Inside the Black Sheep Squadron: LTC Henry Mayo “Hank” Bourgeois

Ken Harbaugh:

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I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mayo “Hank” Bourgeois. Bourgeois served in World War II as a Marine Corps fighter pilot, and was a member of the Black Sheep Squadron (VMFA-214). The Black Sheep became famous for their numerous successes over the Solomon Islands, and their leader, Lt. Col. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington.

LTC Henry Mayo Bourgeois:

My name is Henry Mayo Bourgeois. Born in New Orleans in 1921. I attended St. Aloysius High School in New Orleans and then went to Louisiana State University to become an aeronautical engineer. And my parents and grandparents all came from French-speaking Parish, St. James Parish in Louisiana.

I've been flying since I was 13, and my father's best friend was a reserve Air Force captain, not Army Air Corps, and he looked after me and taught me to fly. And then when I went to LSU, I worked at the Baton Rouge Air Base, Airfield Washington, pushing airplanes. And for flight time in my junior year at LSU, a recruiting team came by in Navy in that white uniforms and gold wings and all that. This was the, let's see, I guess it was the spring of 1941 and they convinced me that this was the way to go. So I signed up to go to flight training and they took me in on my birthday. September 1st, 1941. Went down to Naval Air Station, Corpus Christi, and began flight training there. And the interesting thing about that was the war hadn't started yet, and at that time, the flight training course to get your Wings and become an officer was about 18 to 20 months.

When the war started, they cut out all the crap and we went down. I was out of there in June in six months, and I got my Wings and went at the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant. We went out to North Island, California by San Diego for fighter training and finished that in about the 1st of December 1942. And then they put us on a [inaudible], a transport right to New Caledonia and from there up to Espirito Santos new Hebrides group. And I joined VMF-122 when I arrived there in late January 1943, and that was my first combat tour.

My first combat, remember Joe Foss was in the 122, and this was his last combat tour. And we were on Guadalcanal with flying Wildcats, and didn't have too many airplanes. And the experienced pilots got all the combat flights. But the only thing I did was we had a photographic Wildcat and F4F7 I believe, and I flew two or three missions over Munda to take photographs. And a couple of times the airplane was riddled. And the only other mission I can remember that was a strafing mission when the Navy damaged, I think it was a destroyer in the straits there, and we went up to strafe it.

The second combat tour was interesting because we got brand new, not brand new, but we got 18 Corsairs. And that was a great airplane. And I'll never forget the first time sitting in the cockpit with a handbook reading it, and then it says, push this switch, push that switch, push that button. And the mechanics there, he didn't see this airplane before either. And then that big engine started to run. God, it was a thrill. Had about maybe six or seven hours in that airplane.

And the Japs from their submarines were launching seaplanes at night to fly reconnaissance flight over the naval harbor there in Espirito Santos. So they asked for a volunteer to go up and try and shoot this thing down. So being young and enthused, and I says, I'll go. And so I took off one night at dark and they were trying to vector me around with the radar and they'd get me under this thing, and it was a dark night. You couldn't see it, but I could see against the stars, but I couldn't slow down. It flew so slow, I kept passing under it, and they'd vector me around and came back. I never did get a chance to shoot at it, but that was a thrill in my first mission in a Corsair.

Then the squadron was transferred to Guadalcanal and I was flying a wing on Captain, I can't remember his name, it'll come to mind. We were escorting SBD dive bombers up to Bougainville. If I remember, there were about 18 dive bombers, and I think we had 16 Corsairs in the air flying cover for the dive bombers. And we got up, there was a big thunderstorm. They were really after the shipping, and there was a big thunderstorm over with the harbor. So the alternate was to hit the airfield. And as we dive bombers started to push over about 20 or 30 Japs jumped us, and it started a dog fight.

That dog fights spread all over the sky and maybe 10 miles by 10 miles or something like that. And you never see exactly what's going to happen. And Japs got on my tail... Lundin, Captain Lundin was my leader. And he went after a Jap and a Jap went after me, and then we got separated, and then I went into this cloud to get away from the on my tail and came back out. And here was a Zero right in front of me. I mean maybe a hundred yards at the most, just sitting there. I blasted him and he blew up. And then I went back into the cloud because they were after me again. And this went on, I don't know how long, but it was in and out of this cloud. And after I shot two Zeroes down that day, I came out and there was nobody around. There wasn't an airplane in the sky. So I returned the base, and that was my first combat mission where air to air, actually somebody was shooting at me and I'm shooting at them.

