by Robert Coram
Christie’s office kept preparing new E-M charts, and with each one came a new insight, a new approach, a new way to display information. The deeper Boyd moved into the design applications, the more he had to experiment or explore new aircraft performance fields such as agility or persistence. Incredible as it may seem, the F-X was the first fighter in U.S. history designed with any maneuvering specifications, much less E-M specifications. That is, the F-X was the first U.S. aircraft ever designed with dogfighting in mind. (Aviation aficionados often say the P-51 of World War II and the F-86 of Korea were pure fighters. But the P-51 was designed for range and speed, not maneuvering. It became the premier fighter of World War II only because the British—over the vehement objections of the WrightPat bureaucracy—replaced its puny power plant with a big Rolls-Royce engine. The F-86 was designed as a high-altitude interceptor. To reach high altitude, it had to have big wings, and because it had big wings, it became, serendipitously, a great maneuvering fighter.)
Boyd was guided in his work by one simple principle: he wanted to give pilots a fighter that would outmaneuver any enemy. He did not become fixated on technology or “one-point” numerical solutions. For instance, he did not say the F-X had to have a certain top speed or a certain turning capability. He knew that it must have a high thrust-to-weight ratio if it were to have neck-snapping acceleration. And he knew it had to have lots of wing in order to maneuver quickly into the firing envelope. It had to have the energy to disengage, go for separation, then come back into the fight with an advantage. It had to have the fuel to penetrate deep into enemy territory and sustain a prolonged turning fight. But all these criteria were vague. The closest Boyd came to defining a specific technical solution was when he said the aircraft should pull enough Gs at 30,000 feet to “roll down your goddamn socks.”
Boyd faced opposition at every step. He constantly took things off the airplane to lower the weight. He had no specific figure, but he wanted the F-X to weigh somewhere around thirty-five thousand pounds, maybe less. But while Boyd worked daily to remove things from the F-X, seemingly everyone else in the Air Force—the fire-control people, missile people, electronic-warfare people—wanted to add something. Maintenance people even insisted the aircraft carry a built-in maintenance ladder. They said the aircraft might operate in a forward area where there would be no ladders for mechanics.
“Tell them to get some goddamn orange crates and climb on those,” Boyd growled, trying with little success to explain the term growth factor. A twenty-pound maintenance ladder does not simply add twenty pounds to the aircraft—not if the aircraft is to maintain the same performance. Dozens of subtle additions are caused by the ladder until finally the ladder adds not twenty pounds but perhaps two hundred.
Boyd wanted the F-X to carry a small radar. But electronics people wanted a radar that could acquire and track a MiG at forty nautical miles, a criterion that meant the aircraft must carry an enormous radar dish. The size of the dish was driving the size of the fuselage, which was driving the size of the F-X. Wright-Pat’s structural engineers also wanted a stronger wing, which meant more weight. The Tactical Air Command was calling for more fuel and a top speed of Mach 3. Because the Air Force had been flying the Navy F-4, which had a tail hook, someone decided the F-X, even though it had extraordinary short field landing performance, needed a tail hook. Boyd insisted the F-X have an internal gun, while Wright-Pat’s electronics gurus wanted only missiles. Boyd’s early design work indicated that while a swing-wing aircraft had certain aerodynamic benefits, the extra weight and drag inherent in the swing-wing design destroyed more performance than was gained. Still the Air Force insisted on the heavy swing-wing design.
Boyd was being pecked to death by a thousand ducks. He drank about ten cups a day of what he called “smart juice”—black coffee. He smoked a dozen or so Dutch Masters. Several times each day he loped down to the concourse and bought dozens of chocolate candy bars. He arrived for work at 11:00 A.M. or noon, usually unkempt and unmilitary in appearance. Several times his boss said, “John, get a haircut or get lost.” Once he added, “While you’re at it, get your shoes shined and your uniform pressed.” He thought about telling Boyd to adopt regular working hours, but he knew Boyd was staying at his desk until 3:00 or 4:00 A.M. He knew because several nights a week Boyd called to exult over a new equation he had derived or to shout about a design problem he had solved.
One man who knew Boyd at the time said he was like a radio in which a button is locked down so it cannot receive; it can only transmit. “Boyd is on transmit today” became a warning phrase for visitors.
For several years, the defense industry had been involved in preliminary design work on the Air Force’s new aircraft. Now, as the design process gathered speed and the defense industry realized the Air Force was approaching the big-money decisions, representatives of America’s biggest defense contractors began making their way to Boyd’s office.
Harry Hillaker, the project director for the F-111 and the man who met Boyd at Eglin, was one of the first. Hillaker and Boyd had stayed in touch and found they had much in common in their beliefs about fighter aircraft. Each wanted to work with the other. Hillaker had an extra incentive, as General Dynamics was reeling over the bad press about the F-111 and was seeking a way to redeem itself. But the company was not agile enough, could not move quickly enough, and didn’t invest enough design effort and soon was thrown out of the running. Eventually, they would have another chance.
