In the six months he was at Columbus, Boyd became known among the young lieutenants not only for his flying and leadership
abilities but for several personal attributes. He could eat an inordinate amount of food, and he could eat it faster than
anyone else in 52-F. At the dining room he stacked his plate so high that when he walked to the table, food tumbled to the
floor. He sat down, leaned over, and looked neither right nor left as he forked down the food. It was as if he were shoveling
coal to stoke a furnace. His hand seemed never to stop in its round trip from plate to mouth to plate. And he apparently did
not chew. Usually his squadron mates had barely begun eating when Boyd finished, sighed, rubbed his stomach, pushed his chair
back, popped what seemed to be a full pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum into his mouth, and began talking. He chewed so much
gum and chewed so vigorously that he was known to members of 52-F as the “Juicy Fruit Kid.” While his squadron mates were
still eating,
Boyd expounded on aviation tactics, how frustrated he was about having to follow the Air Force training regimen when he was
ready for advanced maneuvers, and how he was going to be the best fighter pilot in the Air Force.
Every morning the students flew the T-6 “Texan,” a venerable tandem-seat, single-engine aircraft that in World War II had
served as an advanced trainer. The qualities that made it an advanced trainer in an earlier war made it suitable as the basic
trainer for men about to transition into jets. The narrow landing gear on the “Terrible Texan” caused many students to lose
control after landing and make a sharp horizontal turn known as a “ground loop,” a maneuver that could fold or even shear
off the landing gear. The common expression was, “There are two kinds of T-6 pilots: those who have ground-looped it and those
who are going to ground-loop it.” Despite its tendency to bite unwary pilots, the T-6 was sturdy and cruised at a stately
135 mph. The redline, or never-exceed speed, which could be achieved only in a power dive from considerable altitude, was
about 260 mph.
From the beginning of his training, Boyd walked around the base as if he were a general. He was not shy when it came to lecturing
the other students about aerial tactics. He was independent to the point of being ornery and often argued with his civilian
instructor about what he thought was the slow pace of instruction.
During his breaks, Boyd traveled by train to Iowa to see Mary. On one of those weekends, he finally proposed. He and Mary
found a ring at a small jewelry store in Ottumwa and she began planning the wedding.
Back in flight training, Boyd quickly went through basic maneuvers and soloed. And then he went out and threw the T-6 around
the sky in such a fearless manner that it seemed to others as if he had done it a thousand times. It was difficult for his
classmates to accept that he was a student just as they were, that he had never had flying lessons until now. He was, quite
simply, a master of the T-6.
To realize the significance of this, one must understand that the first time a young man slides into the cockpit of an aircraft
and looks at the strange collection of instruments, a feeling of awe washes over him. No matter how intensely he wants to
be a pilot, there is an inherent sense of wonder simply sitting in the cockpit. And when he goes aloft for the first time
and realizes he is moving in a three-dimensional
world, when he realizes that a moment of inattention can lead to a crash and a fiery explosion, he sometimes finds he has
too much respect for the airplane. A pilot can be too cautious. He can be too methodical. He reads and memorizes the specifications,
knows the boundaries of the performance envelope, and is careful never to nudge up against the performance limits. But Boyd
did not believe the performance specs and had no fear of the aircraft. He jostled the T-6; he pushed it and horsed it around
the sky. He flung the airplane up against the outside edges of the performance envelope and then beyond. If the book said
the aircraft should never exceed 260 mph, Boyd pushed it to 265 or 270 or 280. He knew intuitively by the sound of the aircraft
when it was approaching not the book limits but the true limits, which, for those bold enough to search for them, always are
slightly greater. Test pilots do the same thing, but most of them are engineers and highly skilled pilots tuned to a razor
edge of proficiency. Few student pilots are so bold.