The first Corsairs we got were the F-41s. And that's before they screwed them up with extra armor and all that. But they were powerful, they were lightweight, they had problems with oil leaks and hydraulic leaks, but I just can't... I have about 350 hours in Corsairs and I could get in a Corsair right now today and fly it. And the early models were unbelievably maneuverable. You could bank and turn and pull hard things and climb fast. They'd go fast.

Who I really praise is the mechanics on the ground. We'd come back from missions and they work all night long getting these airplanes ready to go in the morning. They might exchange wings or tails or put a new engine, a carburetor, magneto or whatever it was. But I never had a bad airplane. It is kind of interesting. There's a picture in that book over there of a side number Corsair-13 on Monday. I seem to have flown at Corsair side Number-13 most of the times. And you can see it has a bunch of holes in it. And I was a [inaudible] that got shot up in that airplane. But that airplane always seemed to be a little faster, a little smoother, a little better trimmed than all the rest of the airplanes. And it's hard to explain. It's like racing cars. I get, some are great and some are not so great.

We usually had about 18 airplanes assigned at one time. And you had 24 pilots or 26, whatever it was. And you rarely had more than 16 airplanes in commission. Some of them were on the ground waiting parts or whatever it was. And Frank Walton would assign the airplanes and assign the airplane number 22, 13 or 7 or whatever it happens to be. And that's airplane you flew that day. But nobody had an airplane assigned to him specifically. I've read some articles where people like Walsh I believe, claims that he had his Corsair all the time, whether he did or not, it's hard to believe, but we didn't. We flew whatever was available.

The Zero, we were briefed early that it was a fast maneuverable airplane and that you just didn't get involved in a dogfight where you try to out-turn him because there's no way you could do it. You'd always try and keep speed and dive away if he was on your tail. But it had one vulnerability, it had no self-sealing gas tanks or armor plate. And if you could get a burst of fire into that airplane, it was going to go down.

Well, I guess my attitude and the people in my flight was, "Kill the bastards." We talked about, do you shoot them in a parachute? I couldn't do that. But we talked about as long as you hit the airplane, knocked them down, got the pilot out, everybody was happy. But I know there were some people that shot at them in a parachute, in the water, things like that.

And there was some tragedies like Bill Case and one mission in VMF-122, we escorted B-24s. And some unexpected Corsairs came in to join the escort. And he didn't know they were Corsairs and he just pulled over and fired at one. Fortunately, it didn't do any real damage other than some holes in the airplane. But then we lost Alexander in VMF-214 when he mistakenly shot at one of our PT boats and they shot back and knocked him down. And there was another mission where my division was assigned to strafe some Japanese island bases that were really deserted, but lousy weather coming back. And the last man in the division saw what looked like a barge going through the water and he just pulled off and thought a strafing it, but it was ours. And you make mistakes.

And John Bolt, I got to tell you this, I don't know if he told you, but he got interested in armament, how you load the rounds in a machine gun. And he came up with, I can't remember, like incendiary armor-piercing tracer and something around that. It was brand new concept and he spent a lot of time with the Ordnance people, making sure the guns were all Zeroed in at about 200 yards or whatever it was. And I tell you, when you hit a Japanese Zero or any airplane with 650 caliber machine guns, that is a lot of firepower because man, they fire so fast, the airplane would explode, you'd knock a wing off or a tail off or kill a pilot.

And I flew two combat tours with VMF-122, and then that squadron was rotated home. You had to have, in those days, three combat tours and then you were eligible to go home. And I was in a pool of pilots. And at that time, Boyington was designated to be the commanding officer of newly designated 214. And he went through the pool and he picked out pilots who had combat experience. And since I'd had two combat tours and shot down some Japs, I was one of the people that he picked. And that's how I became a member of VMF-214, the Black Sheep.

