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.”
I
N
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 the 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.