Boyd

by Robert Coram

  In addition to being known as a “good stick,” Boyd became known in his squadron for the appetite that had so impressed his fellow pilots at Columbus AFB. The Officers Club had an all-you-can-eat “steak night” once a week. Jerald Parker remembers that he and Boyd would go to the club together, order a steak, and begin eating. Parker would take only a few bites when Boyd would jump up and go for his second, usually bigger, steak. By now Boyd also was becoming known as a talker, and about the only thing he talked about was airto-air combat. He had a one-track mind. He talked as fast as he ate, and he could do both at the same time. Sometimes food and spittle flew from his mouth as he talked. Other officers spoke of Boyd’s table manners with dismay, even disgust. His behavior was most unbecoming for an officer and a gentleman. Few other pilots wanted to sit near Boyd at the dining table. He leaned close when he talked to them. And if he thought they did not understand, he would reach out with a long finger, poke them in the chest, and demand, “Do you get what I am telling you?”

  He talked so much and so often and so loudly about tactics that on November 25 he was made a flight commander and tactics instructor for the squadron. (The Air Force later changed the “tactics instructor” title to “weapons officer.”) At this point, what Boyd was teaching was a refinement and an extension of existing tactics. He was simply a great stick with no reluctance to push the outside limits of the performance envelope.

  Pilots were intrigued both by Boyd’s aircraft handling skills and by his ideas. They asked him to write his tactics down and prepare diagrams of various tactical maneuvers. He eagerly accepted the task and began making notes, putting briefings together, and studying tactics of previous wars. He stayed up during the long cold Korean nights writing lesson plans. Soon he was holding classes.

  Even Boyd’s fellow F-86 pilots, all of whom were avid and passionate about flying jets, were struck by his enthusiasm and energy. More than one said they had never seen a man before or since who was so single-minded about aviation. He did not see the F-86 as an engine and fuselage and an inanimate collection of esoteric parts; he saw it as a sleek and beautiful and lethal weapon of war, almost a living thing, each aircraft having its own personality, each to be ridden into the heavens in the name of the United States of America.

  When Boyd talked of aerial tactics, he grimaced and waved his arms, paced the room, wiggled his shoulders, and snapped his head back and forth. His voice was loud and nonstop. Nervous energy steamed from him. If a person asked him a question, and if Boyd thought the person truly sought knowledge, Boyd would tell him everything he wanted to know about aerial tactics. But he expected those who disagreed to come around to his viewpoint—and quickly. If someone belittled his ideas, they were instantly and forever dismissed from his life. They ceased to exist. He never spoke to them again.

  Boyd’s ideas about tactics were germinating and sprouting at a time when all the world was agog at America’s extraordinary superiority and domination of the skies over MiG Alley. At the end of the war, the MiG was on the losing end of a kill ratio that had been as high as fourteen to one and finally settled at ten to one. The official count for the war was 792 MiGs shot down and 78 F-86s shot down. (Such numbers remain suspect in some quarters. True wins and losses are almost never revealed, even after a war is over. But the ten to one kill ratio remains the number published in histories of Korea.) The extraordinarily lopsided kill ratio, while it made Air Force generals puff out their chests and boast, caused great confusion among serious thinkers in the Air Force. The MiG should have done much better against the F-86. In many ways it was a far superior aircraft. It could make harder turns than the F-86, could out-accelerate it, and had better high-altitude performance. The MiG was one hell of an airplane. So what happened?

  The confusion was put to rest with a rationale that since has become conventional wisdom. Even today, a half-century later, when people talk of how the F-86s defeated the MiGs, they give as the reason, “Our pilots were better trained than the MiG pilots.” And that is true. But it is also true that this logic became an intellectual wastebasket to hide the fact that no one could come up with a better reason.

  But Boyd studied the detailed records of each air-to-air engagement and knew there had to be another reason. It took him another decade to figure out what it was. And when he did, it changed aviation forever.

