Now it was Boyd behind the student, barking, “Guns! Guns! Guns!” Then there was raucous laughter and, “You just got hosed.”
If the student thought this was a fluke and wanted to do it again, Boyd obliged. The outcome was always the same. “Boyd rode
his students until they squealed like pigs, then took them home and made fun of them,” said one of his former students. When
the student realized that continuing the engagement would only add to his humiliation, he signaled he had enough. After they
landed Boyd walked up to the student and asked, “Now do you still think you’re a great pilot?”
“No, Sir,” was the obvious answer.
The elegantly violent slow-speed maneuver does not square with Boyd’s admonition to keep up the airspeed for follow-on maneuvers.
He used it to prove to students that no matter how good they thought they were, they could always learn. And he taught it
as the “desperation maneuver” every fighter pilot should know when he is about to get hosed and there is no other option.
He did the maneuver both
with wings level and in a turn. He did it over the top and out of the bottom. The maneuver taught Boyd that when the F-100
was at a high angle of attack and slow airspeed, the
only
way to control it was with rudders. Keeping the stick locked in the middle and controlling both rolls and turns with the
rudder kept the Hun out of adverse yaw. Nevertheless, most students, even most experienced cadre instructors, were afraid
to try it. It was another of the Hun’s “JC maneuvers”—one that caused the pilot involuntarily to explode over the radio with
a “Jesus Christ.” If it was not done exactly right, it could pop rivets and even warp the wing. It also could cause the Hun
to depart flight and go into a nonrecoverable spin. Boyd taught that the secret was bracing the elbows on the sides of the
cockpit to avoid moving the ailerons and then pumping the rudders.
Boyd sent word to Edwards he had solved the adverse yaw problem. When the golden arms laughed at the temerity of the young
captain, he flew an F-100 over to Edwards and made believers out of them. Then he sent word to North American and they, too,
laughed in disbelief. What could a fighter pilot, a mere captain, do that the dozens of engineers who designed the aircraft
could not do? The senior test pilot at North American came to Nellis and Boyd put him in the front seat of an F-100F and took
him up and proved his point. Thereafter it was written into the flight manuals and taught by every instructor pilot in the
Air Force: when the Hun is at high angle of attack and low airspeed, don’t move the stick laterally. Use the rudders as the
primary control for both roll and turn. Afterward, every time a pilot landed the Hun, he centered the stick and worked the
rudders. It went against everything a pilot learned in flight training and in flying air-to-air combat, but it worked and
became a way of life for Hun drivers. Almost overnight the number of crashes in the F-100 decreased.
It was this quick and violent maneuver that began the legend of “Twenty-Second Boyd.” Boyd became so confident of his ability
in the F-100 that he had a standing offer for every class that went through the FWS: “Meet me over the Green Spot at thirty
grand. Get in trail. Get in close at about five hundred feet. I’ll reverse our positions in twenty seconds or pay you twenty
bucks.”
Wheels were heard grinding in the heads of young fighter pilots when Boyd made his claim:
I’m tight on his six and he rolls right. I hang
close. Five seconds. He pulls heavy Gs. I stay with him. Ten seconds. Even if he pulls more Gs and spits me out of a firing
position, that’s fifteen seconds. He still has to get behind me. I break and go for separation. He can’t do it. No way in
hell he can reverse our positions in twenty seconds.
Boyd beat the pilots. But saying he could do it in twenty seconds was, to other pilots, an outrageous statement. Time was
the friend of the pilot in the defensive position. The more time he had, the better his chance of throwing the offensive pilot
out front. Boyd soon amended his wager to forty seconds and forty dollars. But “Forty-Second Boyd” still beat all challengers
in about twenty seconds, a truly extraordinary feat that even today amazes other fighter pilots.
The only counter to the maneuver Boyd used was to do the same thing in the opposite direction. But it had to be done intuitively,
instantly, with not a split second of hesitation. And it had to be done as violently as Boyd did it. Even when pilots knew
what Boyd was going to do, the reputation of the F-100 prevented them from following through. No one would manhandle the Hun
the way Boyd did.
No doubt exists that Boyd beat every young pilot who came to the FWS. This is not as surprising as it might sound, even if
the students were the best young pilots in the Air Force. They might be good in their squadrons, but they had little training
in air-to-air combat. Even if they had, no one pushed the outside of the envelope like instructors at the FWS. Boyd should
have beaten the students. But the legend of John Boyd has it that he also defeated cadre pilots, Navy pilots, Marine pilots,
and—beginning in the late 1950s—the foreign-exchange pilots who came through Nellis. He took on all challengers.
Nothing in Boyd’s long and tumultuous career causes such a violent reaction among old fighter pilots as hearing about the
invincible Forty-Second Boyd. It sets their teeth on edge. They say all this business about being the best is a boy’s game
and that there is no “world’s greatest fighter pilot”—that even the very best pilot can have a bad day. They quote the adage,
“There never was a horse that couldn’t be rode and there never was a cowboy that couldn’t be throwed.” But if they went through
Nellis in the mid- and late 50s, they knew there was someone better. And it still rankles.
