World War II Database

Full Title: Swashbucklers and Black Sheep: A Pictorial History of Marine Fighting Squadron 214 in World War II

If there was only one individual US Marine Corps squadron that I could specifically name, it would be VMF-214. While its combat record clearly demonstrated the squadron's skill, its larger than life one time commanding officer Gregory "Pappy" Boyington popularized the squadron, especially after the release of the television show "Baa Baa Black Sheep". Bruce Gamble, who had been associated with the squadron's veterans for the past twenty years, told the tale of this squadron with his 2012 Swashbucklers and Black Sheep.

The book had been billed as a pictorial history, and the book was indeed excellent in that department. A great majority of the photographs included in this handsome large-format book were from the private collections of squadron veterans such as George Britt, Frank Walton, Drury McCall, and others, thus rarely seen prior to this publication. Paintings, while few, brought new dimensions to this book. Although it being officially a "pictorial history", the accompanying text was by no means cursory; much like other titles of Gamble's (the recently reviewed Target: Rabaul came to mind), Swashbucklers and Black Sheep was packed with detailed listings of day-by-day activities and narratives of air combat complete with number of American claims compared with actual Japanese losses. Although the concluding chapter about the later generation of VMF-214 (later VMA-214) pilots in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan was for sure off-topic, this departure cleanly wrapped up the story of the squadron.

I had very high expectations going into Swashbucklers and Black Sheep, and the book did not disappoint. Borrowing a phrase from the late Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert: "two thumbs up".