by Robert Coram
But that was a year away. In April 1972, Mary and the children drove Boyd to Dulles, told him good-bye, and left before he boarded a transport of the Military Airlift Command. As always, per fighter-pilot family tradition, Mary and the kids did not watch him take off.
Boyd flew to Travis AFB in California, where more military personnel boarded, and then it was on to Anchorage, Alaska, before crossing the Pacific to Japan. The transport flew down to Clark AFB in the Philippines, where Boyd spent the night in the bachelor officers’ quarters. The next morning he flew to Bangkok and loaded his bags aboard a C-130 that made the rounds of Thai Air Force bases before finally landing at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai AFB.
Chapter Nineteen
Spook Base
IN every war there are military bases where activities are so secret that few people outside the base know what goes on there. These bases have a mystique, a hint of strange comings and goings, rumors of covert organizations that are a cover for even more covert organizations. In the Vietnam war that base was Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai AFB, commonly known as NKP or, by the more irreverent, as Naked Fanny. Activities at NKP were so highly classified that for the first three or four years of its existence the base officially did not exist. But by the time Boyd arrived in April 1972, the word was out: NKP was a spook base.
NKP perches on the east bank of the Mekong River in northeast Thailand, a few miles from the old market town of Nakhon Phanom. It is on the Laotian border, about two hundred miles south of the Plain of Jars. Numerous and varied military operations, all highly compartmentalized so that few people knew what others were doing, were based there. The army had a heavily guarded compound from which the curiously named Studies and Observation Group (SOG) launched some of the most daring and still-secret activities of the war. Six special air-warfare squadrons were based there, and they flew such a bewildering assortment of antiquated propeller-driven aircraft that pilots called NKP “the flying circus.” Helicopters of the special operations crowd clattered in and out at all hours of the day and night. Forward air controllers (FAC) flew nimble little twin-engine OV-10s. World War II–era single-engine A-1 “Sandys”—muscular and heavily armed aircraft—flew search-and-rescue missions and CAS missions, particularly for Special Forces units. (Pierre Sprey’s A-10 was modeled in part after the A-1.) A-26s, World War II light bombers, flew frequent combat missions. Taking off day and night were the ungainly AC-119s, propeller-driven cargo aircraft that, with the addition of a big Gatling cannon firing out the side, became deadly gunships that could light up a target like a Christmas tree. And there were a host of bulbous-nosed, antennae-wearing surveillance aircraft found nowhere else in the Air Force.
No F-4s or Thuds were based there, but they often landed to refuel. After aggressive North Vietnamese pilots shot down a helicopter flying out of NKP, a fully-armed F-4 occasionally sat on runway alert, ready to launch if MiGs came close. NKP was one of the busiest bases in Southeast Asia. It operated perhaps more flights at night than during the day.
Various fenced compounds were scattered around the base and unless one had business there they were off limits. But, as a rule, the base was relatively open. Thais operated a tailor shop, laundry, a bar, and several other commercial establishments. One of the more curious facts about NKP is that it was overrun by packs of wild dogs. The dogs were more or less accepted—hey, we’re in Thailand, we’re at war, was the general feeling. Besides, the ravenous dogs were good at catching the big rats that lived under the hooches of junior officers.
Taking up much of the base was an enormous complex surrounded by two security fences topped with razor wire. Earth-filled revetments bordered the complex. Security police stood in towers and walked patrol along the fences. Admittance to the complex was tightly controlled. The main building, when constructed in 1968, was the largest single building in all of Southeast Asia. But most of the facility was underground, protected by thick concrete walls and operating inside a positive pressurized atmosphere to keep out dust and protect an enormous array of computers. Around NKP the complex was known simply as the “Project.” The official name was Task Force Alpha. Various other code names were associated with the complex: Igloo White, Dutch Mill, and Muscle Shoals.
