by Robert Coram
In March 1955, Boyd received another ER from the same major who evaluated him earlier. The report is even more damning than the first. The first page has low ratings. On the second page, the important first sentence reads, “Lt. Boyd is a loud, talkative person who thrives on debates and discussions.” The middle paragraphs speak glowingly of Boyd’s work: he is a “very successful instructor.” His ability as a pilot is “well above average.” He is “a diligent worker in motivating his students for combat.” And “He is one of the most enthusiastic persons about flying I have ever known.” But in the final paragraph, the major says Boyd would be an asset to a fighter squadron as a flight leader or assistant operations officer and that he is “… a dependable and typically effective officer.” Since Boyd had already served as a flight leader in Korea, the rating officer is saying Boyd would be good at a job he held several years earlier. And to say he is a “typically effective officer” is to say there is nothing special about him; he is not worthy to be considered for promotion—he is one of the herd.
It is a poor evaluation, delivered in a day of inflated ratings, when it was standard practice for most ERs to be fire walled. In fact, most young first lieutenants who received such a rating would seriously reconsider any plans to make a career in the Air Force.
But at the lowest point in his young career, Boyd was accepted as a student at the Fighter Weapons School (FWS) for the class beginning in April. There, he would learn to train instructors in advanced techniques of aerial combat.
The FWS was formed at Nellis in 1949. It had various names and permutations over the years, especially in the mid- and late 50s, but it remained true to its founding belief that air-to-air combat is the noblest and purest use for a fighter aircraft. The idea was to graduate the best fighter pilots in the world and to send those pilots back to their home squadrons to train their fellow pilots in the finer points of aerial combat. But the emphasis on nuclear-bomb delivery and the small number of students attending each three-month class—about a dozen—diluted the potential of the school. (For years Navy and Marine pilots attended the FWS to learn how to become gunslingers. Twenty years after the FWS was formed, the Navy copied the school and called it Top Gun. Because of the movie Top Gun, most of the public knows only of the Navy school.)
The FWS has always been the most difficult and demanding school a fighter pilot can attend. Technically, young pilots can apply; in reality they are invited. They come out of basic flying school, are assigned to a squadron, and are watched for four or five years by their superiors and by former FWS graduates. If they are the best fighter pilots in their squadrons, if they are bold and aggressive, if they preach the gospel of fighter aviation, then they might be invited to the FWS.
The FWS is more than a post–graduate school for fighter pilots. And it is more than the top finishing school in the Air Force. The FWS is the temple of fighter aviation. It is for those who believe that fighter aviation is a sacred calling. As is true in most temples of learning, not all who enter complete the course. Those who graduate and march out the front door are awarded respect and honor. Those who “bust out” find that a promising career has ended. The danger of “busting out” adds a certain frisson of trepidation when the highly prized invitation comes to join the FWS.
If the FWS is a temple and if its graduates are priests, then FWS instructors are high priests. They are grand masters of a three-dimensional, high-speed death dance, the most rapidly changing form of combat ever devised.
An FWS instructor has all the outward appearances of a mortal. But he wears the patch.
In Boyd’s day the instructors wore a large badge-shaped patch on the breast of their green flight suits, and in the center of the patch was a crosshair sitting atop a bull’s-eye. Across the top of the patch in bold letters was the title: INSTRUCTOR. In most places of higher learning, an instructor is at the bottom of the academic pecking order. But at Nellis there is no more prestigious title. An FWS instructor may go on to become a general; many have. But ask him what gave him the most pride—becoming an FWS instructor or being promoted to general—and he will not hesitate. A general wears stars. But an FWS instructor wears the patch.
FWS instructors also wore black-and-gold checkerboard scarfs tucked into the necks of their flight suits. The snouts and the vertical stabilizers of their aircraft were painted in the same checkerboard pattern. Any fighter with the black-and-gold checkerboard pattern instantly was recognized as a Nellis aircraft, and when it landed at another base everyone on the ramp paused and stared as—like a medieval knight flinging aside his cloak—the pilot raised the canopy. Inside flight ops, as the pilot filled out the paperwork, bomber pilots or transport pilots looked over and saw the patch and the black-and-gold checkerboard scarf and their manhood shriveled.