Defense contractors had a cozy relationship with the Pentagon. Their friends were congressmen and senators, cabinet officers and administration officials, and top generals. But it was a peculiarity of the military that to get something done, the contractors had to go through young project officers, usually lieutenant colonels or full colonels. They were used to swaying these men by taking them to expensive Washington restaurants and ordering lobster and steak and wine and picking up the tab. Defense contractors are powerful men. And they thought this young major, this John Boyd, could be easily influenced.
When the contractors came into Boyd’s briefing room, he was loaded with smart juice and smoking a Dutch Master. He stood atop a small platform, looked over his congregation of contractors, and preached a new gospel, the gospel of E-M. When the contractors understood, when they had a vision of the promised land, Boyd’s high-bugling laugh could be heard far down the halls. But when they did not understand or, even worse, when they ignored his vision and presumed to tell him what his ideal fighter should be—usually a modification of one of their existing airplanes—he held a clenched fist in the air and moved it up and down and shook his head and scornfully said, “Stroking the bishop. You’re just stroking the bishop.”
When contractors said some of Boyd’s engineering specifications could not be met or that a fighter could not do what Boyd wanted it to do, he listened, chewed on his hand, and stared unblinkingly at the contractor. When he had enough he stopped chewing, spit out pieces of skin, jabbed the contractor in the chest, and exploded. “You are the dumbest son of a bitch God ever made” or “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about” or “You stupid fuck. That will never work.”
Defense contractors are not used to being talked to in such a fashion. Often they sat there a moment in shock. Boyd moved even closer and shouted louder, “Do you get my meaning?” or “Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”
Almost every time a defense contractor left his office, Boyd turned around and said to all in hearing, sometimes before the contractor was through the door, “The one thing you can always expect from a contractor is that he will hand you a load of shit.” If he suspected a contractor was trying to deceive him, he looked for evidence. He prepared for a confrontation. When he found the evidence, he did not say he had found the proverbial smoking gun. Instead he walked into his office, threw his arms wide, and trumpeted, “I have found the dripping cock.”
Secretaries wept at Boyd’s language. Several threatened to quit. When generals comp
lained about Boyd’s language, he said he did not mean to sound disrespectful. “I’m just a dumb fighter pilot. I don’t know any better. I had an IQ test in high school and they gave me a ninety.” For several months Boyd was not allowed to brief generals and members of Congress. But the Air Force had to have the F-X and no one else preached the gospel as convincingly as Boyd. Soon he was back-briefing VIPs. And his language was the same.
Boyd was impatient and wanted to get a fixed design and see it move into production and into the air. All these needless requirements and senseless questions he saw as part of the conspiracy at Wright-Pat to foul up his airplane. It was the same conspiracy that had kept him from being promoted below the zone to lieutenant colonel.
Wright-Pat was a constant barrier to Boyd. An early and continuing roadblock in the F-X design was the presentation of drag polars. Drag polars—or polars, as they are commonly known—show estimates of the total drag of the airplane as a function of the airplane’s angle of attack (i.e., how high the nose is relative to the airstream). Accurate polars are a critical part of the design process and vital to EM calculations. It is almost a given in aircraft design that an aircraft never has the thrust the contractor says it will have and always has more drag than the contractor predicts. Wright-Pat sent Boyd a collection of polars for the new design that simply looked too good to be true. He began calling the engineers at Wright-Pat to question their estimates, and with each call they grew more patronizing. They had been estimating polars for years on all sorts of aircraft and no one else had complained. To them Boyd was a Pentagon desk jockey who simply did not understand polars.
Finally Boyd demanded a meeting. He checked out a T-33 and flew to Dayton. A group of lieutenant colonels and full colonels, along with several high-ranking civilians, were sitting around a conference table in the Flight Dynamics Lab when Boyd walked in. He got straight to the point. He said the data he had been given was wrong and that this time he wanted good data. He cited chapter and verse. From his briefcase he pulled the drag polars Wright-Pat had derived. Their polars showed that the smaller the wing, the greater the lift. This is dumb, Boyd said. People in the Flight Dynamics Lab need to get on the ball.
The senior colonel stared at Boyd, then made it clear that data from the Flight Dynamics Lab was Air Force gospel. The lab was not at fault if the major could not understand. The level of acrimony escalated. The lieutenant colonels joined the fray and then the civilians.
Finally an exasperated Boyd jerked his wallet from his hip pocket and threw it onto the middle of the conference table. It skidded to a stop in front of the colonel. The conversation stopped and everyone stared at Boyd. He looked around the table, staring each man in the eye. Then he pointed at the wallet. “Everything in there says you fuckers are lying.”
When Boyd returned to the Pentagon, a full colonel was waiting. He chewed Boyd out for insulting a senior officer. He said the general in charge of Research and Development for the Air Force was so angry that he was about to transfer Boyd to Alaska. The two men marched down the hall to the general’s office. Boyd was still carrying the briefcase he had taken to Wright-Pat.
“Major Boyd, I have just one question,” the general said. “Did you tell that colonel at Wright-Pat he was a lying fucker?”
“Yes, Sir, I did.”
