23. This Ace Was Shot Down on the Same Day He Became America’s Highest Scoring Ace of WWII
Gregory Boyington led 48 fighters on a sweep over Rabaul on January 3rd, 1944. That day, he tied Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I record, as well as WWII’s then-highest American record, by downing his 26th Japanese plane. Unfortunately, it proved to be his last, as he was shot down a few minutes later. A massive search failed to locate Pappy, and he was declared Missing in Action (MIA). Unbeknownst to his comrades, Boyington, had survived. Peppered with shrapnel to his groin, arms, and shoulders, and with a massive laceration to his scalp, a bullet in a calf, and a nearly severed left ear, he had managed to parachute from his flaming Corsair into Rabaul’s harbor.
An injured Boyington was strafed in the water by four Zeroes, all of which fortunately missed, before he was picked by a Japanese submarine and made a POW. What followed were twenty months of brutal imprisonment. He was mistreated, beaten, and often went hungry or starved, with the result that he lost nearly seventy pounds. His ordeal finally came to an end on August 29th, 1945, when he was liberated, then taken back to the United States. There, he was greeted by surviving Black Sheep who threw him a party in a San Francisco hotel that was covered by Life magazine and appeared on its October 1st, 1945, issue.