author
Frank Walton
Best known for a vivid history of the famed Black Sheep Squadron, this former Marine reserve officer wrote with the kind of firsthand perspective military readers love. His work focuses on the people behind wartime legend, not just the headlines of combat.
3 Audiobooks
About the author
Frank E. Walton was an American writer best known for Once They Were Eagles: The Men of the Black Sheep Squadron. Library and archive records identify him as Frank E. Walton, born in 1909, and show the book as a history of Marine Fighter Squadron 214, the celebrated "Black Sheep" unit of World War II.
Reference sources connected with the book describe Walton as someone who tracked down surviving members of the original squadron and built his account from their recollections. That gives his writing a personal, interview-based feel, centered on the real aviators behind the squadron's reputation.
Some biographical details about Walton are inconsistent across online sources, so it is safest to say that he was a 20th-century American author associated with military history, especially U.S. Marine Corps aviation. The most clearly confirmed facts are his authorship of Once They Were Eagles and the 1909 birth year attached to standard catalog records.