  Boyd’s brief tour in Korea is put in perspective by what then was called an Officer Efficiency Report—an “OER” or, as it sometimes was shortened, “ER.” In the Air Force of the 1950s, an officer’s promotions—and thus his career—were dependent almost entirely on his ERs. One bad ER could wreck an officer’s career.

  An ER was two pages, three if there were additional indorsements. (The Air Force uses “indorsement” rather than “endorsement.”) A civilian looking at an ER would say it is straightforward in its language. But this is deceptive, even misleading. Writing an ER is an art form—reading it, for the uninitiated, is like trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls. Language that appears to be the highest praise can in reality be language that ends a career. That is why sometimes even today when an officer is forced out of the military, he waves his ERs to the media, and, not knowing how to read them, the media join the cause and say this extraordinary officer has been treated unjustly.

  The most crucial parts of an ER were the first and last paragraphs on the second page. Boyd’s squadron commander explained how, after hostilities ended, Boyd “did a commendable job in teaching fighter tactics to the members of his flight.” It says he also taught newly assigned pilots techniques of combat flying.

  “I consider Lt. Boyd’s flying ability superior to the pilots of his rank and experience,” the reviewing officer wrote. He added a few lines about Boyd’s “nervous energy” and how well he got along with fellow officers. Then came the all-important final paragraph, in which the rating officer evaluated Boyd’s ability for higher command and greater responsibilities. The best possible rating would recommend Boyd either for early promotion or for a school that would prepare him for higher command. Such was the case: the final paragraph concluded with a recommendation that Boyd “be considered for enrollment in the Squadron Officers Course.”

  It was a good evaluation, and it was heightened by an even better indorsement from his group commander, a full colonel who wrote: “Lt. Boyd is an aggressive, capable, dynamic, fearless officer and fighter pilot. The USAF needs more combat pilots of his caliber if we expect to fulfill the responsibility for the defense of our nation for which the Air Force is unquestionably destined. Because of his qualifications and experience, I urge Lt. Boyd’s promotion to Captain at the earliest possible date.” Boyd clearly had made a good impression on his superiors.

  Boyd’s combat tour ended and it was time to rotate back to the States. Years later the pilots who roamed MiG Alley would look back and say Korea was a good war, even a great war for fighter pilots—the last war in which pilots were managed by leaders. In the next war they would be led by managers.

  The Air Force was only seven years old, but it was fast becoming not only a bureaucracy, but a technocracy that worshiped equipment and gadgets more than any other branch of the military. It was becoming hardware oriented and the goals for its hardware were simple:

  Bigger-Faster-Higher-Farther. Air Force generals were taking a cold look at fighter pilots. The high speed of jet combat caused generals to believe drastic changes were in order. With the merge speed of fighter aircraft greater than 1,000 mph, guns were a thing of the past, they said. Missiles were the answer.

  Boyd received orders posting him to Nellis AFB. He would be there six years. And in that time he would become the most famous fighter pilot in the world.

  Chapter Five

  High Priest

  IN the mid-1950s the U.S. Air Force was no place for a fighter pilot.

  Men who flew bombers in World War II now were leading the Air Force, and their philosophy of air power was based on their wartime experience: big, multiengine air
craft plunging deeply into enemy territory and dropping bombs. The very existence of the Air Force as a separate and independent branch of the military was founded on the concept of strategic bombing. Bombers were the favorite—some would say only—aircraft of consequence in the 1950s. America’s national defense was based on the Eisenhower Doctrine of “massive retaliation,” of having enough aircraft and nuclear bombs to act as a deterrent to any foreign power. Only big bombers could carry nuclear weapons to any spot on the globe. Americans built bomb shelters, thousands of them, and every schoolchild practiced what to do if America were attacked by Soviet nuclear weapons. A “limited war” such as Korea was considered an aberration, not a sign of things to come. Now there could be only escalation between superpowers. Escalation meant nuclear and nuclear meant the U.S. Air Force. No other branch of the U.S. military had such a solemn responsibility.

