Boyd

by Robert Coram

  The only counter to the maneuver Boyd used was to do the same thing in the opposite direction. But it had to be done intuitively, instantly, with not a split second of hesitation. And it had to be done as violently as Boyd did it. Even when pilots knew what Boyd was going to do, the reputation of the F-100 prevented them from following through. No one would manhandle the Hun the way Boyd did.

  No doubt exists that Boyd beat every young pilot who came to the FWS. This is not as surprising as it might sound, even if the students were the best young pilots in the Air Force. They might be good in their squadrons, but they had little training in air-to-air combat. Even if they had, no one pushed the outside of the envelope like instructors at the FWS. Boyd should have beaten the students. But the legend of John Boyd has it that he also defeated cadre pilots, Navy pilots, Marine pilots, and—beginning in the late 1950s—the foreign-exchange pilots who came through Nellis. He took on all challengers.

  Nothing in Boyd’s long and tumultuous career causes such a violent reaction among old fighter pilots as hearing about the invincible Forty-Second Boyd. It sets their teeth on edge. They say all this business about being the best is a boy’s game and that there is no “world’s greatest fighter pilot”—that even the very best pilot can have a bad day. They quote the adage, “There never was a horse that couldn’t be rode and there never was a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed.” But if they went through Nellis in the mid- and late 50s, they knew there was someone better. And it still rankles.

  Then, too, most fighter pilots operate at the existing skill level. They never improve the state of their art and they never add anything to their profession. Boyd did both. And that rankles even more.

  Some fighter pilots from Boyd’s day now say Boyd was a one-trick pony, that he had that stupid endgame desperation move, a move that would have gotten him killed in combat. Some say he was easy to beat because he was predictable. But none can come up with the name of a pilot who beat Boyd.

  Boyd’s standing offer struck fighter pilots at the very core. He was rubbing their noses in his superior ability. The offer was a personal affront to every man who considered himself a fighter pilot. No one could be as good as Boyd was supposed to be. Fighter pilots ached to see him beaten. Word would have swept through the Air Force in days about the pilot who defeated Forty-Second Boyd. Details of the engagement, every turn, every maneuver, the final closure, the triumphant “Guns! Guns! Guns!” would have been played and replayed wherever fighter pilots gathered. The pilot who defeated John Boyd would have been remembered.

  The only man who ever came close was Hal Vincent, a Marine Corps pilot who fought Boyd to a dead heat. Vincent was so impressed with Boyd that he applied for and was accepted as a student at the FWS—the first Marine ever to attend. And as is the way of Marines, he was the top graduate in his class.

  Boyd fought countless air battles in the mid- and late 50s. He was never defeated. He was the champ, the title holder. Pope John, some called him. Others said he was the best fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force. And they were right.

  Chapter Seven

  Rat-Racing

  DURING the civil rights days of the mid-50s, Nevada was known as the Mississippi of the West. Restaurants and hotels and casinos displayed signs that said, NO COLORED TRADE SOLICITED. Nevada congressmen were afraid the federal government might interfere with the burgeoning gambling industry, and they defended states’ rights as ardently as did the congressmen of any southern state.

  Black people in Las Vegas lived on the west side of town, and it was on the west side that the first major interracial hotel / casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened in 1954. It closed only six months later and ended integrated entertainment in Las Vegas until early in 1960. Sammy Davis Jr. performed at the Moulin Rouge. He and other black entertainers such as Pearl Bailey, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, and Eartha Kitt also performed at the famous hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, but they could not stay in those hotels, nor could they eat in the restaurants. They stayed on the west side at the Apache Hotel or in rooming houses.

  In early 1960 the Las Vegas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) told the mayor of Las Vegas that southern-style marches would begin unless the Strip was desegregated within thirty days. Mafia dons who then owned and operated many of the Las Vegas casinos thought black people were after a piece of the action. Dr. James McMillan was a dentist and leader of the Las Vegas civil rights movement. He recalled that a casino owner called the NAACP and passed along the word from Mafia leaders. The word, as it usually was when it came from Mafia leaders, was blunt: back off or you’ll be found floating facedown in Lake Mead.

