The most important part of the Korean War for Boyd was not that he never shot down a MiG, but rather what he did and what
he discovered after hostilities ceased. Rarely in the life of a man are successes so clearly stacked one atop the other in
a precise, easy-to-see evolution as they are in the life of John Boyd. The accomplishments of Korea are the foundation of
that evolution.
First, Boyd’s ability as a pilot was outstanding. After hostilities ceased, most of the high-time combat veterans quickly
rotated to flesh out fighter squadrons at other bases around the world. F-86s still patrolled MiG Alley, and on the return
flights, if there was sufficient fuel, the pilots engaged in simulated air-to-air combat. On days when there were no reconnaissance
flights, the pilots slid into their Sabres, climbed to 30,000 feet, and fought until the fuel was exhausted. Boyd clearly
was the best F-86 driver in the squadron, so good that on October 20, 1953, he was made the assistant operations officer.
In addition to being known as a “good stick,” Boyd became known in his squadron for the appetite that had so impressed his
fellow pilots at Columbus AFB. The Officers Club had an all-you-can-eat “steak night” once a week. Jerald Parker remembers
that he and Boyd would go to the club together, order a steak, and begin eating. Parker would take only a few bites when Boyd
would jump up and go for his second, usually bigger, steak. By now Boyd also was becoming known as a talker, and about the
only thing he talked about was airto-air combat. He had a one-track mind. He talked as fast as he ate, and he could do both
at the same time. Sometimes food and spittle flew from his mouth as he talked. Other officers spoke of Boyd’s table manners
with dismay, even disgust. His behavior was most unbecoming for an officer and a gentleman. Few other pilots wanted to sit
near Boyd at the dining table. He leaned close when he talked to them. And if he thought they did not understand, he would
reach out with a long finger, poke them in the chest, and demand, “Do you get what I am telling you?”
He talked so much and so often and so loudly about tactics that on November 25 he was made a flight commander and tactics
instructor for the squadron. (The Air Force later changed the “tactics instructor” title to “weapons officer.”) At this point,
what Boyd was teaching was a refinement and an extension of existing tactics. He was simply a
great stick with no reluctance to push the outside limits of the performance envelope.
Pilots were intrigued both by Boyd’s aircraft handling skills and by his ideas. They asked him to write his tactics down and
prepare diagrams of various tactical maneuvers. He eagerly accepted the task and began making notes, putting briefings together,
and studying tactics of previous wars. He stayed up during the long cold Korean nights writing lesson plans. Soon he was holding
classes.
Even Boyd’s fellow F-86 pilots, all of whom were avid and passionate about flying jets, were struck by his enthusiasm and
energy. More than one said they had never seen a man before or since who was so single-minded about aviation. He did not see
the F-86 as an engine and fuselage and an inanimate collection of esoteric parts; he saw it as a sleek and beautiful and lethal
weapon of war, almost a living thing, each aircraft having its own personality, each to be ridden into the heavens in the
name of the United States of America.
When Boyd talked of aerial tactics, he grimaced and waved his arms, paced the room, wiggled his shoulders, and snapped his
head back and forth. His voice was loud and nonstop. Nervous energy steamed from him. If a person asked him a question, and
if Boyd thought the person truly sought knowledge, Boyd would tell him everything he wanted to know about aerial tactics.
But he expected those who disagreed to come around to his viewpoint—and quickly. If someone belittled his ideas, they were
instantly and forever dismissed from his life. They ceased to exist. He never spoke to them again.
Boyd’s ideas about tactics were germinating and sprouting at a time when all the world was agog at America’s extraordinary
superiority and domination of the skies over MiG Alley. At the end of the war, the MiG was on the losing end of a kill ratio
that had been as high as fourteen to one and finally settled at ten to one. The official count for the war was 792 MiGs shot
down and 78 F-86s shot down. (Such numbers remain suspect in some quarters. True wins and losses are almost never revealed,
even after a war is over. But the ten to one kill ratio remains the number published in histories of Korea.) The extraordinarily
lopsided kill ratio, while it made Air Force generals puff out their chests and boast, caused great confusion among serious
thinkers in the Air Force. The MiG should have done much
better against the F-86. In many ways it was a far superior aircraft. It could make harder turns than the F-86, could out-accelerate
it, and had better high-altitude performance. The MiG was one hell of an airplane. So what happened?
