Boyd (23 page)

Elegance is one of the most important attributes of an equation. The briefer and simpler an equation is, the more elegant
it is.
E = mc
²
is, of course, the ultimate example. Boyd’s theory is not only elegant, but it is simple, beautiful, and revolutionary. And
it is so obvious. When people looked at it, they invariably had one of two reactions: they either slammed a hand to their
forehead and said, “Why didn’t I think of that?” or said it had been done before—nothing so simple could have remained undiscovered
for so long.

Boyd now could do more than imagine and believe; he could actually
see
the potential impact of his work. In the beginning the entire thrust of his theory had been to understand the full performance
envelope of American aircraft, with the goal of developing new tactics for aerial battles. Then he realized that if E-M could
quantify the performance of American aircraft, it could—for the first time—do the same for “threat aircraft,” for the MiGs
and Sukhois flown by the Soviets. Finally, if E-M could quantify aircraft performance, why couldn’t he back up the theory
and use it to
design
fighter aircraft?

Upon first learning of Boyd’s early work with E-M, people naturally ask if he had a “target
P
_s
” or an “ideal
P
_s
.” This is not only wrong, it is meaningless. More is usually better in a fighter, but “target” or “ideal” smacks of optimization
and Boyd despised optimization. He wanted E-M to explore possibilities across the entire flight envelope. He then tweaked
designs, made small variations, and saw how they compared, always keeping the improvements and discarding the degradations.
He evolved his way to a design by trial and error. He did not know what he was looking for before the fact. He selected improvements
as a basis for further variations and tests—very Darwinian, which by its nature put him on an unpredictable path. The end
result emerged when variations no longer yielded improvements. The result was an artistic balance and compromise, not an optimization.

Boyd’s E-M research had an unexpected result on his personal appearance. He no longer was the spit-and-polish officer he had
been at Nellis. The creased shirts and trousers and the crisp military look were gone. Wearing civilian clothes for two years
at Georgia Tech
may have contributed to this; pouring all his energy into his research couldn’t have helped. Although Boyd was rumpled and
disheveled and badly put together, he still saw himself as he was at Nellis. When he and Christie walked from one office to
another, he oftentimes chewed out enlisted personnel for looking sloppy. He stood there, his own shirttail hanging over his
belt and his trousers wrinkled, and lectured enlisted men about the importance of respecting the uniform and making a good
appearance for the Air Force. Christie shook his head in disbelief.

Boyd was developing a curious reputation at Eglin. In addition to the E-M and his slovenly appearance, his dining-room habits
were following him. There was talk of submitting his name to the
Guinness Book of World Records
after he was clocked downing two eggs, a slice of ham, two pieces of toast, and a cup of coffee in twenty-two seconds. And
for such a profane man he had a paradoxical streak of the puritan. He once attended a bachelor party, and the sexually suggestive
language, the gag gifts, and the gyrations of a nude female dancer so embarrassed him that he left.

Boyd was so focused on his research that very few things in the daily course of events registered with him. But after he saw
the movie
El Cid,
he talked for weeks of the final scenes. El Cid is gravely ill, but if Spain is to be saved he must lead his troops in battle
against the Moors. El Cid dies one evening and the next morning his body is dressed in armor and tied to his horse and sent
out ahead of his troops, causing the Moors to flee in panic.

The movie had two themes that must have resonated with Boyd: El Cid is a man of unbending principle and patriotism, and he
sees duty as more important than family. Boyd lived by these same lights. But what Boyd could not know was that after he died,
his friends remembered his great affection for the movie and talked of how he, like El Cid, was causing confusion among his
enemies even after death.

Boyd still had no mandate from the Air Force to work on the E-M Theory. Nevertheless, he was determined to have his work acknowledged.
But he had two big problems. First, he had to have the weight, thrust, lift coefficients, and drag polars for every fighter
aircraft. He had to have what engineers call “the numbers.” Second, he had to find a way to translate pages and pages of complex
mathematics into something
that was informative, persuasive, and interesting—something that, as he kept saying, “even a goddamn general can understand.”

