[skydriver]

I do not know why, but this is something that has always botherd me. I am talking about this photo. Not the fact that it was staged, but the fact that no one knew enough, or realized that some of the Japanese Kill Flags were put on backwards ( see the accompanying text ).

At least my Corgi Boyington Plane has the kill flags on correctly, althought they definatly are not to scale.

I was just wondering anyone elses thougths.

In November 1943, Pappy was publicly credited with 20 aerial victories (his actual total was almost certainly less, but that's another story). The press had begun to pay attention to the Marine Corps ace.

On November 26, at Turtle Bay on Espiritu Santu, Boyington posed in the cockpit of plane #86, decorated with 20 little Rising Sun flags, and painted Lu**belle. The bystander's arm obscures two letters of the word, which was either Lucybelle or Lulubelle. At the time, Boyington was involved with Mrs. Lucy Malcolmson, and Frank Walton recalled the name on the plane as Lucybelle. Makes sense, at the time. But after their messy break-up, Lucy kept $15,000 of Boyington's money that he had entrusted to her.

In later years, Pappy stated that the name on the plane was Lulubelle. As Bruce Gamble put it, "He had about fifteen thousand reasons to forget Lucy, each one worth a dollar." So even the apparently innocuous nose art of a Corsair illustrates some of the themes of Pappy's troubled life -- his difficulties with money, women, and the truth.

If you look carefully at the photograph (or the illustration at the top of this page), you can see that some of the Jap flags are reversed. Why? Some careless news guy just slapped the decals on there for the photo shoot. And some of them ended up backwards. The next day, Boyington boarded an R4D for Vella Lavella, leaving #86 far behind, never sitting in it again.