All graduates of the FWS wear the patch, but in the 1950s the graduates’ patch was smaller than that worn by instructors and was worn on the shoulder of the flight suit. And whether it is one pilot against another (BFM—basic fighter maneuvering) or two or more flying against one or more (ACM—air combat maneuvering), a patch wearer is expected to win.
In the mid-50s, many of the FWS instructors were combat veterans of Korea, men who had flown F-86s down MiG Alley. “Wombats,” the Korean vets were called. To a young student, nothing was better than earning his patch by rat-racing with a wombat.
Well, one thing was better and that was the dream buried in the heart of almost every fighter pilot who ever came to the FWS: the desire to perform so well in the classroom and in the air that six months or a year after he returned to his squadron, he would get the call asking him to return to Nellis as an instructor.
Once in a great while there came along a pilot whose knowledge of air-to-air combat was so great and whose skills were so exemplary that he did not go back to his squadron to await the call. Upon graduation he was asked to stay on as an instructor. These men were seen as the most gifted of the gifted, the ultimate fighter pilots, the pure warriors.
When Boyd graduated from the FWS, he had completed his air work—six point five hours of familiarization and orientation, eleven hours of applied tactics, twenty hours of air-to-ground missions, thirty hours of air-to-air training, and twelve point five hours of training in how to deliver nuclear bombs. On the classroom side, he had twentynine hours of instruction on ground attack, twenty hours on aerial attack, twenty-seven hours on how to set up a fighter weapons program, and twenty-four hours on how to instruct young pilots in the fine art of aerial assassination. There is no ER for Boyd’s time in the FWS, only a training report showing he completed the course. The best indication of how he performed is that upon graduation he was asked to stay on as an instructor—to become a high priest.
And it was as an instructor at the FWS that John Boyd would become a legend—the man known as “Forty-Second Boyd.”
Chapter Six
Pope John Goes Severely Supersonic
IN February 1956, Boyd published an article in the Fighter Weapons Newsletter entitled “A Proposed Plan for Ftr. Vs. Ftr. Training.” It was the first and one of the few things he ever wrote. The extraordinary thing about the piece is that it is less concerned with teaching tricks or specific maneuvers than it is with teaching pilots a new way of thinking; while it illustrates various maneuvers, it more importantly shows pilots the results of the maneuvers.
Original though it is, the article is a shore dimly seen, a tentative effort that only faintly foreshadows Boyd’s first great contribution to fighter aviation. He begins by saying the interest in the Blesse article shows that fighter squadrons are not educating their pilots in aerial combat. Delivery techniques for bullets, bombs, and rockets are standardized, but the vital element of how to place a fighter aircraft in the best position against another fighter is missing. Boyd writes that many of the tricks pilots rely on in training could get them killed in combat. He says fighter training must begin with the most fundamental skill of a fighter pilot: “Have student assume in trail position on th
e instructor and learn how to stay in that position throughout any maneuver.” A fighter pilot must know how to hang on to the enemy’s six long enough to achieve a firing solution.
Hard turns (a near-maximum performance maneuver while keeping the enemy aircraft in sight) were fundamental in air combat, but Boyd added a wrinkle that indicates his genius as an aerial tactician and hints at far more radical moves to come. Pilots had always been taught to enter a turn by moving the stick, which activated the ailerons, followed by rudder application. But Boyd told students to lead with the rudder because it both slowed the aircraft and tightened the turn. For a pilot on the defensive, beginning the turn with rudder also widened the speed differential between the two aircraft and helped force the opponent to the outside, thus gaining lateral separation. When on the defensive, a pilot’s first concern is gaining separation, a tactic that enables him to disengage, then reenter the fight on the offensive. That was not all. He told how to use various tactical combat maneuvers such as the scissors, the high-speed yo-yo, the low-speed yo-yo, the high-G barrel roll, and the vertical rolling scissors to gain the advantage on an opponent.