  In 1954 the Air Force was seven-years old, and like most seven year-olds it was rambunctious, determined to be heard, and always demanding new toys. The Air Force was procurement-driven. In 1954 the biggest slice of the Pentagon budget—$12 billion—went to the Air Force. (The Army received $9.9 billion and the Navy $8.1 billion. The Air Force continued to receive the largest amount of the Pentagon budget through 1961.) Within the Air Force, most of the money went to the Strategic Air Command. SAC was led by General Curtis LeMay. And if anyone wanted to know what God would look like in a flight suit, let them gaze upon General LeMay. “Flying fighters is fun. Flying bombers is important,” he said.

  LeMay forged the U.S. Air Force into the most powerful military force in history. He had enormous globe-straddling bombers and he had nuclear bombs and he had the will to use both. If his public comments meant anything, he wanted to use both. At any given time, many of his SAC crews were airborne, loaded with nuclear weapons, flying along the edges of Soviet airspace, awaiting a coded command to wheel toward the heart of the Soviet Union. Other SAC crews were on alert, living in bunkers only yards from their loaded aircraft, ready to run across the tarmac, take off, and bomb preselected targets on the other side of the world. A SAC bomber such as the B-47 could fly so high and so fast that no F-86 could reach it. If an F-86 couldn’t touch it, the Soviets couldn’t touch it because everyone knew that America built the best aircraft in the world.

  And because SAC officers had such great responsibilities, they were promoted faster than anyone else in the Air Force. They were responsible for America’s safety. And by keeping America safe, they were keeping the free world safe. SAC crews were the chosen few, the anointed ones.

  “Peace is Our Profession” was the SAC motto as it prepared for Armageddon.

  Thus, during the 1950s the primary mission of fighter aviation became intercepting enemy bombers and delivering tactical nuclear weapons. Fighter aircraft in Europe were cocked and locked—sitting on runways, pilots strapped in the cockpits, with small nuclear bombs bolted to the belly. If war broke out, the job of fighters was to take out targets too small for a B-47 crew to worry about.

  Fighter pilots spent most of their time training for the air-to-ground (pilots called it “air-to-mud”) mission. Over and over they practiced thirty-degree and forty-five-degree dive-bombing, skip bombing, and strafing. SAC generals believed the best use of fighter aviation was as a mini-SAC. Fighter pilots who talked of dogfights were relics of bygone days. The first air-to-air missiles were in the pipeline and there were whisperings that these missiles could be fired from ten miles away. Missiles could blow up an enemy aircraft before the enemy pilot even saw the American fighter. The next generation of fighters, it was argued, would not have guns. The day of airborne gunslingers was over.

  But there remained one place where the flame of fighter aviation was kept alive, one spot in America where the fighter pilot still reigned supreme, one remote and almost forgotten place where the spirit of attack was implanted in brave hearts. It was, literally and figuratively, out in the desert.

  Nellis.

  Nellis was in one of the least-populated and most remote parts of America, almost as if exiled there by the bomber generals. The air was parched, the wind relentless, and the heat unbearable. Harsh desert and bleak mountains almost surrounded the base, and here and there were the spavined remains of abandoned mining towns. In the Air Force pecking order of the 1950s, Nellis was at the bottom of the list. An officer assigned to Nellis knew his chance for promotion was limited. But to a small group of men, none of this mattered. Nellis was the home of the fighter pilot. And all fighter pilots wanted to do was to strap on a single-engine jet and go romping across the heavens.

  The Atomic Energy Commission began using Frenchman’s Flat, part of the Nellis bombing range, to detonate nuclear weapons. (The explosions always were announced in advance and one of the most popular pastimes in nearby Las Vegas was watching the mushroom clouds climb high into the clear desert air.) It was not unheard of for a fighter pilot to zoom skyward after dropping his bombs, see a nuclear blast downrange, get on the radio, and say, “Look what I did,” before going sky-dancing across the desert. Words such as Tonopah and Sunrise Mountain and Indian Springs and Texas Lake and the Green Spot began to creep into the fighter-pilot lexicon, dropped like markers to let the listener know the speaker had been to Nellis.

  Nellis.

  To a fighter pilot the very word was magic.

