Boyd (2 page)

Boyd was more than a great stick-and-rudder man. He was that rarest of creatures—a
thinking
fighter pilot. Anyone familiar with the Air Force can tell you two things with confidence: one, fighter pilots are known
for testosterone, not gray matter, and two, military doctrine is dictated by people with stars on their shoulders. But in
1959, when he was just a young captain, John Boyd became the first man to codify the elusive and mysterious ways of air-to-air
combat. He developed and wrote the “Aerial Attack Study,” a document that became official Air Force doctrine, the bible of
air combat—first in America, and then, when it was declassified, for air forces around the world. Put another way, while still
a junior officer, John Boyd changed the way every air force in the world flies and fights.

But creating a new standard for air-to-air combat was only the beginning of Boyd’s intellectual contributions to the Air Force.
Pierre
Sprey told how in 1961 the Air Force sent Boyd back to college for another degree. Boyd chose the Georgia Institute of Technology,
one of the tougher state engineering schools in America. Late one night, while studying for an exam in thermodynamics, Boyd
went off on a riff about being a fighter pilot in Korea and what it was like to fly an F-86 down MiG Alley. Suddenly what
he had learned in thermodynamics meshed with all that he had learned as a fighter pilot and Boyd had the epiphany that became
his Energy-Maneuverability (E-M) Theory.

Tom Christie smiled and nodded as he remembered. He was the man who steadied the soapbox for the rambunctious and confrontational
Boyd in those tumultuous years of presenting the E-M Theory to the Air Force, the years when Boyd became known as the “Mad
Major.” After E-M, nothing was ever the same in aviation. E-M was as clear a line of demarcation between the old and the new
as was the shift from the Copernican world to the Newtonian world. Knowledge gained from E-M made the F-15 and F-16 the finest
aircraft of their type in the world. Boyd is acknowledged as the father of those two aircraft.

Either the “Aerial Attack Study” or the E-M Theory would have given Boyd a lasting place in aviation history. But his greatest
and most enduring accomplishments still lay ahead. After he retired from the Air Force in 1975, Boyd became the founder, leader,
and spiritual center of the Military Reform Movement—a guerrilla movement that affected the monolithic and seemingly omnipotent
Pentagon as few things in history have done. For a few years he was one of the most powerful men in Washington.

Then he went into a self-imposed exile and immersed himself in a daunting study of philosophy, the theory of science, military
history, psychology, and a dozen other seemingly unrelated disciplines. He had evolved from being a warrior to a warrior-engineer,
and now he was about to move into the rarefied atmosphere of the pure intellectual. He synthesized all that he studied into
all that he knew about aerial combat, expanded it to include all forms of conflict, and gave birth to a dazzling briefing
titled “Patterns of Conflict.”

When Sprey reached this part of his eulogy, he paused and his eyes roamed the chapel and found Christie and Spinney and two
other men: Ray Leopold and James Burton. These were Boyd’s Acolytes,
his most dedicated followers. Their years with Boyd were the pivotal, years of their lives. They followed Boyd into dozens
of bloody bureaucratic battles and their careers were forever changed, some say ruined, by the experience. These men believe
that Boyd’s final work made him the most influential military thinker since Sun Tzu wrote
The Art of War
2,400 years ago. For, like an Old Testament prophet purified by wandering in the desert, Boyd’s exile ended with a vision
so amazing and so profound that it convinced both the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps to change their basic doctrines
on war fighting. As bizarre and unbelievable as it sounds, an old fighter pilot taught ground troops how to fight a war. The
results of what he taught were manifested in the crucible of the Gulf War. Everything about the startling speed and decisive
victory of that conflict can be attributed not to the media heroes, not to strutting and bombastic generals, but to a lonely
old man in south Florida who thought he had been forgotten.

Boyd was one of the most important unknown men of his time. He did what so few men are privileged to do: he changed the world.
But much of what he did, or the impact of what he did, was either highly classified or of primary concern to the military.
The only things he ever published were a few articles in specialized Air Force magazines and an eleven-page study. His most
important work was a six-hour briefing. Thus, there is almost nothing for academics to pore over and expound upon. That is
why today both Boyd and his work remain largely unknown outside the military.

