Boyd (18 page)

A request came down from TAC for five copies of each manual—a dead giveaway to Newman. The angry colonel confronted Boyd and
demanded to know why Boyd had gone over his head when he already had given his support to the TR&D manual. But then word came
down from TAC that Boyd’s work would be used as the official training manual at the FWS.

In his Oral History interview, Boyd recounts that he told Newman, “You ought to be glad. This way you are ending up with the
better book. It is a better reflection on you as the commander. Why are you protecting a bunch of goddamn losers over there
who cannot even do their homework? You know they did not do as good of a job as me. They are losers.”

“Get out,” the colonel ordered.

But the next day the colonel called Boyd to his office. “I want to apologize to you,” Boyd quotes him. “I really never read
your manual
before last night. Yours really is much better than the one from TR&D.” Boyd said the colonel then called TR&D and “ate their
ass out” for doing such shabby work.

Several weeks later Ron Catton was passing through flight operations when he saw Boyd and the wing commander, General John
Ewbank, standing against the wall. Boyd was smoking his cigar, waving his arms, and talking loudly and in an angry manner
to the general. Catton doesn’t remember what the conversation was about, only that he was astonished to see a captain publicly
haranguing a brigadier general. Then Boyd began poking Ewbank in the chest, jabbing with the hand holding the cigar and dribbling
ashes down the front of the general’s flight suit.

“General Ewbank put up with a lot from John,” Catton said. “If I’d been a brigadier general and he did that to me in public,
I’d have court-martialed him.”

In 1960 the “Aerial Attack Study” became the official tactics manual for fighter aircraft, and fighter aviation was no longer
a bag of tricks to be passed down from one generation of pilots to another. For the first time the high-stakes game of aerial
combat was documented, codified, and illustrated. While all other fighter pilots used their hands, Boyd used mathematics.

The “Aerial Attack Study” was seized upon by Boyd’s detractors (and by now they were growing in number) as proof that he was
a one-dimensional officer, that all he cared about was air-to-air combat at a time when the primary mission of fighter aviation
was to be a “baby SAC.” Boyd, they claimed, cared nothing for air-to-ground or nuclear-weapons delivery or high-altitude intercepts
or promoting the new missiles or anything else except air-to-air combat. Decades later, senior Air Force generals would still
paint Boyd as someone who simply never understood that the Air Force had moved beyond the air-to-air mission.

But their own closed-mindedness blinded them to Boyd’s staggering accomplishment. Before Boyd published the manual, fighter
pilots thought the game of air-to-air combat was far too complex to ever fully understand. They believed the high-stakes death
dance of aerial combat was too fluid to master. The “Aerial Attack Study” showed this was not the case. When a pilot goes
into an aerial battle,
he must have a three-dimensional picture of the battle in his head. He must have “situation awareness”; that is, he must know
not only where he and each of his squadron mates are located, but also where each enemy aircraft is located. In a swirling
furball of jet combat, which can range from 40,000 feet down to the ground and back again, this seems almost impossible. But
situation awareness boils down to two things: first, the pilot must know the enemy’s position, and second, he must know the
enemy’s velocity. (Boyd would later change “velocity” to “energy state.”) The amount of airspeed or velocity or energy available
to the enemy dictates what that enemy is able to do, which maneuvers he can perform. Boyd was the first to understand the
cognitive aspect of aerial combat, that it was possible to isolate not only every maneuver a fighter pilot could perform but
also the counters to those maneuvers. And the counter to the counter. This meant that when a fighter pilot bounced an enemy
pilot, he could know, depending on the altitude and airspeed and direction of the attack, every option available to the enemy
pilot. And he knew the counter to each option. And if an enemy pilot bounced him, whether it was a high-side or low-side or
head-on attack, he knew every available counter and every available counter to his counter.

Everything a fighter pilot needed to know was in the “Aerial Attack Study.” The most prescient part was called “Basic Limitation
of AIM-9 Against Maneuvering Targets.” Even though the Air Force had an unshakeable belief in the omnipotence of missiles,
Boyd showed—and he was the first to do so—that missiles could be out-maneuvered by a maneuvering target (i.e., another fighter).
His specific reasons for why they could be outmaneuvered was why the “Aerial Attack Study” was classified. The fact missiles
could be defeated was of crucial importance; it meant the dogfight was not dead, as SAC generals believed.

