what happened to Boyington's "Lucybelle"?

dragon53 · Post by **dragon53** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 1:04 pm

I'm thinking of buying the JSI Boyington F4U "Lucybelle". Information posted here shows that "Lucybelle" was not Boyington's personal Corsair, but was painted up for a PR photo session. My question is: after the photo session was over, was "Lucybelle" repainted (i.e. "Lucybelle" and Boyington's kill symbols were removed) and then returned to the pool of Corsairs for other pilots to fly---or is there a remote possibility that Boyington did fly a repainted "Lucybelle" later on?

Killerf6 · Post by **Killerf6** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 1:57 pm

I think your reading to much into it. The Marines didn't fly one specific corsair say like VF-17 did, and even they (VF-17) would fly other planes on the flight line when they had too.

My understanding was that the plane in question was an actual VMF-214 bird. The real question is if it was actually Boyington's personal plane. Most likely Boyington did fly that plane, as well as many others, but it probably was not his personal bird.

dragon53 · Post by **dragon53** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 2:09 pm

KILLERAF6:

I knew that "Lucybelle" was already part of the Black Sheep squadron before the PR photo session, but was painted up for the PR photo session. My question is---what happened to the painted-up "Lucybelle" after the photo session---was it repainted again to its pre-photo session paint scheme and then returned to the mix of other Corsairs?

pcoughran · Post by **pcoughran** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 4:16 pm

Got this off a military history site:
"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.

There were more photo ops. Frank Walton, the Air Combat Intelligence Officer (ACIO), was a talented writer himself, and went along with the press coverage of Boyington. On day, they staged a pretty good event for the cameras. The World Champion St. Louis Cardinals offered to trade Boyington one of their baseball caps for each plane shot down. One photo shows a grinning Greg Boyington exchanging a stack of little Jap flags for a stack of hats. In the most well-known photo, now on the cover of The Black Sheep ... Marine Fighting Squadron 214 in WW2, all the pilots stand on a Corsair, while Boyington, Bolt, Magee and the other aces stand in front with baseball bats in their hand. Other photos featured Black Sheep aces perched on the wing of #740, aiming bats like guns. "

I've seen some models with Lucybelle and some with Lulubelle. Like the quote above if you asked Pappy it was Lulubelle.

Killerf6 · Post by **Killerf6** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 4:21 pm

Yes, as far as I can tell that plane was kept in service. The only way to know for sure would be to have the BUNO # and access to the Navies archives. If you have the BUNO # you can do a google search and some times info comes up.

pcoughran · Post by **pcoughran** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 4:27 pm

Corsair Numbers
For what it's worth, it is known that Pappy Boyington flew the following Corsairs:

* BuNo 18086, an F4U-1A, in November 1943, or he at least sat in it for the photos
* BuNo 17740, an F4U-1A, in December 1943, used in "baseball" photo session
* BuNo 17883, an F4U-1A, in December 1943, also flown by Bob McClurg
* BuNo 17915, an F4U-1A, January 3, 1944, lost on Boyington's last mission

What was their ultimate disposition? Number 915 definitely wound up at the bottom of St. George's Channel; the others were almost certainly scrapped. Only a handful of Corsairs survived.

dragon53 · Post by **dragon53** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 6:20 pm

GUYS:

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, based on the photos of the JSI Corsair, I don't see a BuNo on it.

Killerf6 · Post by **Killerf6** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 11:13 pm

dragon53 wrote:GUYS:

Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, based on the photos of the JSI Corsair, I don't see a BuNo on it.

That wouldn't be very accuratre anyway. JSI could put any number on there. You would need to find it in a pic of the real plane, or a referance of it somewhere.

dragon53 · Post by **dragon53** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 6:07 am

PCOUGHRAN:

Can you provide any additional info on what happened to "Lucybelle" after Boyington's PR photo session?

pcoughran · Post by **pcoughran** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 8:48 am

dragon53 wrote:PCOUGHRAN:

Can you provide any additional info on what happened to "Lucybelle" after Boyington's PR photo session?

I got the impression from what I read that the "Lucybelle" in the famous pictures was really just a "photo" plane and probably never even saw combat. Don't think Pappy even flew the "86" Lucybelle at all, just sat in it for a photo shoot. Was there another corsair that had "Lucybelle" stenciled on it at the Black Sheep airfield and was actually flown by Pappy? - There aren't any pictures of it that I've seen, but I "aint no scholar on the subject." From most accounts, the Black Sheep hopped in whatever plane was working and closest to them at the time, so it would seem odd to have personal stuff on a particular plane if they really did do the "musical chairs" thing everytime they went out.

dragon53 · Post by **dragon53** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 11:48 am

PCOUGHRAN:

Thanks for clarifying that. It looks like I won't buy the JSI Boyington Corsair after all-----I'll wait for the JSI Kepford Corsair that nobody on SSHQ wants except me.

sicqnus · Post by **sicqnus** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 1:57 pm

The story about Lucy Malcomson is true. Plane was painted "Lucybelle". At this time (1943) Miss Malcomson was married and had an affair with Boyington. And this is also true that she sued Boyington and earned $15000 which was a lot of money at this time when he first published his memories.

As why she sued Boyington... Well read this and you'll probably understand why :

Desert News - Jan 9 -1946.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=3 ... 888,798278

dragon53 · Post by **dragon53** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 6:06 pm

SICGNUS:

Thanks for that info. That matches the little info I've read about Boyington---he also supposedly inflated his kills with the Flying Tigers to get collect more bounty money.