La squadriglia delle pecore nere

I loved the "Corsairs" as long as I can remember. I was so disappointed when the Black Sheep series ended I never watched network television again. Pro football was the only network programming I would watch. Then cable came and most recently The History Channel has aired the Black Sheep. I taped as many as I could. Then came my computer and I still haven't watched a network program for over 20 some odd years. I know NBC don't miss me. I don't miss NBC either. God Bless Pappy Boyington. May you rest in peace.

Set in the South Pacific during World War Two, the series dealt with a squadron of US pilots known as the Black Sheep (called such due to the fact most were misfits and disciplinary cases before joining the outfit). The best part of the series were the aerial combat sequences; using a mix of archived material from the war, newly filmed sequences, and superbly edited tapings of radio transmissions, the producers made it seem like you were up there in the sky with the squadron in the encounters with the Japanese. On the ground, the dramatic scenes were often done just as well; you got to realize that even though the squadron was made up of screwballs they behaved as a unit and worked as a team to make it through whatever came up.

Later episodes in the series tend to be rather lacking in entertainment value. The addition of "Pappy's Lambs" - a group of nurses assigned to the island - was probably meant to help ratings, but at the same time the focus started to swing towards them and away from the war against the Japanese, which had been the backbone of the more successful earlier episodes. The overall writing of the series seems to have deteriorated as the show got towards the end of its run as well.

While mixed in quality through its run, the show is definitely worth watching, if nothing else for the Corsairs that were restored to be used on the show - great aircraft!

I watch this every day on the History Channel. Great show, maybe not the most historically accurate, but you get a sense of what life was like for these young pilots in the Pacific. Gutterman and Pappy are my favorite characters. Most everyone with a speaking role in the series carved out a nitche for himself and made his character fairly memorable. This is a show the whole family can watch together and learn a little about WW2. One thing I like about the History Channel is that each commercial break has a blurb from a real member of the Black Sheep Squadron giving insights into areas where the show is not accurate.

Why did they cancel this show?? The show went WAY down hill with the addition of the T&A factor (aka Pappy's Lambs). What was a pathetic attempt to boost ratings further detracted from the historical accurateness of the show by depicting woman with no acting talent, often scantily dressed, with 70s hairstyles positioned on the front lines in WW2. Pappy Boyington was a technical advisor to the show and should have put a stop to this!!!

Attention Hollywood: Pappy Boyington and his brave men would make an excellent feature film. The TV series just scratches the surface of the adventures of the Black Sheep.

While the Movie and T.V. show did have some inaccuracies it did provide a thrilling show that I love to this day. When I was small I would sneak up to my room just so I could See "Pappy" and the "Black Sheep" Squadron every week and since as an adult have become intensely interested in history and the role that these true American heroes played in making this a free country. I wish that everyone could see this show.

With the passing of Robert Conrad and H&I showing the show again I wanted to comment on it. This is one of the first shows I remember watching because my Grandfather served with the actual Boyington during WW2 and we watched several eps shortly before he died.

I read Boyington's autobiography when I was a young teen. Needless to say the show isn't accurate, and was said by former members of the unit in the 80s at a reunion and the former members expressed great displeasure at Boyington. My Grandfather's overlap of service was limited as he was in the Army Air Corps and knew him from base overlap and because he was a mechanic which was as important as pilots because of limited replacement parts.

So while the show was inaccurate, it was generally inspiring (I believe one of the reasons I enlisted when I was 17) and entertaining. Today if I want history, I've got the History and Military Channels, so all one needs to do is expect it to entertain which it does. I'd make it akin to MASH which certainly wasn't real either, but was entertaining.

What a lot of people won't remember is the time period when this was on being post-Vietnam and there was a negative attitude towards the service that post 9/11 isn't remembered by many (I served in the late 80s and Desert Storm and the military was viewed positively in my opinion by most then, but not as high as after 9/11).

so watch it for what it's meant to be, entertainment.