As soon as pilots saw the manual, they knew this was what they had always wanted. The first 600 copies disappeared almost
overnight. Although classified “secret,” manuala were taken home by pilots who hid them and studied them and prepared for
the inevitable day when war would come and they would be in an aerial gunfight.

For the “Aerial Attack Study” Boyd received the Legion of Merit, an award usually given to senior officers. The commendation
said the
“Aerial Attack Study” was the “first instance in the history of fighter aviation in which tactics have been reduced to an
objective state.” The commendation further stated that Boyd had demonstrated the maneuvers in a way that showed he was “undisputed
master in the area of aerial combat.” Finally, the commendation said Boyd had assembled the manual “with a zeal seldom equaled”
while performing his regular duties “in a superior manner.”

Demand for the manuals was so great that several years later the Air Force removed the material on missiles, changed the language
in a few sections, and printed a nonclassified version. Air Force squadrons rotating through Nellis took copies back to their
home bases, where copy after copy was made and passed around until they became tattered.

Hal Vincent of the Marine Corps, the pilot who fought Boyd to a dead heat in simulated aerial combat, used the manual to train
Navy and Marine pilots. Foreign pilots training at Nellis as part of the Mutual Defense Assistance Pact took copies back to
their countries, where it was studied as if it were Holy Writ. They agreed that the U.S. Air Force was truly an amazing organization
if a mere captain could write such a document. Within ten years the “Aerial Attack Study” became the tactics manual for air
forces around the world. It changed the way they flew and the way they fought. Forty years after it was written, even with
the passage of the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, nothing substantial has been added to it.

And it was written by a thirty-three-year-old captain who was not happy with it.

Boyd believed the “Aerial Attack Study” could be formulated another way, that there had to be a better method of articulating
the contents, maybe even something beyond the maneuver-countermaneuver strategy, something that went even beyond the mathematical
formulae to the core, the very essence, of combat flying.

“One day I’ll have a breakthrough on this,” he told Spradling.

While most thought Boyd was a great pilot, others—including at least one of the pilots who checked his flying proficiency—thought
he was so heavy-handed that he was dangerous to himself and to others.

Harold Burke was a chief warrant officer and the man in charge of aircraft maintenance for the FWS in 1960. He was a passenger
in the
backseat of a Hun one day during a firepower demonstration for VIPs visiting Nellis. Boyd was flying off the right wing in
a second F-100. Both aircraft were loaded with bombs and rockets.

As the two aircraft flew out to the bombing range, the element leader decided he wanted Boyd on his left wing. Rather than
easing off on the power, sliding backwards, then moving into position on the other wing, Boyd simply rolled inverted across
the top of the lead F-100 and settled into position on the left wing. Burke looked up through the canopy at Boyd’s head, about
twenty feet away. The element leader was angry at the proximity of two fast-moving aircraft loaded with enough bombs and rockets
to blow a big hole in southern Nevada. This was the most stupid and dangerous thing he had ever seen a pilot do.

“Dammit, Boyd. Don’t be horsing around,” he radioed angrily.

“One G is one G,” Boyd said. “It doesn’t matter what position I’m in.”

The point was that he flew the Hun as smoothly in the roll as he could have flown in level flight. It was a casual demonstration
of extraordinary flying ability—a maneuver only a highly skilled and supremely confident fighter pilot would perform. Others
believe it is one of the dumbest things they ever heard of a fighter pilot doing.

On June 1, 1960, Boyd was flying an F-100D, serial number 56-2931A, at 25,000 feet in a remote part of the Nellis Range. The
aircraft entered an unusual series of maneuvers. Boyd jerked the stick full aft and performed a maneuver called “wiping out
the cockpit.” He moved the stick full right forward, full left forward, full left rear, full right rear. The Hun lost airspeed
and wallowed and lurched about the sky. Boyd selected afterburner. The Hun shook as it was racked with one compressor stall
after another. It stood on its exhaust flame and indicated zero airspeed but was still flying. Then Boyd jammed the stick
full forward and dumped the nose. The extreme maneuver blew out the pressure seals on the primary and then the backup flight-control
systems. The Hun was no longer an aerodynamic object, simply a fourteen-ton collection of metal and electronics falling rapidly
toward the desert. Boyd had no options. He ejected.