The heart of Task Force Alpha was the “Infiltration Surveillance Center,” the purpose of which was to monitor acoustic sensors, seismic sensors, urine sniffers, and various other sensors planted along the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the purpose of observing the enemy. Banks of computers synthesized the sensor data and tried to form a picture of what the enemy was doing. Is that a convoy of trucks or hundreds of men marching down the trail? Where are they likely to stop for the night? Might a supply depot be there? Once the computers spit out the information, targeting experts decided what aircraft and what bombs or missiles to send against the enemy.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a network of trails and dirt roads that formed the main route by which North Vietnamese forces operating in South Vietnam were resupplied by cargo-carrying bicycles and small trucks. Seeding the trail with sensors had been the idea of Defense Secretary McNamara’s R&D technocrats, and the project became known as the “McNamara Line.” The $2.5 billion operation was a huge windfall for IBM. The technocrats convinced McNamara that if the trail were wired—as one Task Force Alpha worker said, like a “pinball machine”—the supply chain could be broken and America could win the war. This was America’s first electronic battlefield. It was one of the most highly classified operations of the Vietnam War.
John Boyd came to NKP as the vice commander of Task Force Alpha.
Boyd arrived at a time when something happened almost every day to demonstrate the lunacy of the war. Drugs were so pervasive on base that when he went to the dining room he was given a knife and fork and then a plastic spoon. All the metal spoons had been stolen to use as small containers in which drugs were heated. One of the enlisted men who worked for Boyd in the top-secret underground chamber always wore a raincoat to work. Underneath he was naked. His job was to listen to Vietnamese radio transmissions and the man said he could not break their codes when he was dressed.
Boyd jumped into his first command job with considerable zest. Locating the position of enemy artillery was one function of Task Force Alpha. The acoustic sensors could not pinpoint the gun location quickly enough. By the time attack aircraft arrived on the scene, the gun was silent or had been relocated. Boyd developed a grid system for implanting sensors. Now, sometimes less than five minutes after the first enemy shell was lobbed, FAC pilots were firing marking rockets and the jets were lining up to bomb the artillery position.
Boyd was so excited about his new system that he began flying as a passenger on some night missions. He probably flew in the OV-10, a small, 175-mph, propeller-driven aircraft used by FAC pilots. But Boyd was too valuable to be flying over enemy territory and his boss soon ordered him to stand down.
In addition to his Task Force Alpha responsibilities, Boyd was also inspector general and equal opportunity training officer—a job fraught with peril considering the racial turmoil in the military toward the end of the Vietnam War. But he still found time to use EM to develop a briefing that compared the performance of the F-4 with enemy-fighter aircraft operating in the theater. He gave the brief at Air Force bases throughout Thailand and Vietnam. Boyd also was ordered to preside over a board of inquiry into one of several F-111 crashes. He believed the assignment was punishment for his years of criticizing the F-111.
Like every other officer arriving at NKP, Boyd went to the Thai tailor shop on base and ordered up a “party suit.” These were often blue, but members of Task Force Alpha wore black. The garment was cut like a flight suit, with a zipper up the front. It had numerous pockets. Party suits were worn at the Officers Club for going-away parties or for other festive events celebrated at a combat base. No rules governed the ornaments or decorations or regalia or patches sewn onto party suits and as a result they were some of the most colorful attire ever seen on military personnel.
Boyd had his big Fighter Weapons School patch sewn onto the breast, and unit patches were sewn onto each shoulder. One patch says, PARTICIPANT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA WAR GAMES. On the back is the pièce de résistance, a coiled, bright yellow garden hose and written underneath, also in bright yellow, THE HOSER.
