Boyington was a heavy drinker throughout his adult life and his service record was dogged by bitter feuds with other officers.  The lack of military-style discipline in the A.V.G. suited him down to the ground.  Between missions he hit the bottle and partied; sometimes he and his comrades celebrated by shooting off their pistols close to frightened civilians and they were not above threatening to shoot barkeepers who were reluctant to serve them.  One nightclub proprietor who upset them could only watch in dismay as they shot down every chandelier in the place before leaving.

After a long series of dogfights, strafing missions and crash landings, Boyington returned to the U.S.A. with 6 kills to his credit.  Back home he was snubbed by a military establishment  which initially failed to honour its promise to restore A.V.G. members to their former ranks.  Reduced to parking cars in order to pay his way, he desperately wrote to an Under Secretary of the Navy  and was returned to active duty.

Sent to the Pacific theatre of operations, Boyington saw little combat for some time and languished in an administrative position.  When he was finally given command of a combat squadron the potential opportunity slipped through his fingers as he was injured in an accident at his own base and hospitalised in New Zealand.

Coming back to the War again, he was stuck in the rut of more routine work until he managed to persuade his commanding officer that he could remedy a shortage of combat squadrons by effectively pulling together a number of unattached pilots who were straight out of flight training and awaiting assignment or separated from their original units and unwanted by others.

The former Flying Tiger was much older than any of his new comrades; they quickly dubbed him 'Grandpappy', a nickname which eventually contracted to simply 'Pappy'.

Given less than 4 weeks to get them ready, Boyington worked them round the clock; they scored heavily on their first combat mission (Boyington achieving 5 kills that day - his best ever tally on a single flight).

From that point onwards The Black Sheep Squadron (a name which they adopted at their leader's suggestion when their original title - 'Boyington's Bastards' - was deemed unfit to print in newspapers) went on to achieve one of the best records of any U.S. fighter group in World War 2.

Boyington's  personal score went up steadily.  He found himself stuck on 25 kills and under tremendous pressure from everybody to better Eddie Rickenbacker's record of victories.

Here's Boyington's own account of the fateful mission in which he finally reached that goal and the price he paid for it:

"It was before dawn on January 3, 1944, on Bougainville. I was having baked beans for breakfast at the edge of the airstrip the Seabees had built, after the Marines had taken a small chunk of land on the beach. As I ate the beans, I glanced over at row after row of white crosses, too far away and too dark to read the names. But I didn't have to, I knew that each cross marked the final resting place of some Marine who had gone as far as he was able in this mortal world of ours.

Before taking off everything seemed to be wrong that morning. My plane wasn't ready and I had to switch to another. At last minute the ground crew got my original plane in order and I scampered back into that. I was to lead a fighter sweep over Rabaul, meaning two hundred miles over enemy waters and territory again. We coasted over at about twenty thousand feet to Rabaul. A few hazy cloud banks were hanging around-not much different from a lot of other days. The fellow flying my wing was Captain George Ashmun, New York City. He had told me before the mission: "You go ahead and shoot all you want, Gramps. All I'll do is keep them off your tail."

This boy was another who wanted me to beat that record, and was offering to stick his neck way out in the bargain. I spotted a few planes coming through the loosely scattered clouds and signaled to the pilots in back of me: "Go down and get to work." George and I dove first. I poured a long burst into the first enemy plane that approached, and a fraction of a second later saw the Nip pilot catapult out and the plane itself break out into fire. George screamed out over the radio: "Gramps, you got a flamer!"

Then he and I went down lower into the fight after the rest of the enemy planes. We figured that the whole pack of our planes was going to follow us down, but the clouds must have obscured their view. Anyway, George and I were not paying too much attention, just figuring that the rest of the boys would be with us in a few seconds, as was usually the case. Finding approximately ten enemy planes, George and I commenced firing. What we saw coming from above we thought were our own planes-but they were not. We were being jumped by about twenty planes.

