What nickname did Pappy Boyington's squadron have, and where did "Pappy" come from?

Boyington and Major Stan Bailey were given permission to gather pilots without an assignment into one squadron. In September 1943 Boyington became commanding officer of Marine Fighter Squadron 214 (VMF-214), known by its nickname "Black Sheep Squadron."

The pilots first called themselves "Boyington's Bastards," because they had all been "orphans" without a squadron to belong to and lacked reliable aircraft and mechanics. The squadron presented the label to Captain Jack DeChant, the Marine Corps's public information officer, who rejected it because civilian newspapers would refuse to print it. DeChant proposed an alternative with essentially the same meaning: "Black Sheep." Although they dropped "Boyington's Bastards," the unit kept the heraldic symbol associated with illegitimacy, the black bar of bastardy crossing its coat of arms.

Boyington received the nickname "Gramps" because, at 31, he was a decade older than most of the Marines serving under him. The name "Gramps" turned into "Pappy" in a variation of "The Whiffenpoof Song" whose new lyrics were written by Paul "Moon" Mullen, one of his pilots, and that version was picked up by war correspondents.