by Robert Coram
The Air Force has a rule that after a transfer to another base an officer must serve a certain length of time before he can retire. The rule is to justify the expense incurred by the government in moving an officer. Boyd had transferred from the Pentagon to Andrews AFB. Never mind that it was only across town, that Boyd’s residence remained the same, and that Boyd had been spending several days a week at the Pentagon. Rules are rules and Boyd had not served long enough at Andrews. In early May paperwork came down saying Boyd’s request to retire had been revoked. He must have known it was coming, because several days before the request was denied, he filed an addendum to his retirement request asking that it be withdrawn. “I desire to remain on active duty because of the shortage of R&D officers in the Air Force with broad analytical skills,” he wrote. “Additionally I feel that I can contribute more to the Air Force and to the nation in this capacity than I could in private industry.”
Boyd may have known that a promotion board had met and decided to promote him to colonel. This is conjecture because the workings of a promotion board are secret, but when a controversial name for promotion to colonel comes before the board—and Boyd’s name certainly was controversial—board members have been known to call various generals to ask if they have any problem with this officer being promoted. The name of the contender often leaks.
Officers are promoted by date of rank; that is, a senior lieutenant colonel is promoted before one with less time in grade. Officers promoted below the zone are the last, as they are most junior. It is not unusual for these officers to know twelve or fifteen months ahead of time that they are being promoted.
A few days after Boyd’s request for retirement was disapproved, he received an extraordinarily strong ER that laid the groundwork for a promotion. It is clear from the ER that the reviewing officer believed few lieutenant colonels in the history of the Air Force have had such an impact as Boyd. During the previous year he received two awards that brought credit on the Air Force “in a manner rare for an officer of his rank and experience.” From a nationwide pool of candidates, he won the 1970 Hoyt S. Vandenberg Award for “outstanding contributions to aerospace technology.” The ER said Boyd was “one of the best minds in the Air Force.” He won a Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf cluster for his advanced E-M Theory, which the reviewing officer said “constitutes the most powerful evaluative tool for fighter aircraft analysis known to date and has provided industry with one of the most effective tools generated in the history of aeronautical engineering.” The review ended with: “Definitely promote below-the-zone to Colonel—now.”
It was Tom Christie who set in motion the events leading to Boyd’s promotion. Christie and an Air Force colonel wrote an eight-page memo for General James Ferguson. As a three-star, Ferguson had been deputy chief of staff for Research and Development and knew Boyd’s contributions. When Ferguson received his fourth star and was given the Systems Command, it was he who had Boyd transferred from the Pentagon to Andrews to monitor progress on the F-15.
Christie’s memo said Boyd was about to retire and that the Air Force could not afford to lose an officer who had made so many contributions and who would make still more. Ferguson agreed and asked for a letter that he could sign and submit to the promotion board, a letter recommending Boyd be promoted to full colonel. Christie obliged.
Here the issue of Boyd’s promotion becomes even more cloudy. First, a promotion board theoretically is free of command influence. In fact, some say a hint of command influence is enough to prevent an officer from being promoted. Second, four-stars rarely send letters of recommendation to a promotion board. When they do, the letter is received as Holy Writ.
It would seem the Finagler had pulled off his finest coup; he still was protecting Boyd, still operating outside the vision of those in the middle of a fray. He believes that Boyd never knew of his involvement.
It would be a year before Boyd pinned the silver eagles of a colonel on his shoulders. But he knew he was on the promotion list. The irony is that by promoting Boyd, the Systems Command made it possible for him to subvert its most cherished fighter project.
By December 1970, Riccioni, as the self-anointed godfather of the Fighter Mafia, was receiving a lot of attention. While some colonels in the Pentagon affect a swagger stick, Riccioni stalked the halls with a hunting arrow wedged under his arm. He used it as a pointer and waved it about in meetings.
“Why does Colonel Riccioni carry that arrow around?” someone asked Boyd.
“Hell, I don’t know. Ask him.”
“Because I am a warrior,” Riccioni said. “It never lets me forget that I am a true warrior.”