  Dr. McMillan replied that he was not trying to cut into the casino business. All he wanted was to make Las Vegas more cosmopolitan. Opening casinos and restaurants to blacks, a new market, would make more money for the casino owners. Desegregation would be good for business.

  This the Mafia understood. A few days later the casino owner called Dr. McMillan again. “It’s okay. They’re going to integrate this town.”

  The national media picked up the story. Las Vegas would no longer discriminate in public accommodations. Black people could stay at Strip hotels and eat at restaurants there. A formal agreement desegregating all hotel / casinos on the Strip was signed in March 1960, and that is the date usually accepted for the desegregation of hotels and restaurants in Las Vegas.

  But three years earlier, John Boyd forced the desegregation of Las Vegas.

  It happened this way.

  Boyd was becoming more and more interested in math and aerial tactics. He did not want his staff contaminated by the raucous Friday afternoons on base, especially at the Stag Bar behind the Officers Club, so he and Sprad began inviting their staffs to a Friday brunch at the Sahara Hotel. Boyd always was first in line at the enormous buffet for which Las Vegas hotels remain famous. After shoveling the food down, he shoved his chair away from the table, reached into his breast pocket for a Dutch Master, ripped away the cellophane, bit off the end, and struck a match. After a few deep puffs he smiled upon his staff, most of whom barely had begun their meals, and began to expound upon his ideas about the nature of aerial combat and how, if the bomber generals didn’t destroy him, he was going to change fighter aviation.

  Two hours was the maximum time Boyd allowed for these brunches. His name for the government was “Uncle,” as in “Uncle Sam,” and he believed that he owed Uncle a solid day’s work. It might be Friday afternoon and fighter pilots might be gathering at the Stag Bar, but the pilots who worked for Boyd would return to the office and stay there until 4:30 P.M.

  One day in 1957 a new instructor came to the FWS: First Lieutenant Oscar T. Brooks. He was black.

  The next Friday rolled around and by midmorning Boyd’s staff was preparing to leave for the drive down Las Vegas Boulevard to the Sahara. Spradling pulled Boyd aside, nodded toward Lieutenant Brooks, who was standing across the room, and said, “John, is this a good idea?”

  “Is what a good idea?”

  “Taking Oscar to the Sahara. They will throw us out if Oscar goes. He’s going to be embarrassed.”

  Boyd turned to Spradling and his voice was low and urgent and intense. “Sprad, goddammit, he’s going. We’re going down there as a group and if they kick us out they’ll have to kick out the whole base. They’ll have to kick out the fucking U.S. Air Force.”

  “But, John, I was just—”

  “Sprad, if they object to Oscar, they have to object to all of us. The Air Force is integrated. We have been for years. We don’t have a problem. It’s their goddamn problem.”

  A fighter pilot is a fighter pilot is a fighter pilot. If a man can drive a Hun it doesn’t matter what color he is.

  Go as a group they did.

  Spradling was nervous. He was in civilian clothes but Boyd and the six other pilots wore Class A summer uniforms and were conspicuous in the crowd of about one hundred diners in the large dining room. Spradling wondere
d if the waiters would refuse to serve them or if the manager would ask them to leave. He wondered how Lieutenant Brooks would react. He wondered most of all how Boyd would react.

  The group walked through the buffet line and took their plates to the table. Waiters came with drinks. A manager hovered nearby. But if anyone thought of asking the group to leave, one look at Boyd’s glowering face was enough to give them pause. Boyd had on his hard look, the one he had learned from his mother. It was a stern and foreboding visage that brooked no disagreement. He was daring anyone in the hotel to make any sort of scene. He was anxious for battle.

  Nothing happened. Everyone was served quickly and courteously and the manager hovered nearby to make sure everything went smoothly.

  Boyd and his fighter pilots desegregated Las Vegas that Friday in 1957. It was not a one-time event. They went back almost every Friday until Boyd was transferred in the summer of 1960.