There was always parties and we were invited over there one night for a party. Boyington was there. I didn't know who he was at the time. He was just introduced as Greg. And that was the first time I met him. And then when we transferred to go overseas, it turned out that he was the senior officer in the pilot replacement pool aboard the ship. And that's when I first got to know him. He liked to play Bridge and I liked to play Bridge. And so it was 17 or 18 days getting over to New Caledonia. So we played a lot of bridge on the way. He had bought along a case of Scotch whiskey for some general friend out there, but I think he drank it all up on the way. And I liked him but when we got on the islands out there, he seemed to do a lot of drinking and he really was not an administrator on the ground. And whatever squadron it was in, it was really run by either executive officer or some administrative officer. And the black Sheep Squadron, it was Frank Walton who was intelligence officer. He really ran the ground part of the squadron. And Boyington just seemed to be kind of placid and drunk most of the time. Sometimes when he took off in the morning, he just staggered out an airplane. But in the air, God, I'll tell you, it was something.

I can remember flying dawn patrols with him. And you would go up there and it was really nothing to do, but just circle around for two hours and hoping if the Japanese came down to bomb Munder, you might get something. And it was nothing to do. So he'd get bored with making circles and we'd start doing loops and rolls and wing overs and anything else, just to… And God, by the time he ended up, he was sweating like mad, trying to keep up with him. But he was a brilliant pilot, very aggressive in anything he did on the ground hand-to-hand fight or anything like that. On the [inaudible 00:12:28] going over that was a Marine raider battalion being transferred out to the Pacific. And every day up on the recreation deck, they would practice hand-to-hand fighting and boxing and everything. And he was right in the middle of it all the time. Well, his opponent was a corporal or sergeant or another major. It didn't make any difference. He'd do his best to beat him to the ground.

He just seemed to have a will to win in everything. On the ground, fighting, arguing or in the air with an airplane. And he certainly, in the airplane field, was extremely capable pilot. He was really something.

It was kind of interesting, that combat tour, even though we supposedly had a division, when we get up there, you never had enough airplanes. You'd get a mission in the morning or we usually flew two missions a day. And he'd go on, Frank Walton would say, "Hey, look, you're going to fly this and you're going to fly that." And I had a reputation for having extremely good eyesight, which I did in those days. And Boyington was anxious to find Japs to shoot down because sometimes we go up on fighter missions and sweeps and they wouldn't be a Japanese in the air. And, so one, day he says, "Bourgeois, you are leading the mission today." And he was flying on my wing. In fact, I have a photo in that thing there I took from the cockpit. And that's the way he was. He was aggressive and he wanted to get into some sort of action. And that day we went up there, we're right over Bougainville area, and I'm looking up and there are two Japs way up high and the two Japs way down low. And I told the leader of the other division, I said, you take the two up there and I'll take the two down there. And we rolled over. We never could catch these two guys. They went into a cloud and disappeared. And when we got back, Boyington chewed my fanny out. He says, "Why didn't you just stay there and let them come at us so we could get them?" But that's the way he was. He was really aggressive.

When you get in combat with people, you're depending upon each other and you're friends. I mean, I don't think there was anybody that did anything like robbed a bank or chase girls cause there was no girls out there, even though that episode said there were. But you become a... It's hard to explain. I guess it's like a football team that works together and they develop a comradeship where they want to win. They want to do well on in VMF-122 and 214. It was the same way, but it seemed to be more so in 214. And I attribute that to, we had about three or four singers that every night after the flying was over, the doctor would give us a couple of brandies and you'd sit around and sing. And some of these guys were pretty good. You sit around close and working together. It's kind of impressive.

When the squadron was organized, and we all knew we were going to be assigned to VMF-214 back in Espirito Island at Turtle Bay, which was the Marine Corps training base, stepping stone to [inaudible]. And we got together and talked, I think Bill Case started this, and said, "We ought to have a squadron name." Frank Walton encouraged that. And the guy says, "Why don't we call ourselves Boyington's Bastards?" And Walton says, "No, no." He says, "The papers will not put that in their papers back home. You got to think about something else." So they argued about it for a while. They saw that it was Boyington's Black Sheep, which the bastard's stripe type thing. And they had finally asked an artist, it was a Marine correspondent, I believe, to draw up a shield, which is on those caps with the bastard's stripe and the rest of the thing. So it's been that way ever since.