Getting the numbers was an almost insurmountable obstacle. The weight of an airplane is a good example. Obtaining the weight
seems simple. But what weight? The ramp weight (what an aircraft weighs sitting on the ramp) is one of the most common measurements.
But the ramp weight, depending upon the amount of fuel or the external racks and weapons, can vary by thousands of pounds.
What is the fuel state of the aircraft when it fights a MiG? What missiles are aboard? The variables for the weight of an
aircraft are endless. The manufacturer and the Air Force always offer stripped-down and misleading figures because the less
an aircraft weighs, the better its performance—and they want the performance to look better than it really is. But the foundation
of E-M is based on having correct numbers. To use spurious data would endanger pilots. Boyd had to have the correct numbers,
and those numbers were at the Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio.

At the time the Air Force was divided into three broad categories: the operational Air Force, the supply Air Force, and the
acquisitions Air Force. Wright-Patterson was the heart of the acquisitions Air Force. Wright-Patterson actually is two bases:
Wright Field and Patterson AFB. But usually this distinction is not made, and the facility is referred to simply as Wright-Pat.
The base is the crown jewel of Air Force bases—what those in the Air Force call a “heartthrob base.” Named for the Wright
brothers, it is one of the oldest bases in the Air Force. The Air Force Museum is at Wright-Pat. And the base has the cachet
of being the intellectual center of the Air Force, the home of the Propulsion Laboratory and the Flight Dynamics Laboratory,
where the Air Force does basic research into aircraft and engines. Wright-Pat has a higher percentage of advanced degrees
and a higher ratio of officers to enlisted men than any other base in the Air Force. Wright-Pat and Eglin both were in the
Air Force Systems Command (AFSC). But the difference between the two bases was the difference between an Ivy League university
and a trade school. People at Wright-Pat looked at Eglin as that place down in the Florida panhandle where pilots played with
their airplanes and dropped bombs and tested guns; it was a hobby shop. The heavy lifting,
the work of consequence, was done in the cloistered confines of Wright-Pat.

While the denizens of Wright-Pat have always had a very high opinion of themselves, that opinion is not universally shared.
A story is told of how a group of former high-ranking German officers was touring military facilities in America and was taken
to Wright-Pat. The officers saw the labs and talked with professorial officers and experienced the lofty mustiness of the
base, and then one of the German officers turned to his host and quietly said, “Now I know why we lost the war.”

His host from Wright-Pat smiled and waited.

“We had
two
bases like this.”

It was this atmosphere that Boyd entered. He flew to Wright-Pat and was driven to the Flight Dynamics Lab, where he explained
what he wanted. The officer with whom he talked must have been bemused by the intense major from Eglin who believed he was
working on some revolutionary idea about aircraft performance. It was as if a first grader had gone to his father and asked
for engineering data on the family auto. But the officer had been told to provide the data. Besides, no harm could be done
by giving this major from Eglin the data. It would be amusing to see just how much he understood. After all, he was only a
fighter pilot.

Then Boyd went to the Foreign Intelligence Division, commonly called Foreign Tech, and asked to see the highly classified
performance data of Soviet aircraft—not how high a MiG-15 can fly or how fast a Sukhoi can go, but the same thing he had asked
for in American aircraft: weight, thrust, lift, drag coefficients, and drag polars. This data was too sensitive for Boyd simply
to throw it in the backseat of his T-33 and carry it to Eglin; it would be sent by special courier.

Boyd was elated when he took off from Dayton the next morning. Rather than flying south to Florida, he flew northeast for
about 350 miles—less than an hour in the air—and landed at Erie.

After talking with his mother for a while, Boyd called his sister Marion and asked her to meet him at their father’s grave.
He liked to visit the cemetery on West Lake Avenue when he was in town. The two met and stood near the grave in silence for
a while. Marion sometimes wondered why her younger brother never asked about her
memories of their father. But he was not the sort of person to whom Marion could say, “John, don’t you want to know about
our father?” So they talked of other things, mostly Boyd’s work at Eglin.