There were times at NKP when officers found little to celebrate. In the early summer of 1972, race relations at NKP took a dangerous turn. One of the senior officers on base was devoutly religious, very conservative, and was becoming unwrapped by the war. He found solace in American booze and Thai women. The guilt he must have felt, he visited upon his troops. After a fight between black and white enlisted men, the commander ordered the black troops onto a helicopter, and they were flown under armed guard to an army jail near Bangkok. Pretrial detention rarely is practiced in the military, and because white participants in the incident were not treated the same way, the base seethed in racial tension. Feelings ran so high that white pilots were afraid to walk near the barracks where black security police were housed. Numerous racial fights broke out.
The commander ignored what was going on around him and sought refuge in more booze and more women. That was when Boyd stepped in. As equal opportunity training (EOT) officer, he took his responsibility seriously. Although several layers of command existed between Boyd and the commander, Boyd ordered up a helicopter and told the senior lawyer on base to go to Bangkok and interview the black prisoners. “Find out what happened,” he said in effect. “If those guys were not involved or if they did not start the fight, get ’em out of jail. If they started it, leave them there.”
Arnold Persky, then a major in the office of the judge advocate general, was the lawyer Boyd ordered to Bangkok. Persky interviewed the prisoners and ordered one, identified as the provocateur, to remain incarcerated until his trial. The others not only were released but flew back to NKP aboard Persky’s helicopter. When they returned Boyd sat down with all the black troops on base and told them it did not matter what had happened before, that now he was the EOT officer and things were different. The racial situation on base was defused. “The difference was night and day,” said Persky. “Colonel Boyd turned it around.”
Because this was Boyd’s first operational command, he was evaluated by his superiors two months after he arrived. The letter of evaluation said Boyd “has a seemingly unlimited ability and stamina to effectively cope with stressed operational procedures.” He “prevented a possible major problem” by “exercising unusually sound judgment” in a racially charged situation. But most important of all it said, “He is fully qualified for Command.” Air Force generals in Southeast Asia must have agreed, because the commander who had caused the incident was relieved of duty and shipped back to the States, while Boyd was pulled out of Task Force Alpha and given command of the 56th Combat Support Group, a job that included, among other things, being base commander.
On August 10, Boyd wrote Mary that he was working out, eating lightly, and trying to lower his weight to 170 pounds. He said he had been doing much thinking and felt he was “on the verge of a fantastic breakthrough on the thinking processes and how they can be taught to others.” He said he had arrived at an “expansion and distillation” of what he had begun thinking about while still at the Pentagon. “Don’t speak about it to others because as usual they’ll think it’s cracked,” he said.
What Boyd was obsessing about—and that is not too strong a word—was trying to understand the nature of creativity. This had actually begun several years earlier as he wondered how he came up with the E-M Theory. E-M is at heart such a simple thing; why had no one else discovered it? What was there about his thinking that enabled him to be the first? His search ranged far afield. From the base library he checked out every available book on philosophy and physics and math and economics and science and Taoism and a half dozen other disciplines. He was all over the map, searching but not quite knowing for what. He hints at what he is working on when, in a letter dated September 28, he again writes Mary that he is on the “verge of a fantastic breakthrough” in the thinking process and how it applies to life.
On October 15 he writes, “I’ve expanded on the thought processes in directions that frankly amaze even me.” He says if his theory is workable, “I may be on the trail of a theory of learning quite different and—it appears now—more powerful than methods or theories currently in use.” He says he is not sure where the ideas will ultimately lead and that before he goes much farther he wants to discuss it with Pierre Sprey. Boyd says he has “a new direction to my life” and that if his theory holds true, “I think it will bring us closer together and provide an enrichment toward living that has eluded us in the past.”
It was when Boyd left Task Force Alpha to become commander of the 56th Combat Support Group that he received his first ER in Southeast Asia. The first page is fire walled, with the exception of the box dealing with “skills in human relations,” which doubtless meant that he sometimes was more frank than his superiors liked. Nevertheless, the all-important first sentence on the second page reads, “Colonel Boyd is the most dedicated officer with whom I have ever served.” The reviewing officer says he had personal knowledge that Boyd’s briefing comparing F-4 performance with enemy aircraft “not only saved one of our aircraft from destruction, but also the user was credited with a victory.” Once again the efficacy of Boyd’s outside-roll maneuver was proven in combat.