The confusion was put to rest with a rationale that since has become conventional wisdom. Even today, a half-century later,
when people talk of how the F-86s defeated the MiGs, they give as the reason, “Our pilots were better trained than the MiG
pilots.” And that is true. But it is also true that this logic became an intellectual wastebasket to hide the fact that no
one could come up with a better reason.
But Boyd studied the detailed records of each air-to-air engagement and knew there had to be another reason. It took him another
decade to figure out what it was. And when he did, it changed aviation forever.
Boyd’s brief tour in Korea is put in perspective by what then was called an Officer Efficiency Report—an “OER” or, as it sometimes
was shortened, “ER.” In the Air Force of the 1950s, an officer’s promotions—and thus his career—were dependent almost entirely
on his ERs. One bad ER could wreck an officer’s career.
An ER was two pages, three if there were additional indorsements. (The Air Force uses “indorsement” rather than “endorsement.”)
A civilian looking at an ER would say it is straightforward in its language. But this is deceptive, even misleading. Writing
an ER is an art form—reading it, for the uninitiated, is like trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls. Language that appears
to be the highest praise can in reality be language that ends a career. That is why sometimes even today when an officer is
forced out of the military, he waves his ERs to the media, and, not knowing how to read them, the media join the cause and
say this extraordinary officer has been treated unjustly.
The most crucial parts of an ER were the first and last paragraphs on the second page. Boyd’s squadron commander explained
how, after hostilities ended, Boyd “did a commendable job in teaching fighter tactics to the members of his flight.” It says
he also taught newly assigned pilots techniques of combat flying.
“I consider Lt. Boyd’s flying ability superior to the pilots of his rank and experience,” the reviewing officer wrote. He
added a few lines about Boyd’s “nervous energy” and how well he got along with
fellow officers. Then came the all-important final paragraph, in which the rating officer evaluated Boyd’s ability for higher
command and greater responsibilities. The best possible rating would recommend Boyd either for early promotion or for a school
that would prepare him for higher command. Such was the case: the final paragraph concluded with a recommendation that Boyd
“be considered for enrollment in the Squadron Officers Course.”
It was a good evaluation, and it was heightened by an even better indorsement from his group commander, a full colonel who
wrote: “Lt. Boyd is an aggressive, capable, dynamic, fearless officer and fighter pilot. The USAF needs more combat pilots
of his caliber if we expect to fulfill the responsibility for the defense of our nation for which the Air Force is unquestionably
destined. Because of his qualifications and experience, I urge Lt. Boyd’s promotion to Captain at the earliest possible date.”
Boyd clearly had made a good impression on his superiors.
Boyd’s combat tour ended and it was time to rotate back to the States. Years later the pilots who roamed MiG Alley would look
back and say Korea was a good war, even a great war for fighter pilots—the last war in which pilots were managed by leaders.
In the next war they would be led by managers.
The Air Force was only seven years old, but it was fast becoming not only a bureaucracy, but a technocracy that worshiped
equipment and gadgets more than any other branch of the military. It was becoming hardware oriented and the goals for its
hardware were simple:
Bigger-Faster-Higher-Farther. Air Force generals were taking a cold look at fighter pilots. The high speed of jet combat caused
generals to believe drastic changes were in order. With the merge speed of fighter aircraft greater than 1,000 mph, guns were
a thing of the past, they said. Missiles were the answer.
Boyd received orders posting him to Nellis AFB. He would be there six years. And in that time he would become the most famous
fighter pilot in the world.
I
N
the mid-1950s the U.S. Air Force was no place for a fighter pilot.
