What a remarkable man was Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, one of the most celebrated fighter pilots of World War II.
As a young man he enlisted in the Marine Corps in the 1930s but was ornery and drank too much. Both he and the Marines were happy to part company when Boyington joined the Flying Tigers in China as a paid mercenary. Flying the obsolescent P-40s, he managed to down two Japanese zeros and destroyed four more on the ground. He continued adding those four to his total score, although aircraft destroyed on the ground were never counted as victories in the US military.
With the outbreak of World War II, the Flying Tigers were dissolved and Boyington talked his way back into the Marine Corps. He was sent to the Pacific and was squadron leader of 214, called the Black Sheep squadron, and flying the modern F4U Corsairs.
It's a candid biography and there are multiple talking heads -- biographers, friends, other pilots. Boyington's behavior was reckless. He off-handedly challenged anyone to fight him. He deliberately irritated his superiors. He drank when he didn't fly and sometimes when he did. One team mate remembers Boyington staggering out to his airplane. How do you fly in combat when you are hung over -- or still drunk from the night before? Boyington racked up enough kills to tie his nearest competitor, winning the Congressional Medal of Honor. (They all seemed to treat the contest like a high school football game.) Then he was finally shot down and imprisoned in 1944.
Released at the end of the war, he returned to his old ways and the Marine Corps promoted him to Lieutenant Colonel before easing him into an early retirement. The guy was an embarrassment to everyone.
He drifted from job to job before dying of cancer, still adored by his team in the Black Sheep Squadron.
There is a 1976 TV series based on the squadron's exploits. It's inaccurate and unbecoming. Boyington was hired as a consultant but contributed little to the program.