Riccioni liked the attention. He referred to himself in the third person, as in “Riccioni told several generals yesterday that they should be careful of the Fighter Mafia.” But Riccioni did not understand that the very phrase Fighter Mafia enraged the Blue Suiters. Careerists saw the Fighter Mafia as a band of insurrectionists, plotters, and elitists. Riccioni’s need for recognition and his naïveté, were becoming a dangerous combination. He began writing inflammatory memos to superior officers, the contents of which called too much attention to the Fighter Mafia. Once he wrote a letter in which he blasted the F-14 as a grossly inferior aircraft and said that the Navy should consider buying a lightweight fighter. He sent copies to top admirals. In Riccioni’s diatribes he positioned himself as the creator of the Fighter Mafia and even hinted at the true purpose of the study for which he had received funding. There were veiled references to an airplane that one day would embarrass the Air Force by defeating the F-15.
Boyd and Sprey were bewildered. On one hand it seemed Riccioni was a glory hound. On the other hand he was so innocent and genuinely sweet that it was impossible to be angry with him. One day Boyd went to him and said, “If you insist on getting credit for the work you do, you’ll never get far in life. Don’t confuse yourself with the idea of getting credit.”
Riccioni agreed. But he continued writing incendiary memos.
An exasperated Boyd marched into Riccioni’s office and said, “I have a special project and I need all the pencils you have.”
Riccioni handed him the pencils from atop his desk. “You need more?”
“I need all you have.” Riccioni dug more from his desk.
“You still have two in your shirt pocket. Give me those.”
Boyd took the pencils, broke them in half, and tossed the remains in a waste can. A startled Riccioni looked up at him.
“Rich, you owe me. I’ve saved your ass more than once. Now it’s time to collect.”
Riccioni by this time had learned that Boyd had saved his career. He agreed that he owed Boyd and said, “What do you want?”
“No more goddamn memos. I don’t want you to write anybody about anything.”
Riccioni could not change his nature. He could not work behind the scenes. He became increasingly outspoken about the virtues of a lightweight fighter and he criticized the F-15 as needlessly complex and outrageously expensive. At a Christmas party, General John Myer, the then vice chief of staff, questioned Riccioni. The godfather listed everything wrong with the F-15 and said America needed an alternative, a small, cheap, high-performance aircraft.
“Are you telling me we have the wrong airplane?” the general asked.
Almost any other colonel in the Pentagon would have realized that a colonel does not tell the vice chief that the most prestigious acquisition project in the Air Force is a mistake. Riccioni said, “I can give you a better airplane for one-third the price.” The general wheeled and walked away.
Several days later the godfather got word he was being transferred to Korea.
Sprey, too, was leaving. He was disillusioned with the Department of Defense and with how Bigger-Higher-Faster-Farther always seemed to prevail. He had decided to join a startup company that studied air and water quality and analyzed environmental trends. He remained a consultant on the A-10 and still worked closely with Boyd, pulling all-nighters in motel
rooms with contractors, still doing the Lord’s work. In the Building, only Boyd would be found, and then as a visitor.
Few secrets remain secrets in the incestuous world of defense contractors. Word was now out about the study contracts, and other players wanted in. Lockheed and LTV and Boeing started taking seriously the study contracts awarded to Northrop and General Dynamics. The lightweight fighter could turn into a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
In May 1971, Congress issued a blistering report on both the F-14 and F-15 and recommended spending $50 million to begin development of an alternative lightweight fighter. Pentagon generals fumed. There was information in the report that the Air Force and Navy considered proprietary. It had to have come from inside the Pentagon.
Talk of the lightweight fighter frightened generals far more than would the sudden appearance of a enemy bomber over the Pentagon. It was all the things that careerists fear. It signified change. It went against everything the Air Force held sacred. The brand-new, expensive, gold-plated F-15 was the hearthrob aircraft, the best in the world, they thought. And now the Fighter Mafia was saying it had a better and— quelle horreur—cheaper airplane.