Men who flew bombers in World War II now were leading the Air Force, and their philosophy of air power was based on their
wartime experience: big, multiengine aircraft plunging deeply into enemy territory and dropping bombs. The very existence
of the Air Force as a separate and independent branch of the military was founded on the concept of strategic bombing. Bombers
were the favorite—some would say
only
—aircraft of consequence in the 1950s. America’s national defense was based on the Eisenhower Doctrine of “massive retaliation,”
of having enough aircraft and nuclear bombs to act as a deterrent to any foreign power. Only big bombers could carry nuclear
weapons to any spot on the globe. Americans built bomb shelters, thousands of them, and every schoolchild practiced what to
do if America were attacked by Soviet nuclear weapons. A “limited war” such as Korea was considered an aberration, not a sign
of things to come. Now there could be only escalation between superpowers. Escalation meant nuclear and nuclear meant the
U.S. Air Force. No other branch of the U.S. military had such a solemn responsibility.
In 1954 the Air Force was seven-years old, and like most seven year-olds it was rambunctious, determined to be heard, and
always
demanding new toys. The Air Force was procurement-driven. In 1954 the biggest slice of the Pentagon budget—$12 billion—went
to the Air Force. (The Army received $9.9 billion and the Navy $8.1 billion. The Air Force continued to receive the largest
amount of the Pentagon budget through 1961.) Within the Air Force, most of the money went to the Strategic Air Command. SAC
was led by General Curtis LeMay. And if anyone wanted to know what God would look like in a flight suit, let them gaze upon
General LeMay. “Flying fighters is fun. Flying bombers is important,” he said.
LeMay forged the U.S. Air Force into the most powerful military force in history. He had enormous globe-straddling bombers
and he had nuclear bombs and he had the will to use both. If his public comments meant anything, he
wanted
to use both. At any given time, many of his SAC crews were airborne, loaded with nuclear weapons, flying along the edges
of Soviet airspace, awaiting a coded command to wheel toward the heart of the Soviet Union. Other SAC crews were on alert,
living in bunkers only yards from their loaded aircraft, ready to run across the tarmac, take off, and bomb preselected targets
on the other side of the world. A SAC bomber such as the B-47 could fly so high and so fast that no F-86 could reach it. If
an F-86 couldn’t touch it, the Soviets couldn’t touch it because everyone knew that America built the best aircraft in the
world.
And because SAC officers had such great responsibilities, they were promoted faster than anyone else in the Air Force. They
were responsible for America’s safety. And by keeping America safe, they were keeping the free world safe. SAC crews were
the chosen few, the anointed ones.
“Peace is Our Profession” was the SAC motto as it prepared for Armageddon.
Thus, during the 1950s the primary mission of fighter aviation became intercepting enemy bombers and delivering tactical nuclear
weapons. Fighter aircraft in Europe were cocked and locked—sitting on runways, pilots strapped in the cockpits, with small
nuclear bombs bolted to the belly. If war broke out, the job of fighters was to take out targets too small for a B-47 crew
to worry about.
Fighter pilots spent most of their time training for the air-to-ground (pilots called it “air-to-mud”) mission. Over and over
they practiced thirty-degree and forty-five-degree dive-bombing, skip
bombing, and strafing. SAC generals believed the best use of fighter aviation was as a mini-SAC. Fighter pilots who talked
of dogfights were relics of bygone days. The first air-to-air missiles were in the pipeline and there were whisperings that
these missiles could be fired from ten miles away. Missiles could blow up an enemy aircraft before the enemy pilot even saw
the American fighter. The next generation of fighters, it was argued, would not have guns. The day of airborne gunslingers
was over.
But there remained one place where the flame of fighter aviation was kept alive, one spot in America where the fighter pilot
still reigned supreme, one remote and almost forgotten place where the spirit of attack was implanted in brave hearts. It
was, literally and figuratively, out in the desert.
Nellis.
Nellis was in one of the least-populated and most remote parts of America, almost as if exiled there by the bomber generals.
The air was parched, the wind relentless, and the heat unbearable. Harsh desert and bleak mountains almost surrounded the
base, and here and there were the spavined remains of abandoned mining towns. In the Air Force pecking order of the 1950s,
Nellis was at the bottom of the list. An officer assigned to Nellis knew his chance for promotion was limited. But to a small
group of men, none of this mattered. Nellis was the home of the fighter pilot. And all fighter pilots wanted to do was to
strap on a single-engine jet and go romping across the heavens.