Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: SunTracker on December 18, 2003, 04:03:39 AM
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Can anyone give me some details on the shoot down of Gregory Boyington?
Heres what I know (could be wrong): His wingman was shot down, he tried to dive away from some Ki61s. His plane caught on fire, and he bailed out at very low altitude.
As they say..What REALLY happened?
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I seem to remember reading that he didn't have time to... or couldn't... get his canopy to slide back, so he undid his straps and kicked the stick forward, throwing him through the canopy.
It sounded cool when I was 14, but sounds a little dubious to me now.
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True about his wingman...while trying to shoot a bunch of Japanese pilots off his wingman's 6 he was shot down. His wingman was killed I believe. Don't recall plane type, or if he mentioned it in his book.
He was pretty badly wounded too. Apparently when he finally got into his rubber raft he realised that part of his scalp was flapping in the breeze and that he had a cannon round hit on one of his legs. Obviously it wasn't a clean hit, otherwise he wouldn't have a leg left, but it was a serious wound.
I can give more details...but book is at home.
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I caught a tv interview with him a while back (must've been over 20 years ago).
I don't remeber much of it, but one thing that I found kinda funny at the time and it stuck with me.
he said that after he was down and in the raft he tore the name patch off his flight suit, and ditched his tags and anything else with his name on it(Aperently out of conscern over his treatment if he where captured) then later when he was being pulled from the water he noticed that someone had stenciled his name on his life-raft
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Ok, so he went down trying to save his wingman. Thats admirable.
Anyone know why it was just Maj. Boyington and his wingman out by themselves?
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Read away ...
http://www.acepilots.com/usmc_boyington2.html (http://www.acepilots.com/usmc_boyington2.html)