  By then the city of Las Vegas had followed their lead.

  Boyd became an Air Force legend not only for his flying, but for his abilities as a teacher. A typical day in the classroom went something like this:

  At about 8:00 A.M., Captain John Boyd strode briskly into a classroom in the old World War II frame building that served as the Academic Section of the FWS. He stepped up on the platform, walked to the lectern, and picked up two F-100 models mounted on dowels. Then he turned to the ten or twelve young men sitting in straight-backed wooden chairs and said, “Good morning, gentlemen.”

  “Good morning, Sir,” they echoed.

  They took the measure of the man they had heard about for so long. He was tall for a fighter pilot and had dark hair, an angular face, and the nose of a raptor. He was rangy and his carriage was loose, more like that of an athlete than a military officer. His uniform was neat and the creases down each side of his shirt lined up with the sharp creases in his trousers. He thrummed with nervous energy as he stood there with the F-100 models in his hand.

  Boyd studied the class. The students came from Air Force bases around the world, from Itazuke, Japan, and Clovis, New Mexico; from Kadena on Okinawa and Bitburg in Germany; from Wethersfield, England, and George, California. They were from different backgrounds. Many were on the short side. Most were bachelors in their mid- or late 20s. Each was the best fighter pilot in his home squadron and each believed he was the best fighter pilot in the class. And each ached to meet Forty-Second Boyd over the Green Spot.

  Boyd knew each was thinking the same thing: This guy is getting a bit of age on him. His eyes are not as good as they once were. He can’t pull heavy Gs the way I can. When I get him over the Green Spot, I’ll pull enough Gs to roll his eyes back in his head and then I’ll hose him. Maybe ten seconds. Easy.

  Boyd smiled. They would have their chance. But before they flew against him, they had to listen to him. The platform from which he spoke was a foot high and stretched from wall to wall across the front of the classroom. He roamed this stage like a caged animal and began teaching a subject he knew better than any man in the Air Force: how to fly a fighter plane in combat. In the beginning his voice was soft and compelling, almost as if he were sharing a secret. He stepped forward and prowled the classroom and returned to the platform. He stopped at the edge, leaning toward the students, the tips of his shoes bending as his toes curled downward like a diver on the edge of a swimming pool. Then he backed up, spun around, and began writing equations on the blackboard—long, complicated equations about lift and drag and vectors, math far over the head of most fighter pilots. They didn’t care about math. Who the hell could remember this stuff when they were at 25,000 feet in a high-G turn and trying to roll out on a point? All they wanted was to get on Boyd’s six and hose him.

  Boyd wrote with one hand and erased with the other, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to demand, “Do you get what I’m telling you?”

  “Yes, Sir,” they said as one.

  The old building had no air-conditioning and within minutes he was soaked to the waist. He paused, fired up a Dutch Master, and looked around the classroom. “Are you receiving?” he boomed.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He puffed on his cigar and remembered what Spradling told him: “Lower the intensity, John. You are just too overpowering to the students. Slow down. Relax.”

  Boyd took a deep breath and tried to do as Spradling said, but seconds later the admonition was forgotten as he wrote another equation or demonstrated another aerial maneuver. This material was too important; the students had to understand. Boyd taught them aerial maneuvers they had never heard of, maneuvers that even the boldest pilot among them had never considered. He demonstrated with the F-100 models, twisting his body and contorting his arms as he showed maneuver and countermaneuver. There was one maneuver so foreign to fighter pilots, so astonishing in concept, that when Boyd demonstrated it the students frowned in disbelief. He placed the two F-100 models in a tail chase, one tucked in tightly behind the other. In combat, the defensive pilot would be pulling heavy Gs to keep the offensive pilot from getting a firing solution. The usual tactic for the offensive aircraft was to pull tighter and tighter, seeking a better angle in order to loose a burst of gunfire. But Boyd showed how the offensive pilot could roll his wings level, pull up into a climb, and then roll in the opposite direction. This happens so quickly and is such an unexpected maneuver that the defensive pilot has no time to react. As the offensive pilot comes out of the roll, he is perfectly positioned on the tail of the enemy.