The Acolytes work to change that. They work to keep Boyd’s memory alive and to move his ideas into the mainstream of American
thought. Each Wednesday evening, as they have done for almost thirty years, they meet in the Officers Club at Fort Myer. The
basement room where they convene is called, fittingly enough, the Old Guard Room. They talk of Boyd and they replay the old
battles and they laugh about the “cape jobs” and “hot platters” and “tube steaks” he engineered. But the conversation often
lingers on Boyd’s character and integrity. Not that he was an exemplar of all things good and noble. Far from it. Like many
fighter pilots, he took a certain pride in his profanity and coarseness and crude sense of humor. He cared little for his
personal appearance and could be demanding, abrasive, and unreasonable. And while in his professional life Boyd accomplished
things that can never be duplicated, in his personal life he did things few would want to duplicate.

Boyd’s Acolytes minimize his faults. They say it is more important that his core beliefs were steel-wrapped and his moral
compass was locked on true North, that he never misspent his gifts. His motivation was simple: to get as close as possible
to the truth. He would have been the first to admit there is no absolute truth. But he continued chasing something that was
always receding from his grasp. And in the pursuit he came far closer to the unattainable than do most men.

Boyd never achieved the one thing he wanted most. He died thinking the people in his hometown never knew of his contributions
to national defense. He died thinking he would be remembered, if at all, as a crackpot and a failure, as a man who never made
general, and a man whose ideas were not understood and whose accomplishments were not important.

All his life Boyd was pursued by enemies real and imagined. He reacted the only way he knew how: by attacking. The rank or
position of his enemy, the size or significance of the institution, none of it mattered. He attacked. And when Boyd attacked,
he gave no quarter. Time after time he outmaneuvered his foes and sent them down to ignominious defeat.

The men around Boyd, those who knew him longest and best, say he stood fast against the blandishments of big money. He was
a profane puritan who held himself and others to the highest standards. He lived in a world of black and white, of right and
wrong, of good and evil. He never broke the faith and would not tolerate those who did. He was an incorruptible man in a place
where so many were corrupt. He was a pure man at a time when pure men were needed but so few answered the call.

All this and more the friends of John Boyd remembered that dreary day in the chapel at Arlington National Cemetery. Then it
was over and they slowly walked out of the chapel and huddled in small groups against the rain and mist. They were angry at
the Air Force. More should have been done to honor the man who had given so much.

If the U.S. Air Force was conspicuous by its absence, the U.S. Marines were conspicuous by their presence. In fact, had anyone
passed by who knew military culture but did not know John Boyd,
they would have been bewildered to see so many Marines at the memorial service of an Air Force pilot. Particularly noticeable
was a group of young lieutenants—rigid, close-cropped, and hard young men from the Basic School at Marine Base Quantico. These
were warriors-in-training. From their ranks would come the future leadership of the Marine Corps. Then there was a senior
marine colonel who wore the ribbons and decorations of a man who had seen combat in many places. His presence awed the young
lieutenants and they kept their eyes on him.

The colonel’s command presence made him stand out—that and the fact he marched alone as the crowd walked down a rain-glistening
road between endless rows of tombstones. The damp air muffled the rhythmic clacking of the horses’ hooves and the sharp snap
of metal taps on the gleaming shoes of the honor guard.

On a green and windswept slope, the cortege halted. The grass was wet and the air was clean and sweet. The crowd gathered
at Section Sixty, grave site number 3,660. The Marine colonel took from his pocket a Marine Corps insignia, the eagle globe
and anchor. He marched out of the crowd, kneeled, and placed the insignia near the urn containing Boyd’s ashes. Someone took
a picture. In that frozen moment the light of the flash sparkled on the eagle globe and anchor, causing it to stand out sharply
against the bronze urn and green grass. The black insignia drew every eye. As one, and without a command to do so, the young
lieutenants snapped to attention. Placing the symbol of the U.S. Marine Corps on a grave is the highest honor a Marine can
bestow. It is rarely seen, even at the funeral of decorated combat Marines, and it may have been the first time in history
an Air Force pilot received the honor. This simple act is an expression of love—love of the deceased, love of the Truth, love
of country, and love of the Corps, all wrapped up together. It signified that a warrior spirit had departed the flight pattern.