Then Boyd grabbed one of his old bathing suits and drove out to the Peninsula. He and Frank Pettinato walked the beach and
he told Pettinato about the Energy-Maneuverability Theory he was working on and how the Air Force didn’t understand what he
was trying to do and all the high-ranking people who were trying to stop his work. Frank Pettinato Jr. was there too, working
as a lifeguard for his father, and remembers how Boyd then dove into Lake Erie, swam a few hundred yards offshore, turned
and swam effortlessly down the beach for several miles, his long arms slicing deep into the water, legs kicking tirelessly.
Boyd was in his midthirties—to Frank Jr., an old guy—but he never slowed his pace.

Boyd talked more with Frank Pettinato and then was gone. A half-hour later a small silver jet appeared low over the bay and
only a few yards offshore. It roared along in front of Pettinato’s lifeguard tower, then pulled into a steep climb and a wingover
and the pilot came back, this time lower, skimming the surface of Lake Erie. Observers swore the jet was so low that the turbulence
stirred the water. The aircraft climbed out toward the south.

The little straight-wing plain-Jane T-33 was an old and under-powered training jet. There were so many of them they were used
by many officers just to maintain their flying status. But to people in Erie it was a jet fighter. And it was flown by an
Erie man who used to be a lifeguard out at the Peninsula and who had been a combat pilot in Korea. Frank Jr. remembers that
his father was very excited and came over to him and grabbed his arm, pointed at the jet, and said, “See that fighter plane?
That’s John. That’s John Boyd.”

After buzzing the beach, Boyd climbed up to altitude, adjusted the throttle and the trim, and settled back for the flight
down to Eglin. He must have been quite happy. The data from Wright-Pat would be along soon. Frank Pettinato was proud of him.
He knew that Erie was talking about his buzzing the beach at the Peninsula. The poor boy in ragged clothes, the boy with no
father, had grown up to be somebody. He was more than a salesman.

Back at Eglin in the modest house on the corner lot at 11 Bens Lane, Mary waited. When they arrived at Eglin, he had said
to her, “I
want you to try and be more social here than you were at Nellis.” And she had promised. “I’ll change,” she said. “I’ll go
to parties at the club with you and I’ll meet your friends.”

And she did try. She went to a few parties at the club. She followed Boyd around, almost hiding behind him, trailing in his
wake. She was very shy and her Presbyterianism weighed heavily on her. Boyd insisted on introducing her by saying, “This is
my wife, Mary. I found her in an Iowa cornfield.” Everyone laughed but Mary. Once she turned away in tears, but an angry Boyd
said, “Mary, you can’t be a big baby. You have to be tough. You have to face up to things. If you don’t want to do that, why
don’t you just stay at home and feel sorry for yourself?”

Mary frequently stared at Boyd with her big Ottumwa eyes and asked him questions about his childhood and not having a father
and being poor. She reminded him that she had taken several psychology courses at Iowa and she knew about these things.

“You’re are always trying to find out about my weaknesses,” he said.

“I’m not looking for weaknesses. But children who grew up as you did almost always have scars. And you don’t. You just seem
unreal to me.”

“Mary, you are my wife and I want you to be on my side. Not against me.”

But in their time at Eglin, Boyd and Mary did begin to drift apart. Boyd’s work became more important to him than his family.
It is almost as if Boyd believed his family obligations were over once he had finished his job of fathering five children.
Mary’s job was to raise the children while he went about his life’s work.

Mary began spending two or three days each week at the fabled talcum-powder beach of the Florida panhandle. Stephen liked
the beach. He climbed down from his wheelchair and rolled in the gentle surf and was free. He often became sunburned, but
he had so much fun that Mary paid little attention.

I
N
late 1962, Harry Hillaker was one of the most important men in the defense industry. He worked for General Dynamics and was
project engineer for the F-111, the aircraft that Secretary of Defense McNamara decided to make the universal aircraft for
the Navy and Air Force. In theory, the multipurpose aircraft exemplified the cost-effectiveness so beloved by McNamara. It
was hyped as the aircraft that could perform close air support, air-to-air combat, air-to-ground, and nuclear-attack missions.
It could do everything but dust crops.