Contractors took the congressional criticism of the F-15 and F-14 as a further sign that the lightweight fighter might be worth pursuing. Boyd cautioned those in his office that contractors always wanted to buy lunches and dinners and could easily corrupt the unwary. One contractor who wanted a piece of the lightweight fighter project announced it was sending a delegation of top officials to see Boyd, but first the contractor sent Boyd a massive stack of data to analyze. The data contained conclusions about aircraft performance that were so optimistic Boyd knew they were false. Then the vice presidents and top engineers descended upon Boyd’s office and it was like a visit from royalty. The executives were coifed and tailored and their shoes gleamed and they were trying hard not to be patronizing toward this rumpled, scruffy-shoed colonel who happened to be the point man on the aircraft project. Boyd singled out one part of their proposal, a wing design that he knew created enormous wing-tip vortices. The proposal said nothing about the vortices.
In a calm and mildly curious voice, Boyd asked, “How did you get this data on the wing design?”
The vice president charged off the cliff. “Wind-tunnel tests,” he said.
“Fuck a wind tunnel,” Boyd roared. He pointed up. “The biggest wind tunnel in the world is up there. It’s called reality. This is not reality.”
Boyd paused. The vice presidents and engineers looked at each other. The senior man was about to speak again when Boyd said, “I had NASA check you people out. They can’t duplicate your performance claims.”
Such a statement is akin to saying the performance claims are bogus. The senior man drew himself up and said, “Colonel, we’ve had dozens of engineers on this for months.” He tapped the desk. “It is correct. You need to go back to NASA and—”
Boyd stood up and pointed to the door. “You people are lying to me. Get the fuck out of my office.”
“Colonel—”
“Out, goddammit!”
Officers and secretaries in the office were horrified. No one spoke to defense contractors like this. Boyd stood in the door, eyes glaring, daring any of the corporate executives to defy him. They collected their leather briefcases and all their data and stalked down the hall. Boyd raised a clenched fist and moved it up and down. “Stroking the bishop. You guys are just stroking the bishop. Come back when you get it right.”
Boyd worked for Uncle. He was doing America’s business and he had no time for defense contractors who bellied up to the trough with half-baked ideas. Billions of taxpayers’ dollars were at stake and he had a fiduciary responsibility to see that the money was spent wisely.
Several weeks later the vice president in charge of the delegation called and told another officer that Boyd was right, that engineers had made a mistake on the wing design. He said it was not intentional, simply a mistake. He was afraid to tell Boyd for fear of his reaction. He asked the officer to pass the word to Boyd that the mistake had been corrected.
Another contractor sent in its top engineer, a world-famous designer who had sold an extraordinary series of aircraft to the U.S. government, to make a bid for the proposed new fighter. The engineer presented a set of generalized plans with no supporting data. The aerodynamic estimates were broad and vague. The lift versus drag curves were wildly optimistic. Boyd realized the design was not for a new aircraft but simply an upgrade of an existing airplane. The designer was giving Boyd what he thought the Air Force needed and not what Boyd wanted. The contractor apparently thought Boyd would be awed by the famous designer.
Boyd loved to tell the story of what happened. He looked at the drag curves and shook his head in apparent awe. “This is amazing,” he said. “I just can’t believe this.”
The designer smiled. His retinue of engineers smiled. The famous John Boyd, for all of his reputation from E-M, was still a fighter pilot. And fighter pilots are easy to confuse when they are out of the cockpit.
Boyd leaned over the lift and drag chart and his fingers moved to the left, beyond the edges of the chart. He looked up, wide-eyed. “I can extrapolate this thing back to where the wing has zero lift. Wow. This airplane is so good that not only does it have zero lift, it has negative drag.”
The designer no longer was smiling. Perhaps he had underestimated this Colonel Boyd. Perhaps he should have spent more time on the design. Boyd was only warming to his subject. “If this thing has negative drag, that means it has thrust without turning on the engines.” He paused as if in deep thought. “That means when it is on the ramp with all that thrust, even with the engine turned off, you got to tie the goddamn thing down or it will take off by itself.”
The designer glowered at Boyd. Who would have thought anyone would extrapolate the curves back to zero and show, using the contractor’s own data, that the engines had thrust even before ignition?