The effect of the article was instantaneous. The newsletter that had been a somewhat boring and boilerplate publication suddenly was a hot property among fighter pilots. They sent copies to fighter pilots around the world. They pored over Boyd’s words, moving their hands, visualizing the maneuvers, nodding as they understood what he was teaching.
What he was teaching was how to think—not just of the maneuver, but of the effect each maneuver had on airspeed, what counter-moves were available to an enemy pilot, how to anticipate those counters, and how to keep enough airspeed to counter the counter-move. Airspeed preservation enabled a pilot to maintain or to regain the offensive. It was radical, heady stuff, the first effort ever to make air combat a science rather than an art.
Boyd’s article appealed most to young fighter pilots; to those who were still green and open to new ideas; to those who wanted to stretch beyond the old way of doing things. His article did not appeal to everyone. Boots Blesse’s earlier piece was still being widely circulated, and Blesse loyalists dismissed Boyd’s article with, “Yeah? How many MiGs did he shoot down?”
The derision did not deter Boyd, but, at some level, he must have been stung by the criticism. He knew that he was on the trail of something important, and to have it dismissed simply because he was not an ace was galling. Perhaps it was in compensation that he began making outrageous statements in public.
One day Boyd was in a group of officers when someone suggested that a pilot with his knowledge of tactics should join the Thunderbirds, the Air Force flight demonstration team. Inherent in the remark was the jab that Boyd might actually not be good enough to fly with the Thunderbirds, whose pilots were considered among the best in the Air Force.
Boyd stunned the group when he said he had been invited to join but refused.
The officers stared at him in utter amazement as he waved his arms and went off on a cadenza about the Thunderbirds that was nothing short of heretical. “The Thunderbirds are like a goddamned bunch of trained monkeys. They’re fucking circus performers. They get out there over the desert and perform the same maneuvers over and over and over. That’s not flying. You could take a goddamned bunch of old ladies and train them to do the same thing. Then they go off and do an air show and strut around in their pressed uniforms like they are fucking movie stars. They are good for recruiting; I admit that. They might be the best recruiting tool the Air Force has. But what they do has nothing to do with combat flying. It’s all about appearance and not about flying an airplane. I wouldn’t have anything to do with that crowd. All they do is work the cocktail and pussy circuit.”
He was right when he said being a member of the team is all about appearance. In fact, it may be more about appearance and social graces than it is about flying skills. In truth, it is unlikely Boyd ever was invited to join the Thunderbirds.
Boyd was amused by the astonishment his comments evoked, and over the years he often repeated them. But such views did not sit well with the corporate Air Force. Even bomber pilots looked on the Thunderbirds the way a parent would look upon an exceptionally bright child who is brought out to perform for guests. The Thunderbirds were the greatest public relations tool in the Air Force. One day Boyd would pay for his comments.
But for the moment Boyd was working for superiors who were mature enough to overlook his glaring faults and to appreciate what he was doing for fighter aviation.
One ER begins: “Lt. Boyd is the most outstanding officer with whom I have been privileged to work. He is an expert in the field of fighter aircraft flying and tactics… [who] has improved upon the fundamentals of the publication ‘No Guts, No Glory’ to the extent that he is considered one of the foremost authorities on fighter tactics.” The ER is indorsed by a lieutenant colonel who says Boyd’s “zealous and enthusiastic nature sometimes causes him to force his viewpoint upon the unwilling.” But even more extraordinary is that the ER for Boyd, who still is a first lieutenant, is indorsed by a major general who says, “This young pilot has more get-up-and-go than any other 1st Lieutenant that I know.” The general ends by saying, “I recommend that consideration be given him to advance ahead of his contemporaries.”
