intelligence officer Walton, a former Los Angeles police sergeant, was given his job with the unit in part to look after Boyington.

‘Boyington loved to drink,’ recalled Avey, ‘but he never went into the air drunk, although he was hung over at times. He loved to wrestle when he was drunk, and one time I was in the shower when Boyington, drunk , barged in looking to wrestle. Now, we were standing on sharp, steel Marston matting that covered much of our base, and I was nude. He wanted to throw me down. No way did I want to wrestle with him there! After the war Boyington struggled with his booze and eventually gave it up.’

Other men broke the long monotony with crazy antics, such as the pilot who shipped home anything he could at government expense. Chris Magee, a happy-go-lucky individual who read books on philosophy and witchcraft, brought along a pile of hand grenades to toss at Japanese buildings when flying at low altitudes and constantly wore blue bathing trunks, tennis shoes and a bandanna. ‘He always acted crazy, but he was a good pilot,’ said Avey of the man credited with nine kills, second only to Boyington.

Boredom often was broken by a loosely formed group called the ‘Choral Society,’ which stayed up far into the night in Boyington’s tent belting out all sorts of songs, some raucous, others moving. One ditty parodied Yale’s ‘Whiffenpoof’ song: ‘We are poor little lambs who have lost our way/ Baa, baa, baa /Gentlemen Black Sheep off on a spree/Damned from here to Kahili/God have mercy on such as we/ Baa, baa, baa.’

Far from glamorous, living conditions in the South Pacific were ‘horrible,’ Avey said. ‘There was nothing pretty about it–either coral rocks or jungle trees.’ Their bases at Munda, the Russells, or Vella Lavella were cramped, experienced heavy rains at times, and were sweltering in the heat because of their proximity to the equator.

‘Mosquitos and big black ants were everywhere,’ he said. ‘At night we would catch six-inch salamanders and put them in our bedding. They helped keep mosquitos away. One morning one of our pilots was bit by a scorpion that had crawled into his pants overnight. When he put on his pants, the thing bit him. I also remember once on Vella Lavella looking down at the other end of the runway and seeing a huge mass of red crabs crossing over to get to the sea.’

The food fit in with their miserable living quarters, said Avey, although gradually everyone got used to it. Once, however, the unit ran out of food, and the Black Sheep had to eat Spam three times a day for a month. ‘I haven’t eaten Spam since,’ Avey reflected.

‘There wasn’t much to do once it got dark,’ Avey said. ‘Our quarters were blacked out except for tiny blue lights on the floor, and we had no radio. It seemed like I was in the South Pacific all my life.’

Some nights could stretch endlessly because the Japanese normally sent over planes to harass the exhausted pilots. When enemy planes were heard, Avey and the others dashed for foxholes dug outside of their tents. ‘I slept with a pistol under my pillow just in case. Early one morning a group of us gathered together to discuss our mission when we heard some planes. We all jumped into a large foxhole, but beating us to it was this dog that one guy kept around. It jumped quicker than we did.’

As the Black Sheep Squadron neared the end of its second six-week tour, concern arose over Boyington’s health. Reporters rarely left him alone as he neared the Marine record for most kills by a pilot, and the constant strain of dealing with the press, in addition to strenuous combat missions, took a toll on the squadron leader.

‘He flew missions every day for correspondents,’ Avey said. ‘They wanted him to break the record for downing Japanese planes. There were always four or five guys who wanted to interview him. I resented them because they should have let Boyington and us rest. They didn’t think about what it was like for us. Boyington was tired and at times shouldn’t have gone up, but he did. I wonder if that didn’t have something to do with his being shot down and captured.’

On January 3, 1944, Boyington took off on a mission accompanied by a new wingman whose plane was damaged by Zeros near Rabaul. ‘As the wingman headed down to the sea,’ Avey recalled, ‘Boyington followed him yelling, ‘Bail out! Bail out!’ The wingman didn’t, but now Boyington was so low in altitude the Zeros jumped all over him and got him.’

Four Zeros strafed Boyington in the water for almost 20 minutes before a Japanese submarine picked him up. He spent the remainder of the war in various enemy camps.

The Black Sheep scoured the skies seeking vengeance for their fallen leader, strafing barges and land targets and checking out any rumors about downed airmen sighted at sea. Nothing turned up, however, and on January 6, the Black Sheep carried out their final mission as a unit. In two six-week combat tours, VMF-214 accumulated a stellar squadron record of 1,776 missions and 168 planes destroyed or damaged, earning eight pilots ace status and the squadron a Presidential Unit Citation. An Associated Press story of March 20, 1944, summarized the unit’s many achievements:

‘The Black Sheep long had been recognized as one of the hardest hitting and most eager teams of air fighters and a squadron which was nourished by the fighting competitive spirit of its lost skipper…

‘The Black Sheep started as a squadron of nobodies, being formed from a collection of flyers and replacements on the spur of the moment….Within a matter of weeks it became the best Japanese-killing outfit in the Solomons and, in some respects, the most unusual squadron ever to fly the South Pacific skies.’

When the war ended in August 1945, Avery was at Pearl Harbor preparing to participate in the upcoming invasion of Japan. He remembers the day as though it were yesterday.

‘A girl came up and cried on my shoulder. I told her I was going to the beach and asked if she wanted to come along. She couldn’t, but she gave me the name of her girlfriend. The two of us went to the beach and had a party.

‘Hawaii was crazy that night. All the lights could be turned on, and cars were driving up and down streets dragging wash basins behind for noise. People were swimming in the ocean at 2 a.m.’

After World War II, during which Avey received the Distinguished Flying Cross, he remained in the Marines and flew jets during the Korean conflict, eventually rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Avey cringes at mention of the popular 1970s television show that pictured the unit as a hard-drinking bunch. ‘Television made it look like all we did was party, but that was in no way true. We never went up drunk. The only thing accurate about the show was that we flew Corsairs.’

Avey was not upset when the television show gave different names to the squadron’s pilots because ‘I did not want to be associated with it, anyway.’ He and other Black Sheep survivors let Boyington, who had served as the show’s adviser, know how they felt during a 1976 squadron reunion in Hawaii.

‘We all gave him hell for allowing them to do what they did,’ Avey said. ‘Boyington realized how upset we were and apologized to us, and he was not one to apologize very often.’

After his Korean service, Avey moved to Michigan and worked for the Ford Motor Company, from which he retired in 1974. He and his wife, Peggy, currently enjoy retirement in a Detroit suburb. Avey finds that the war is always with him.

‘After World War II, I worked for Ford for 18 years, but it is a blur,’ he said. ‘I’m retired now, yet all I can think of is World War II. It runs through my mind at night and ruins my sleep. Even now, I have nightmares about dodging Japanese flak or planes and trying to avoid getting killed.

‘World War II has dominated my life. I wish I could get it out of my mind, but I can’t.’

This article was written by John Wukovits and originally published in the May 1997 issue of Aviation History. For more great articles subscribe to Aviation History magazine today!

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Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Aerial Combat, Airborne Operations, Aviation History, World War II