Boyd shoved the papers across the desk. “Goddamn airplane is made out of balonium.” According to Boyd, the designer called the next day and invited him to lunch and asked him not to tell his superiors about the spurious design. “I have to tell them,” Boyd said. Then the engineer made an offer that, stripped of all the circumlocutions and delicate language, amounted to a bribe for Boyd to keep silent. “That won’t take,” Boyd responded. Then came an open threat that the designer would use his company’s considerable clout with the Department of Defense to have Boyd fired. “Take your best shot, you son of a bitch,” Boyd said.
A week later the famous designer and his company withdrew their design from consideration.
Once an officer is promoted to colonel, he is automatically considered for general the next time the promotion board meets. It might be several months after his promotion or it might be a year. To be passed over the first time is not significant. But when a man is passed over the second time, he begins to have doubts. If he is passed over a third time, his chances have gone. Thus, the first ER after making colonel is crucial. It is here the colonel has the first intimation of whether or not generals want to admit him to their fraternity.
On October 13, 1971, Boyd received his first ER after making full colonel and it was devastating. On the front side he was downgraded in three categories. The narrative is a classic example of an ER that, to the uninitiated, is unsurpassed. “Colonel Boyd has continued to make outstanding, major contributions to the Air Force’s analytical approach toward optimizing the design characteristics of aircraft.” Here Boyd is praised for his old work. And “outstanding, major contributions” is nowhere near as strong as previous comments about the innovative, groundbreaking aspects of his work, or of his leadership role. The reviewing officer recommends Boyd return to school to obtain a doctorate and then teach at the Air Force Academy. This seems to indicate belief in an officer potential. But to a colonel with twenty years of service it is demeaning. Boyd has only an undergraduate degree. It would take him three or
four years to get a Ph.D. For a colonel to be taken out of the operational loop for four years is to end his career. Even worse, generals do not teach at the Academy; they command the Academy. Finally, if superior officers think a colonel might one day wear stars on his shoulders, his ER talks of leadership, hints at his political abilities, his statecraft. It recommends him for an assignment that qualifies him to be a general. Boyd’s ER has none of that. Boyd’s fate is sealed by an additional indorsement from a major general who says simply, “I concur with the evaluation and recommendations of the reporting and indorsing officer.”
John Boyd had contributed as much to fighter tactics, aeronautical engineering, science, the Air Force, and his country as any man in Air Force history. A list of Air Force original thinkers—and this is a short list—would begin with his name. But his enemies prevailed. He had shot down too many generals ever to become a general. This must have been a time of despair for Boyd. As always he sought solace in his work. And it was then that he had another epiphany, a marvelous and far-reaching epiphany.
In doing advanced conceptual design work on the lightweight fighter, he went over all his notes from the past, from as far back as Korea. He remembered his early E-M work and how difficult it was to prepare accurate E-M charts for the F-86. He remembered the F-86’s countless battles with MiGs. He remembered how, on paper, the MiG was a superior aircraft in almost every respect. But the F-86 had a ten-to-one kill ratio against the MiG. Why?
Boyd pored over the notes again and again. Could there be something else, some other element, perhaps an element not covered by E-M, that held the answer? Boyd made a list of attributes of the MiG and the F-86. For days he went into frequent trances as he groped for the answer. In the end he came up with two significant advantages the F-86 had over the MiG. First, the F-86 had a bubble canopy that gave the pilot a 360-degree field of vision, while the MiG pilot’s view to the rear was blocked. Thus, the F-86 pilot had a much easier time observing his enemy than the enemy had observing him. Second, the F-86 had full hydraulic controls, while the MiG did not. This meant that the F-86 pilot could control his aircraft with one finger, while controlling the MiG was so difficult that MiG pilots often lifted weights between flights in order to gain strength. The unboosted controls of the MiG meant that its pilot grew fatigued more quickly than the F-86 pilot but, far more importantly, the F-86 driver could go from one maneuver to another more quickly than the MiG driver. In a practical sense this meant the F-86 pilot could go through a series of either offensive or defensive maneuvers quicker than could his adversary. And with each maneuver he gained a half second or a second on his enemy until he could either break for separation or be in position for a kill. The MiG was faster in raw acceleration and in turning ability, but the F-86 was quicker in changing maneuvers. And in combat, quicker is more important.