  Boyd bared his teeth. “Then you hose the bastard.”

  The move was so counterintuitive that it took several moments to sink in. As the students pondered, Boyd placed the F-100 models on his desk, turned back to the class, and said, “The world is divided into hosers and hosees. Your job as fighter pilots is to be a hoser.” A feral grin split his face. He leaned toward the class and added, “I, of course, am the ultimate hoser.”

  By then the pure and elegant beauty of the maneuver sank into their consciousness and they understood and sighed in awe.

  One of the students was a first lieutenant named Everett Raspberry. He was known as “Razz” and was considered one of the most promising young pilots in the Air Force. When Razz graduated, he was the “Distinguished Graduate” of his class. He would return as an instructor and become a close friend of Boyd’s. Still later he would go to Vietnam and fly F-4s with the 555th Fighter Squadron—the famed “Triple Nickel”—where he would teach the other pilots the maneuver Boyd taught him. One day the Triple Nickel would go up against the North Vietnamese Air Force and have a day of glory that would be remembered for as long as fighter pilots talked of their exploits.

  Razz, along with every other student in the class, quickly realized the Boyd legend was based on fact. Boyd clearly was the best aerial tactician in the Air Force. He personified everything the FWS was about. By the end of the first day, all that the students wanted was to learn everything Boyd had to teach.

  That afternoon Boyd took his charges aloft. It was time to put into practice what he taught in the classroom. The students put on their green flight suits, zipped up the “chaps” that allowed them to handle more Gs, put on their aviator sunglasses, and strode across the flight line toward the silvery F-100s. Heat waves danced on the runway like dervishes. Off in the distance, west of the Sheep Range, was where they would fight today. As they approached the open canopies of the F-100s, they checked to see that the sleeves of their flight suits were snugged down and tucked into their gloves. Exposed metal inside the cockpit could have a temperature of 140 degrees. Slowly and carefully they settled into the cockpits, fired up the engines, and taxied to the end of the 11,000-foot runway. Then they closed the greenhouse-like canopies and temperatures rose still higher. Air-conditioning in the F-100 did not kick in until the engine was producing almost full power, so they baked and felt sweat running down their helmets, into their eyes, down the small of their backs, and into the cracks of their buttocks and pooling under their thighs while they awaite
d clearance from the tower. Once cleared for takeoff, they advanced power, and as the throttle passed through 75 or 80 percent, they felt the engine chugging for a few seconds. As they accelerated past 100-percent power and ignited the afterburner, the “eyelids” at the rear of the tailpipe opened and a thunderous wave of sound slammed across the base. Fire erupted from the tails as the Huns began their takeoff roll. The students maintained position on Boyd as they climbed out of the pattern in close formation and headed northwest for the Range. The pilots fidgeted with the air-conditioning controls and sought to find the balance between too much and not enough. Not enough and they continued to sweat. Too much and small pieces of ice blasted from the ducts and the canopy fogged over. By the time they reached 30,000 feet and were circling over the Green Spot, everyone was squared away.

  Courage, diminished in the classroom under Boyd’s intimidating presence, returned. The man who knocked off Forty-Second Boyd would be the most famous fighter pilot in the Air Force, and they were eager to give it a try.

  They played grabass. They went rat-racing. They got into furballs. Boyd gave them their chance and one by one he hosed them, and then he nursed them along, teaching, demonstrating how to control the Hun.

  At the end of the day, the F-100s returned to Nellis, rolled into place on the ramp, and the pilots dismounted. They were drenched with perspiration, and salt rings stained their flight suits. Their short hair was pressed down tightly by the helmets. They might have lost three or four pounds during the strenuous high-G maneuvers. They were thirsty and longed for a cold beer.

  But first they had to catch a ride on the truck that served as the flight-line taxi. They headed back to ops for the debrief, the most important part of the mission. How well a fighter pilot conducted the debrief was one of the most important criteria in evaluating that student as a possible instructor. After the debrief the pilots charged for the Stag Bar.