  Much of the land in southern Nevada was owned by the government, and the year-round good weather meant southern Nevada was perfect for dogfighting. In addition to government-owned land, Nellis had rights to the airspace over almost one million acres called the Nellis Range. Airspace was not as controlled then as it is today, and if Nellis pilots wandered off the Range, it did not matter too much. Summer temperatures on the Range regularly reached 110 or 120, sometimes even 130 degrees. To this blast furnace the best young pilots in the Air Force were sent to have their imperfections burned away and to be hammered into the pure gold that was a fighter pilot.

  To a fighter pilot, no other place had the mystique of this distant and lonely outpost. There was Nellis and there was the rest of the world. SAC’s bomber pilots might be the glamour boys. But to a fighter pilot, flying a B-47 or a B-52 was the aviation equivalent of being a bus driver. Bomber pilots were cautious, methodical team players who climbed high, motored along for half a day, dropped their bombs—often without seeing the target—and came home. The man who drove this aluminum overcast was not even called a pilot; he was the aircraft commander. And he had a copilot, engineer, navigator, and bombardier—a crew to do all the things a fighter pilot did by himself. SAC pilots were “bomber pukes.”

  Then there were the test pilots over at Edwards AFB in California. The media loved these guys. But fighter pilots snorted in derision at every newspaper article. Sure, test pilots flew hot new experimental airplanes, but they also had little clipboards strapped to their knees and on the clipboards were the altitudes and airspeeds they were to fly and the instructions for every maneuver to be performed and little boxes into which they put check marks when the maneuvers were completed. Test pilots were marionettes whose strings were pulled by controllers on the ground, “golden arms” who could display little initiative and who could never cut loose and bank and yank and turn and burn and fling themselves around the sky the way fighter pilots did. Pilots at Edwards went to their little bar up in the high desert and boasted about pushing the outside of the envelope. But it was big talk about a small envelope. In the mid-50s, most of the test pilots started out as fighter pilots, but they were fighter pilots gone astray. More and more of the test pilots were engineers who were conservative, anal, by-the-book types, not hell-raising warriors.

  Test pilots were evaluators. Fighter pilots were applicators.

  Test pilots were pessimists who tried to find something wrong with an airplane. Fighter pilots were optimists who looked for something great in an airplane.

  Test pilots were detached from the airplane they flew. Fighter pilots fell in love with their airplane.

&nb
sp; Test pilots talked of going into space.

  Space?

  And in a capsule?

  You don’t fly a fucking capsule, you sit in it and watch the instruments. You’re a passenger. To hell with space. Fighter pilots wanted to get on an enemy’s six and hose the sonofabitch.

  Fighter pilots held the golden arms in almost as much contempt as they did SAC pilots. Test pilots were “Edwards pukes.”

  Bomber pukes and Edwards pukes ranked only slightly above people who did not fly, the nonrated bureaucrats known as “staff pukes.”

  The motto at Nellis was “Every Man a Tiger” and to be called a tiger by a senior fighter pilot was the ultimate accolade. Confident and intelligent men would damn near pop the rivets out of their aircraft during air-to-air combat training just to have one of the Nellis cadre nod approvingly and call them “Tiger.” To be called a tiger meant you had stainless-steel testicles that dragged the ground and struck sparks when you walked. To be called a tiger meant you were a pure fighter pilot and that you would not hesitate to tell a bird colonel to get fucked.

  Air-to-air training was mostly shooting at a towed target called a DART. But there was always time for a tail chase. Young fighter pilots not only pushed the outside edge of the envelope, they broke through it and operated in the pulsing red danger zone beyond. Pilots scorched across the desert so low they ripped the tops out of Joshua trees and then dropped ever lower and kicked up plumes of sand and came back to base with cactus wedged in the wing roots. They flew about ninety miles north of Nellis and met over a little oasis of grass and cottonwood trees they called the “Green Spot,” the only green for a hundred miles in any direction and easily identified from the air. One of the first brothels in Nevada was located at the Green Spot, and oftentimes the employees sunbathed nude.