He led off his accident report by saying he had discovered a design deficiency in the F-100, and that deficiency was the reason
he lost the
airplane. General Ewbank was almost apoplectic. He planned to court-martial Boyd for gross negligence, for performing an illegal
and dangerous maneuver that resulted in the loss of an airplane.

Boyd said he could duplicate the hydraulic failure and prove there was a design flaw. What he had learned would make the F-100
a safer aircraft. Boyd thought he should get a medal rather than a court-martial.

Spradling was hearing talk that Boyd didn’t hear. The long knives were out.

“Sprad, don’t worry,” Boyd said. “They can’t touch me. I do my homework.”

A board of inquiry was convened. If the board said the loss of the aircraft was Boyd’s fault, it would be the end of his career.

The general ordered a static test that would replicate the conditions Boyd experienced. He went to the flight line and personally
chose the F-100D that was to be tested. He thought if Boyd selected the aircraft, he would pick one with weakened seals.

Harold Burke set up the test. The F-100 was lifted on jacks and a hydraulic line attached. “We had an inert aircraft but active
hydraulics,” he said. Boyd crawled into the cockpit. Many of the FWS cadre and a group of students were on the ramp watching
the test. It was Forty-Second Boyd against the Air Force and this time the betting favored the Air Force. When Burke said
the F-100 had hydraulic pressure, Boyd wiped out the cockpit, held the stick full aft, then shoved it forward. Hydraulic fluid
gushed from the belly of the F-100 and pooled on the ramp.

Boyd had won the first round, but now the general said the maneuvers that caused the hydraulic failure were reckless and negligent.

Boyd pulled out the aircraft manual compiled by engineers at North American and showed there was nothing in the manual that
proscribed the maneuvers he had performed. Then he pulled out the Air Force Technical Orders (T/O) on the F-100. Every aircraft
in the Air Force has a T/O. This is where pilots learn what the aircraft will do and not do. There was nothing in the T/O
prohibiting the maneuvers. Nor were there squadron or wing prohibitions. Boyd won. The Air Force decided that he had, after
all, discovered a design deficiency in the F-100.

Boyd’s last ER at Nellis, dated July 22, 1960, began with “Capt.
Boyd has done an outstanding job as the Academic Supervisor for the USAF Fighter Weapons School.…” Of the “Aerial Attack Study”
his rating officer wrote, “This is the first manual of its type in existence. TAC has accepted the manual in its entirety
and will issue the manual as an accepted doctrine for all TAC F-100 equipped units.” He ended by saying, “I recommend that
he be promoted to the temporary grade of Major ahead of his contemporaries.”

The astonishing thing about this last ER is that it was indorsed by General Ewbank. The general said Boyd “enjoys an outstanding
reputation with respect to his speciality within tactical aviation circles. I consider Captain Boyd to have an exceptionally
high potential in the Air Force, and one who should go far in his career. I know him to be fully qualified for promotion and
recommend that every consideration be given to his early advancement to the next highest rank.”

It was extraordinary, especially for someone with Boyd’s reputation for impatience and outspoken nature.

Now it was time for the next step in his career, the beginning of his evolution from a warrior to a warrior-engineer. Early
in August he packed the station wagon, and he and Mary and their four children prepared for the long drive to Atlanta and
Georgia Tech. Mary was pregnant again, and early next year there would be a fifth child. Lashed to the top of the station
wagon were clothes and personal items the family would need until the household goods arrived in Atlanta. It was a hot day
and the wind off the desert was blowing hard. Spradling helped Boyd tie down the last items atop the overloaded station wagon
and made sure all was secure.

“Sprad, I’ll call you when I have that breakthrough,” Boyd said.

“Anytime, John.”

A flight of Huns took off and Boyd watched as they slipped the reins of Earth, tucked in close, and climbed for what the poet
called the “long delirious burning blue” of 30,000 feet and a game of grabass over the Green Spot. The maneuvers they used
would be maneuvers Boyd taught them. They had read his manual. There were only a few FWS-trained fighter pilots, but if war
came, they would be ready.