Baa, Baa Black Sheep

I realize now that it may seem strange, but back in the 1970’s the TV was pretty limited.  In the NY area you had the three networks, channels 2(wcbs), 4(wnbc) and 7(wabc), the three independents 5(wnew), 9(wor) and 11(wpix) with 13(wnet) which was the PBS channel .  There were some UHF channels, but the reception was so bad that it was pointless to try and watch them.  So for the most part it was the networks for evening TV watching.

Some shows were bad, some were really bad and a few were, for me worth watching. One such show was the WW2 drama Baa Baa Black sheep, with Robert Conrad as the leader of a bunch of Marine Ne’er do wells in the Solomon islands.  The show had interesting characters and oh yes, real WW2 F4u Corsairs.  It was fun to watch. Here’s  a Youtube playlist.

What brought this up was this post about Boyington and his squadron.

https://pacificparatrooper.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/boyington-his-black-sheep/

I have Boyington’s book buried deep in my bins. It’s like a lot of the memoirs that were published in the 1970’s, a straightforward story of true heroism that was just doing their job.

http://www.amazon.com/Baa-Black-Sheep-Gregory-Boyington-ebook/dp/B00DXKJ5GE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454802212&sr=1-1&keywords=greg+boyington

Like so many of the greatest generation Boyington insisted that he was no hero, but considering how much they had to deal with and how little we have had to deal with, I can’t think of that generation any other way.  I’m glad that growing up that I had the pleasure of knowing so many of them that are gone now and heard so many stories first hand.  That’s something that kids now will never have.

Connecticut has made the Corsair the plane of Connecticut because so many were manufactured here by Sikorsky.  There are no less than two ongoing restorations going on.

http://www.connecticutscorsair.com/

https://cascstratford.wordpress.com/

The planes themselves though, can’t tell the stories of what they did.