“You are out of here. You are being transferred.” The general launched his own chewing-out session about respecting senior officers and insubordination and how lucky Boyd was that he was only being transferred. When he paused, Boyd said, “Sir, do you want to know why I said that?”
“No.”
“I think you do. Give me one minute.” He opened his briefcase.
Reluctantly, the general looked at the drag polars. “Know how to read these, General?”
“Yes.”
The general moved his finger over the polars. “They’re saying…”
“Yes, Sir, they are saying the smaller the wing, the greater the lift.”
“That means…”
“Yes, Sir, that means the greatest lift would come if there were no wing at all.”
The general picked up his telephone and called Wright-Pat. And Boyd swears that as the general picked up the phone, he muttered, “They are lying fuckers.”
Once again Boyd was protected by a benevolent general. And his list of enemies grew longer.
Even Sprey suggested that perhaps Boyd was a bit confrontational. “Tiger, I’ve got to have accurate information,” Boyd responded. “There is no such thing as being too careful about information. I need the right information to separate the wheat from the chaff. Those who can’t separate the wheat from the chaff don’t matter.”
Trade-offs are the heart and soul of aircraft design. If an engineer wanted greater range, he knew acceleration would be diminished. If he wanted greater speed, the wings would have to be smaller, and that, in turn, would decrease turning ability. If he wanted a small airplane, the engine, wings, or range would shrink. All things have to be wrapped inside the skin of a fighter. Design discipline is the key. The engineer must remember the mission.
By using E-M and ever more sophisticated computers, Boyd was able to consider a virtually limitless number of variables. His tradeoffs were orders of magnitude more complicated than had ever been done before. He was going through thousands of designs. The slightest variation in one performance area had an impact all across the design spectrum.
Boyd’s trade-offs using E-M and computers were a turning point in aviation design and aviation history. He was working with the entire maneuvering envelope of a proposed fighter, something that had never been done before. Sprey was there every step of the way. Soon he would have the chance to put into practice all he was learning from Boyd.
Boyd’s first ER in the Pentagon covered the period from September 8, 1966, through June 9, 1967. Rarely has there been an ER with such disagreements between the reviewing officer and the indorsing officer. On the front side the colonel who wrote the ER gave Boyd less than top marks in four categories. The colonel dwelled on Boyd’s scientific and research contributions to the F-X program and said, “If Major Boyd were evaluated solely on technical competence, he would be rated absolutely superior.” This sounds complimentary. But the ER of a major being considered for promotion should not talk about technical competence; rather it should talk about his ability to lead, to obtain the maximum work from his subordinates, to show a potential for higher rank and greater responsibilities. Talking about a major’s technical competence is a signal to the promotion board that this officer is not qualified for further advancement. The colonel who wrote the indorsement ended by saying, “Maj. Boyd is very opinionated and at times tends to be argumentative.” It is a damning, career-stopping ER.
But once again a superior comes to Boyd’s aid. The officer writing the additional indorsement says that Boyd is not opinionated and argumentative but is advocating a new advanced fighter, that there are many designs and systems, and that Boyd usually is right in what he wants. “He has made himself an authority on the subject and is more knowledgeable and informed in this field than his rating officials.” Adding heft to the colonel’s additional indorsement is still another indorsement from a major general. The general says Boyd is a “promising officer, strongly motivated and one who gives his best effort toward any assignment.” He says Boyd “… should be promoted to Lt. Colonel immediately.”
Not being promoted below the zone to lieutenant colonel still weighed on Boyd. He brought up the subject in conversation, sometimes in an unusual fashion. In the summer of 1967 he went to Europe and the Pacific to brief top commanders on the F-X. During one briefing in Europe to a four-star general, the general mused on how this new aircraft would require intensive pilot training. The general then boasted about the safety record of fighter pilots under his command and told how he had had no training accidents for several years.
“General, if you’re not having accidents, your training program is not what it should be,” Boyd said.
He told the general of Nellis and how realistic the training was—and how it resulted in a ten-to-one exchange ratio in Korea. “Goddamnit, general, you need more accidents,” he said. “You need to kill some pilots.”
The general stared at Boyd, horrified at what a training accident would do to his career. The general made it clear that Boyd was not only flirting with insubordination but advocating dangerous and irresponsible ideas. He hinted of disciplinary action.
“I don’t know what you can do, General,” Boyd said. “I was only responding to what you said.”
“Promotion boards can be influenced,” the general said.
“I’ve been passed over,” Boyd said.
But he became a lieutenant colonel soon after.
If there was a turning point, a time when even the most jingoistic Air Force general at last understood that Communist forces could build fighter aircraft superior to anything that America put in the air, it was Vietnam in 1967, the worst year of the war for the Air Force. It finally sank in that, as Boyd had said for years, the Air Force had no true airto-air fighter. It is said that combat is the ultimate and unkindest judge of fighter aircraft. That was certainly true in Vietnam. The long-boasted-about ten-to-one exchange ratio from Korea sank close to parity in North Vietnam; at one time it even favored the North Vietnamese. When the war finally ended, one Air Force pilot would be an ace. North Vietnam would have sixteen.