It is one of the best ERs of Boyd’s career.
In February 1957, he was promoted to captain and a few months later ordered to Maxwell Field at Montgomery, Alabama, for the four-month Squadron Officers School, a stepping-stone school for young career officers on the way up.
After returning to Nellis, he moved from the antiquated and depressing base housing to a duplex at 11 Cassady Street in North Las Vegas. Boyd’s family was now squared away, and his career rested on a solid and expanding foundation. He was ready to hatch a revolution.
Vernon “Sprad” Spradling was an Air Force veteran with 2,000 hours of flying time and a masters degree in public administration—a short fireplug of a man with a no-nonsense demeanor who spent several years observing the nuclear tests at Yucca Flats and working in the highly classified nuclear weapons research facility at Nellis. Then he transferred to the FWS, where his job was to select and train instructors and monitor their performance in the classroom. Before an FWS instructor could stand in front of a class, he had to stand in front of Spradling and demonstrate both his knowledge and his teaching skills. Spradling made sure each lecture hewed to Air Force doctrine and covered all the salient points. And as Spradling’s mandate was to improve the quality of instruction, he constantly searched for new ideas and new information and new ways to present both. He liked what he saw in Boyd.
The FWS then consisted of three divisions. To faculty and staff the most prestigious division was Operations and Training, the core of what the FWS was about. The second division was Research and Development, which, like Operations, involved lots of flying. The third and least desirable division was Academics, where the curriculum and teaching methods were developed. If there was a dumping ground in the FWS, Academics was it.
Spradling went to Boyd and said, “John, I want you to head up the academic side; be director of Academics.”
Boyd thought for a minute, nodded, and said, “Sprad, I’ll do it. But only if you let me tweak up the tactics part of the curriculum.”
Spradling had no problem with tweaking up the tactics. In fact it fit in with his plans to upgrade the FWS. But his definition of tweak was considerably less ambitious than Boyd’s. Boyd wanted to add four more classes to the academic side of the school, and he told Sprad if the head of the FWS turned him down that he would go back to the training squadron and train pilots who were better than FWS graduates. The head of the FWS knew Boyd could do what he said. Whether he agreed with all of Boyd’s ideas about increasing the academic load or whether he did not want other pilots defeating FWS graduates, he allowed Boyd to add the additional classes to the curriculum.
Boyd moved into Spradling’s office and took a seat at a facing desk,
positions the two men would occupy for about four years. Over those years and many more, Spradling became “Mr. Fighter Weapons School,” the institutional memory, the one unchanging element in a school where officers came and went every few years. He was at Nellis twenty-two years and knew the great instructors and the great students, some of whom became heroes in Vietnam or rose to become generals. But for Vernon Spradling the memory of John Boyd burns brighter than that of anyone who passed through the school during those twenty-two years. No one knew Boyd better than he.
By now Boyd realized that his business degree from Iowa had not prepared him for what he wanted to do in the Air Force. But when a fighter pilot with a degree in aeronautical engineering happened to pass through the FWS, Boyd learned for the first time of variational calculus. Math had been easy for him in high school and in college, so he bought textbooks and taught himself calculus. Now he could take his ideas and his research about fighter tactics to a new level. He could reduce the movements of a fighter to mathematical equations of lift and drag and vectors. He could codify in absolute terms what fighter pilots had always believed was an ineffable, unquantifiable art form. Every day Boyd sat across from Spradling, drawing ribbon charts as he developed air-to-air tactics and writing arcane equations, scratching them out, and rewriting them. Spradling and Boyd might be talking and then Spradling would ask a question and get no answer. He would look up from his work to see Boyd staring at the wall, oblivious to the world, for maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. Boyd was, as he described it, “having a séance with myself.” Then it was as if a switch had been turned on: suddenly Boyd spun around in his chair and picked up the conversation, waved his arms like a windmill in a hurricane, leaned across his desk toward Spradling, voice rising until he almost was shouting, spittle flying from his mouth.