And no matter Boyd’s feelings about the F-111, he obviously did a good job of investigating the crash. The reviewing officer says Boyd’s report of that incident was “thorough” and “well-received.” The ER dwelled on the racial incident Boyd defused and said, “Since that time we have not had even a minor incident of a racial nature in this unit.” The indorsing officer, a major general, says Boyd’s performance was “absolutely superior” and that “Colonel Boyd is a highly intelligent and dedicated officer who generates enthusiasm and instills confidence in those with whom he works and supervises.”
It was as base commander, a job that made Boyd master of all he surveyed, that his creative flair for solving problems soon burst into bloom. Boyd was responsible for all civil-engineering projects on base, transportation, security, and just about everything else, from supervising the dining rooms to making sure religious services were available for all. The previous commander had ignored many of the housekeeping activities around NKP.
In his new job, Boyd saw problems that needed immediate attention everywhere he looked. But 7th Air Force sent down paperwork daily that took hours to answer. Boyd thought Air Force bureaucracy was keeping him from the job at hand. His solution was to respond but to add material that caused 7th Air Force more paperwork than 7th Air Force caused him. “Pain goes both ways,” he said. In only a few weeks the time-consuming requests from 7th Air Force shrank to almost nothing.
One of the most immediate and most serious problems Boyd had to deal with was that a number of the wild dogs on base had become rabid. Boyd’s solution was immediate, effective, and simple: every dog was shot on sight—no exceptions. He later said that security police, acting on his orders, even shot a dog being walked on a leash by an Air Force officer. Boyd’s reasoning was that while a dog did not show any symptoms of rabies, he might have been bitten and soon would manifest the disease. An Air Force combat base simply did not have the leisure of placing dogs in quarantine and then waiting to see if they were infected.
When Boyd made a base inspection, he found more of the legacy of laxness left by the former commander: latrines used by enlisted men were covered with scatological graffiti. Boyd called in the senior sergeants from all units on base and said he wanted the latrines repainted and that there would be no more graffiti. They told him that repainting the latrines would only present a new canvas for updated obscenities. Boys will be boys, the sergeants said.
Boyd put on his hard face and wagged a long forefinger at the sergeants. “Here’s what I’m gonna do,” he said he told the sergeants. “First, I’m going to h
ave the latrines repainted. Then I’m going to dig a trench off base, out in front of the main gate. And the first goddamn time I see any more obscenity on the walls I’m going to padlock every enlisted latrine on this base. If somebody wants to piss or shit—day or night, rain or shine—he’s going to have to do it in that trench. In front of every Thai person passing by.” He paused to let his message sink in. He knew what the sergeants were thinking. The busiest street in town led straight to the base. A trench dug in front of the main gate would be in sight of hundreds of people. Thais were notoriously finicky about personal cleanliness and privacy. Any Americans seen using the trench would be subjected to considerable disdain. Plus, it was the rainy season, a miserable time in Southeast Asia.
The sergeants were not alarmed. They had their own latrines. If this crazy colonel wanted to dig a trench for the enlisted men, it would not affect them. “That includes you sergeants,” Boyd added. “I’ll padlock your latrines, too. So by God you better make sure your troops get the message. Now get out of here and have those latrines repainted.”
It is said that from November 1972 until the base was closed, NKP had the cleanest enlisted latrines in all of Southeast Asia.
Then there was the story of the junior officer who was having an affair with a Thai woman. There was nothing unusual about this.
Thai women are extraordinarily beautiful and many American officers formed close relationships with them. But this particular officer was married and soon was overcome with guilt. He broke off the relationship. The woman in question was the daughter of an influential village official who felt his family lost face when his daughter was spurned. He was about to charge the young officer with rape.