George and I scissored in the conventional Thatch-weave way, protecting each other's blank spots, the rear ends of our fighters. In doing this I saw George shoot a burst into a plane and it turned away from us plunging downward, all on fire. A second later I did the same thing to another plane. But it was then that I saw George's plane start to throw smoke, and down he went in a half glide. I sensed something was horribly wrong with him. I screamed at him: "For God's sake, George, dive!

Our planes could dive away from practically anything the Nips had out there at the time, except perhaps a Tony. But apparently George had never heard me or could do nothing about it if he had. He just kept going down in a half glide. Time and time again I screamed at him: "For God's sake, George, dive straight down!" But he didn't even flutter an aileron in answer to me.

I climbed in behind the Nip planes that were plugging at him on the way down to the water. There were so many of them I wasn't even bothering to use my electric gun sight consciously, but continued to seesaw back and forth on my rudder pedals, trying to spray them all in general, trying to get them off George to give him a chance to bail out or dive - or do something at least. But the same thing that was happening to him was now happening to me. I could feel the impact of enemy fire against my armor plate, behind my back, like hail on a tin roof. I could see the enemy shots progressing along my wing tips, making patterns.

George's plane burst into flames and a moment later crashed into the water. At that point there was nothing left for me to do. I had done everything I could. I decided to get the hell away from the Nips. I threw everything in the cockpit all the way forward - this means full speed ahead - and nosed my plane over to pick up extra speed until I was forced by water to level off. I had gone practically a half a mile at a speed of about four hundred knots, when all of a sudden my main gas tank went up in flames in front of my very eyes. The sensation was much the same as opening the door of a furnace and sticking one's head into the thing.

Though I was about a hundred feet off the water, I didn't have a chance of trying to gain altitude. I was fully aware that if I tried to gain altitude for a bail-out I would be fried in a few more seconds.

At first, being kind of stunned, I thought: "Well, you finally got it, didn't you, wise guy?" and then I thought: "Oh, no you didn't!".  There was only one thing left to do. I reached for the rip cord with my right hand and released the safety belt with my left, putting both feet on the stick and kicking it all the way forward with all my strength.  My body was given centrifugal force when I kicked the stick in this manner.  My body for an instant weighed well over a ton, I imagine.  If I had had a third hand I could have opened the canopy. But all I could do was to give myself this propulsion.  It either jettisoned me right up through the canopy or tore the canopy off.  I don't know which.  There was a jerk that snapped my head and I knew my chute had caught - what a relief. Then I felt an awful slam on my side - no time to pendulum - just boom-boom and I was in the water."

Boyington was repeatedly strafed by Japanese planes and left for dead.  Floating in his inflatable raft and terribly injured, he was picked up by an enemy submarine. He was taken to Rabaul and eventually transferred via other islands to Japan.  Because he was considered a special category prisoner, Boyington did not appear on the normal P.O.W. lists; his family and comrades believed him to be dead until after the surrender of the Imperial Japanese Forces.

During his captivity, Boyington experienced cruel thirst and starvation; he was beaten  and abused on innumerable occasions but stood up to his tormentors with courage and resourcefulness.

He was on Truk Island when American planes launched a devastating attack there.  He and fellow P.O.W.s were left in a trench in the middle of the Island's airbase as explosions and shrapnel burst all over. Remarkably, none of them were harmed by the storm of death and destruction which rained down all around their shallow hole in the ground.

Later on, during one of many interrogation sessions at a prison camp in Japan, an enemy intelligence officer informed him that he had been awarded his country's supreme military decoration  - The Congressional Medal Of Honor.  At the time Boyington did not enjoy this distinction; up till then he had kept his captors guessing to some extent by pretending that he had an undistinguished record without a single Japanese plane to his credit.

Liberated  after Japan's defeat, Boyington's survival amazed all those who had written him off.  He retired from the U.S.M.C. with the rank of Colonel.  In addition to the Medal Of Honor, he earned the Navy Cross and a Purple Heart.

'Pappy' Boyington passed away in 1988.  His final resting place is Arlington National Cemetary.