Nine uneventful months north of the border, during which Avey saw "a lot of the middle of Canada," were spiced up only once, when low oil pressure forced him to land a British bomber on a farm. He avoided injury, and later devoured a hearty chicken dinner with the startled but courteous farmer.
Avey quickly transferred to the U.S. Marines after the surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor officially brought the United States into the war. "I wanted to get into a fighting outfit," he explained. "The Marines sent me to Quantico, Va., as a second lieutenant, and one month later I was sent to Corpus Christi, Texas, to learn how to fly American planes."
Avey headed for the Pacific in mid-1942, and by the following spring he had joined a fighter squadron operating out of Espiritu Santo, an island northeast of Australia in the Coral Sea. In six weeks of combat, mainly over the Solomon Islands, Avey was credited with 2 1/2 kills. That half kill still rankles him.
"I shot down the plane, but one young pilot also claimed it," Avey said. "He was shooting from about five miles away, and I could see his tracers falling off target. The kid even later admitted he was lying, but authorities awarded each of us credit for half a kill. That eventually kept me from being an ace."
Because Avey had only flown in one combat tour, he remained behind when the bulk of the squadron was ordered home. Rather than take his chances with an unknown outfit, Avey transferred to Boyington's squadron, VMF-214, which had already made its mark in six short weeks of combat flying.
The Black Sheep first gathered in September 1943 when Admiral William "Bull" Halsey asked that an additional Marine squadron be immediately dispatched to assist his hotly contested Solomon Islands operation. Normally, squadrons were formed in the United States and trained together extensively before heading overseas, but in the urgency of the situation a squadron was hastily assembled from replacement pilots and remnants from other units. Its commander would be Major Boyington, known simultaneously for his skill as a pilot (he was already an ace) and his talent for getting into trouble (he was without a unit because he broke one of his ankles while wrestling during a drinking spree).
After three weeks of hurried training, the original unit of 28 pilots (only three had combat experience), one intelligence officer and one surgeon moved to its forward base at Munda in the Russell Islands on September 12. During two six-week combat tours, 51 different men eventually served with the Black Sheep; 11 died in action.
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This article was written by John F. Wukovits and originally published in Aviation History Magazine in June 1999.
For more great articles be sure to pick up your copy of Aviation History.
©2002, PRIMEDIA History Group, a division of PRIMEDIA Special Interest Publications.
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