Pilots who pride themselves on their finesse, who never deviate more than fifty feet from their assigned altitude or more
than ten knots from their airspeed, or who fly maneuvers strictly by the book, would say that Boyd was “heavy-handed.” And
they would be correct. But there is little finesse in air combat. Many civilians and those who have never looked through the
gun sight—then called a pipper—at an enemy aircraft have a romantic perception, no doubt influenced by books and movies about
World War I, that pilots are knights of the air, chivalrous men who salute their opponents before engaging in a fight that
always is fair. They believe that elaborate rules of aerial courtesy prevail and that battle in the clear pure upper regions
somehow is different, more glorified and rarefied, than battle in the mud. This is arrant nonsense. If anything, aerial combat
is far meaner and grittier than ground combat. It is a primitive form of battle that happens to take place in the air. Fighter
pilots—that is, the ones who survive air combat—are not gentlemen; they are back-stabbing assassins. They come out of the
sun and attack an enemy when he is blind. They sneak up behind or underneath or “bounce” the enemy from above or flop into
position on his tail—his sixo’clock position—and “tap” him before he knows they are there. That is why fighter pilots jink
and weave and dart about like water bugs in a mason jar. They never hold a heading or a position longer
than six or eight seconds. Aerial combat is brutally unforgiving. To come in second place is to die, usually in a rather spectacular
manner. Most casualties never know they are targets until they are riddled with bullets, covered with flames, and on the way
to creating a big hole in the ground. Those who want to engage in the romanticized World War I pirouette of a fair fight will
have a short career. Thus, aerial combat favors the bold, those who are not afraid to use the airplane for its true purpose:
a gun platform. There is nothing sophisticated about sneaking up on someone and killing him. Aerial combat is a blood sport,
a knife in the dark. Winners live and losers die. Boyd instinctively knew this and his flying was, from the beginning, that
of the true fighter pilot.
A month before he graduated, he took Christmas leave and, after an engagement of only three months, he and Mary were married
in the Presbyterian church in Ottumwa. Boyd wore his Air Force uniform. Elsie and Ann were there. Boyd had little money or
time for a honeymoon, so he and Mary drove twenty-five miles to Fairfield, home of Parsons College, and rented a hotel room
for several days. Then, together, they set off for Columbus.
During the last months of flight training—when it is clear they will graduate and be awarded the wings of an Air Force pilot—the
trainees are divided into those who will go to multiengine aircraft and those who will fly fighters.
Fighter pilots were what the Air Force needed. On the bomber side of the Korean War, the B-29s and B-50s of the Strategic
Air Command (SAC) suffered heavy losses flying daytime missions and were reduced to flying almost entirely at night and in
smaller numbers. SAC was neither prepared nor equipped to fight a small conventional war; SAC was geared toward delivering
nuclear weapons. It was different on the fighter side of the war. Six fighter wings were stationed in Korea, one in Japan,
and another in Okinawa—all dedicated to the war in Korea. A wing consists of three squadrons, each theoretically comprised
of twenty-four to thirty-two aircraft. A fighter wing has about ninety-six aircraft. Thus, these six wings had a theoretical
maximum of 500–600 aircraft, although the actual number was about half that. F-86 pilots rotated to noncombat duty after one
hundred missions, and there was always a demand for replacements.
Korea was a fighter war, not a bomber war, and chances are slim that a fighter pilot as skillful as Boyd would have been sent
to bombers. But as Boyd tells the story, there was a plot afoot to keep him out of F-86s. Boyd claimed the Air Force told
him he was too tall to be a fighter pilot and would have to fly bombers. “Bullshit, I will not go to multi-engines. I will
not stay in the service if I have to go to multiengines,” he recalled telling them. He threatened to resign his commission.
If Boyd did deliver such an ultimatum, a big part of it was bluff. He knew if he tried to resign the Air Force would keep
him on active duty, give him a demeaning job, and make his life miserable until he was discharged. Boyd was too committed
to flying jets simply to walk away. If indeed he was told he was going to fly bombers, and if he did threaten to resign, the
most likely reason is that he wanted to prove the point that he would rather leave the service than fly bombers. This might
sit well with superiors who appreciated a passionate approach. Whatever happened, Boyd got his wish and was assigned to fighters,
and the story of Boyd’s ultimatum, like that of tearing down the hangars in Japan, was valuable primarily for what it revealed
about his mind-set. For the remainder of his career, Boyd would see plots and punishment in every new assignment. Again and
again there would be a campaign to embarrass or humiliate him with a nonflying job, a bureaucratic battle would ensue, and
he, against great odds and with his career on the line, would ultimately prevail.