See, I was only there in the first combat tour. Okay, that was from September, about 6th, to October of whenever we finished the first combat tour. And I don't remember any correspondence or any big deal at that time. Frank Walton, and I didn't know this was sending all kinds of press releases back to the United States, everybody's hometown. In fact, he sent them to the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. And God, when I came home, I was a hero and I didn't even know what was going on. And so he did that to everybody. And I think that's stirred up interest in Boyington because he began his first mission, he shot down 5 Zeroes and then got a few more and began to build his lead, his quantity as it is. And Walton would always enter that in every press release. And I think that stirred the interest of correspondence. And when the squadron went back for its second combat tour, then that's when they hounded him up there. And at that time, they were flying out of Bougainville, the first combat tour. We were flying out Monday, and I wasn't involved in the second combat tour. So I really don't know what went on other than what I read in the books and the records.

I really liked Frank Walton from the beginning when I first met him, he was smart, he was intelligent, he really had his hand on the capabilities of the pilots in the black sheep. And I think sometimes when he assigned people to a mission, he would sort of put people together for say, a fighter's suite. And I remember one time he insisted I fly wing on Bailey and he says, "You and Bailey can work together, you both have the same capabilities." And things like that. I liked the guy, I really did. And I didn't realize that he was also doing all this publicity work until I got back home. But met him maybe only once or twice after the war, and that's about it. He came up when he wrote his book and visited everybody and interviewed us and all that stuff. And that was the last time I saw him.

All of a sudden Traces came by my airplane. I'm looking in the rearview mirror and there's a Zero back there. So I wasn't going too fast, but I throttled and everything, full throttle and everything. And this Zero was closing up on me and he's shooting, didn't hit the airplane. And so one of the things you do in a Corsair to get away from a Zero is you dive because you outspeed him. So I dove down on the deck and this guy stayed right with me, and make this airplane go fast, you close all the flaps, the cooling flaps and the oil flaps and everything else. And he's still sneaking up on me. And every once in a while he'd lob in some cannon shells or whatever it was. And I realized I wasn't headed back to towards my base. I was going at an angle away for it, and I'm getting kind of low on gas, and I decided I'm going to have to fight this guy, so I'm ready to turn around and do whatever I can. And all of a sudden the Zero pulls off and flies away.

In 1973, after I'd retired from the Marine Corps, I was working for the Singer Company in one of the aerospace divisions, and they sent me to Japan to help one of the Mitsubishi divisions that was producing our gyros and things to plan for the future. Their vice president of marketing was a retired Japanese Air Force General Suo. And we got to talking about the war, and he and I became friendly because he likes to hunt and I liked to hunt. And in fact, he got me a custom-made shotgun while I was there, which was impossible for somebody to do. And so we talked about the war and he'd been invited back to the United States to New Jersey to view our factory and how we did things. And I said, "Bring your log book and I'll check my log book." And we went back and we looked at our log book, and that was a guy that day that was trying to shoot me down. And it was interesting, we became lifelong friends. Unfortunately, he's passed away now.

Well, we invited General Suo to visit our factory in New Jersey to see the products and how they were built. And he was there for a couple of weeks and I took him duck and goose hunting in Maryland on the eastern shore. And it was one of those days when the weather was right and the birds were flying and close by and he got his limit and I got my limit. And that night we went to dinner and I'd been picking up the tabs all the time. So he picked up the tab and we had a few snorts, and then it was over. He turned to me and he says, "Hank son," he says, "I'm sure glad I didn't shoot you down."

I put 21 years in and retired now. And the only reason I took earlier retirement was my eyes went bad and I got grounded and I lost my flight pay and I had three boys coming up at the time and I couldn't figure out how to finance it, so I went to work in the industry.

Well, there was a reunion in, the first one, in Hawaii. I couldn't make it at the time. For some reason or other. And I don't remember how it started, but I started getting it together and we went as a group up for an Alaskan tour. We went to New Orleans and a Mississippi Delta Queen for a short trip. And I've been trying to get them together about every four years and we're getting fewer and fewer. In fact, Groover just passed away. And I understand that [inaudible] and Mark aren't doing too well.

Well there are 20 of us alive today and some of them not too well. And out of the 54, the first into the two combat tours, we're getting down to a few. In fact, I wondered who was going to fly the last mission. I hope it's me. Okay.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mayo “Hank” Bourgeois.

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