A seven-man rifle squad fired three volleys and a lone bugler played the ever-melancholy “Taps.” The service was over. Some
of those at the funeral turned and walked away. But the young Marine officers remained at attention, a last, lingering sign
of respect. Like the Marines, Boyd’s friends were reluctant to say good-bye. They tarried in the mist and talked. High overhead
they could hear a flight of F-15s prowling around and looking for a way to let down through
the clouds and make a flyby over Boyd’s grave. But it would not happen; the clouds were too thick. Boyd’s friends huddled
their shoulders against the rain. Around them, in one of America’s most majestic and solemn places, were the graves of thousands
who fought and died for their beliefs. It was the proper resting place for the mortal remains of John Boyd. But somehow, some
way, his grave should have been set apart from the others. For while America likes to believe that it often produces men like
John Boyd, the truth is that men who embody a warrior spirit combined with sweeping and lasting intellectual achievement are
rare not only in America, but in any country. They seldom pass among us. And they do so only when there is a great need.

E
RIE
, Pennsylvania, is a hard town, a blue-collar town, a grubby and decrepit town that has more in common with its fellow Great
Lakes rust-belt towns of Buffalo and Cleveland than it has with Pennsylvania cities. Perched high in the northwestern corner
of Pennsylvania, with its face toward the lake and its back toward the rest of the state, Erie is the only port town in Pennsylvania.
Even people in other parts of the state often are surprised to learn that until the last year or so it was their third largest
municipality, after the elegant and history-wrapped city of Philadelphia and the brawny sophistication of Pittsburgh. The
town of about one hundred thousand just doesn’t seem that big—not so much because it is remote, which it is, but because it
is so
narrow,
so
provincial
.

The one natural feature in Erie worthy of note is the glorious Presque Isle Peninsula, which juts seven miles into the lake
and forms a bay that in the summer is ideal for boating and in the winter for ice sailing. “The Peninsula,” as it is called,
offers not only eleven beaches but an untrammeled spot of wilderness, a glorious combination of wetlands and walking trails
that draws people by the thousands. It is a unique natural bounty.

But Erie also is suited for being an industrial port, an opening onto the Great Lakes. And almost from its beginning the town
has been caught between the polarities of wanting to be a tourist destination and wanting to be an industrial port. The desire
to be an industrial city has prevailed to the degree that contamination from local industries may never be removed from the
muck at the bottom of the lake.

Erie long has searched for that which made it unique—for events or people in its history worth boasting about to the outside
world. Such events and such people have been few and, when viewed from other parts of America, may seem curious. For example,
it is a matter of considerable local pride that in the Battle of Lake Erie, an engagement during the War of 1812, Commodore
Oliver Hazard Perry sailed aboard a ship built in Erie. Then there was Erie’s Colonel Strong Vincent, who stood in the midst
of battle at Gettysburg and exhorted his troops with a riding crop—an act that resulted in his being killed by a Confederate
sniper. While most historians agree that Colonel Joshua Chamberlain was the Union hero at Gettysburg, people in Erie say Strong
Vincent saved the day. And there was the train that carried the body of President Abraham Lincoln from Washington back home
to Illinois, a train that passed through Erie.

In the 1920s, Hubert and Elsie Boyd, along with three children—two boys and a girl—lived in a brown, two-story, frame house
at 514 Lincoln Avenue on the west side of Erie, only a block from the bay. This was one of the most prestigious parts of Erie,
and Lincoln Avenue itself was the sort of street parents longed for: a street of well-maintained homes, a safe street, a street
famous for its umbrageous maples and spreading oaks. The homes, most with front porches, breasted against the sidewalk in
a neat row. The street ended a long block away at a steep bluff overlooking the bay. Beyond the bay was the Peninsula and
beyond the Peninsula was Lake Erie and beyond Lake Erie was the vast horizon and Canada.