Williams AFB in Arizona was known as “Willy” or the “Patch” and, as the incubator for fighter pilots, was one of the most
famous bases in the Air Force. Here, pilots climbed into jets for the first time. Willy also was the jumping-off point for
specialized training. If a pilot was to fly the F-84 fighter-bomber, he would transfer from Willy to Luke AFB, also in Arizona,
for combat training. If he was to fly the F-86, he would be sent to Nellis AFB in Nevada.
Instructors at Willy knew that every pilot they trained would be sent to Korea, and they took it as their solemn and sacred
duty to make sure the young pilots were well-trained and highly professional. Upon arriving at Willy in April 1952, class
52-F gathered in an auditorium for their welcome. A colonel stood in front of them, stared belligerently, then said, “If I
had my way, we’d kill half you sons of bitches. The other half would leave here as fighter pilots.” He
let them chew on that for a moment and then said, “But the goddamn Congress won’t let me do that.”
Nevertheless, he tried. Class 52-F had more than its share of training accidents and fatalities. The pace was stepped up and
the transition to jets and to basic combat training was made as realistic as possible—a prelude to even more realistic training
for those who would go to Nellis. But Boyd chafed under the regimen. “A lot of the things they were doing there I had already
learned, and I wanted it to go a bit faster to pick up the pace,” he recalled. “I felt as if I was being held back—that is,
until I got that first jet ride, then I really liked it.”
He began his jet training in the F-80 “Shooting Star,” a single-engine, straight-winged jet that was slow and underpowered.
Early models of the F-80 had no ejection seat, so if the aircraft caught fire or “flamed out” or had a mechanical problem,
the pilot was in serious trouble, especially a pilot as tall as Boyd. The least he could hope for was banged up knees. If
he was flying a model of the F-80 with an ejection seat, he would be lucky if his legs were not broken or even amputated.
Tall F-80 pilots were solicitous toward their mechanics.
Boyd found the rules were different when flying a jet. Ease the throttle forward in the T-6 and there is a rising thunder
of noise and a surge of power that can pull a pilot through a loop or around the corner in a tight turn. But careless throttle
application in a jet caused a new phenomenon known as “flame out.” Some of the early jet engines were unreliable and suddenly
stopped in flight. And when young pilots pushed the outside of the envelope during tactical engagements, they sometimes overestimated
their flying abilities and crashed in the desert.
Boyd never worried about any of this. “I started to do my dirty tricks again—I just could not avoid them,” he said. Part of
advanced flight training at Willy was what Boyd called “stupid cross-country trips,” where the pilot would report in regularly
by radio. Rather than flying these trips, Boyd took his F-80 down to where he knew friends from Luke AFB were flying F-84s
in simulated air-to-air combat and joined in. Several times when he was supposed to be on a cross-country flight, he went
out to where the instructors practiced simulated air-to-air to “bounce” them. They did not like this, especially when he won.
During his Oral History interview, Boyd was asked what he thought about when he found himself on the defensive in those early
air-to-air engagements. He manifested both the macho nature of a fighter pilot and the thinking of fighter aviation at the
time when he replied, “I had to bend the shit out of that airplane” and “hose” the opponent.
To “bend” an airplane was to pull more Gs than the enemy, to put one’s aircraft on the inside of the pursuit curve and gain
the advantage from which he could fire.
When a jet fires its guns, tracers allow the pilot to correct his aim. If the jet is pulling Gs, the stream of tracers bends
and looks like the stream of water from a hose that is moved quickly. Thus, to “hose” an enemy is to get him in the pipper,
follow him with tracers, and—as pilots say—wax his ass.
Halfway through the training, the instructors looked over the best of the young pilots, those who manifested not only stick-and-rudder
skills, but who had what has been described as “the spirit of attack borne in a brave heart,” and selected them to transition
into the F-86 Sabre. Boyd was selected.