Then, too, most fighter pilots operate at the existing skill level. They never improve the state of their art and they never
add anything to their profession. Boyd did both. And that rankles even more.
Some fighter pilots from Boyd’s day now say Boyd was a one-trick pony, that he had that stupid endgame desperation move, a
move that would have gotten him killed in combat. Some say he was easy to beat because he was predictable. But none can come
up with the name of a pilot who beat Boyd.
Boyd’s standing offer struck fighter pilots at the very core. He was rubbing their noses in his superior ability. The offer
was a personal affront to every man who considered himself a fighter pilot. No one could be as good as Boyd was supposed to
be. Fighter pilots ached to see him beaten. Word would have swept through the Air Force in days about the pilot who defeated
Forty-Second Boyd. Details of the engagement, every turn, every maneuver, the final closure, the triumphant “Guns! Guns! Guns!”
would have been played and replayed wherever fighter pilots gathered. The pilot who defeated John Boyd would have been remembered.
The only man who ever came close was Hal Vincent, a Marine Corps pilot who fought Boyd to a dead heat. Vincent was so impressed
with Boyd that he applied for and was accepted as a student at the FWS—the first Marine ever to attend. And as is the way
of Marines, he was the top graduate in his class.
Boyd fought countless air battles in the mid- and late 50s. He was never defeated. He was the champ, the title holder.
Pope John,
some called him. Others said he was the best fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force. And they were right.
D
URING
the civil rights days of the mid-50s, Nevada was known as the Mississippi of the West. Restaurants and hotels and casinos
displayed signs that said,
NO COLORED TRADE SOLICITED
. Nevada congressmen were afraid the federal government might interfere with the burgeoning gambling industry, and they defended
states’ rights as ardently as did the congressmen of any southern state.
Black people in Las Vegas lived on the west side of town, and it was on the west side that the first major interracial hotel
/ casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened in 1954. It closed only six months later and ended integrated entertainment in Las Vegas
until early in 1960. Sammy Davis Jr. performed at the Moulin Rouge. He and other black entertainers such as Pearl Bailey,
Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Harry Belafonte, and Eartha Kitt also performed at the famous hotels on the Las Vegas Strip,
but they could not stay in those hotels, nor could they eat in the restaurants. They stayed on the west side at the Apache
Hotel or in rooming houses.
In early 1960 the Las Vegas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) told the mayor of Las Vegas
that southern-style marches would begin unless the Strip was desegregated within thirty days. Mafia dons who then owned and
operated
many of the Las Vegas casinos thought black people were after a piece of the action. Dr. James McMillan was a dentist and
leader of the Las Vegas civil rights movement. He recalled that a casino owner called the NAACP and passed along the word
from Mafia leaders. The word, as it usually was when it came from Mafia leaders, was blunt: back off or you’ll be found floating
facedown in Lake Mead.
Dr. McMillan replied that he was not trying to cut into the casino business. All he wanted was to make Las Vegas more cosmopolitan.
Opening casinos and restaurants to blacks, a new market, would make more money for the casino owners. Desegregation would
be good for business.
This the Mafia understood. A few days later the casino owner called Dr. McMillan again. “It’s okay. They’re going to integrate
this town.”
The national media picked up the story. Las Vegas would no longer discriminate in public accommodations. Black people could
stay at Strip hotels and eat at restaurants there. A formal agreement desegregating all hotel / casinos on the Strip was signed
in March 1960, and that is the date usually accepted for the desegregation of hotels and restaurants in Las Vegas.
But three years earlier, John Boyd forced the desegregation of Las Vegas.
It happened this way.
Boyd was becoming more and more interested in math and aerial tactics. He did not want his staff contaminated by the raucous
Friday afternoons on base, especially at the Stag Bar behind the Officers Club, so he and Sprad began inviting their staffs
to a Friday brunch at the Sahara Hotel. Boyd always was first in line at the enormous buffet for which Las Vegas hotels remain
famous. After shoveling the food down, he shoved his chair away from the table, reached into his breast pocket for a Dutch
Master, ripped away the cellophane, bit off the end, and struck a match. After a few deep puffs he smiled upon his staff,
most of whom barely had begun their meals, and began to expound upon his ideas about the nature of aerial combat and how,
if the bomber generals didn’t destroy him, he was going to change fighter aviation.
Two hours was the maximum time Boyd allowed for these brunches. His name for the government was “Uncle,” as in “Uncle
Sam,” and he believed that he owed Uncle a solid day’s work. It might be Friday afternoon and fighter pilots might be gathering
at the Stag Bar, but the pilots who worked for Boyd would return to the office and stay there until 4:30
P
.
M
.
One day in 1957 a new instructor came to the FWS: First Lieutenant Oscar T. Brooks. He was black.
The next Friday rolled around and by midmorning Boyd’s staff was preparing to leave for the drive down Las Vegas Boulevard
to the Sahara. Spradling pulled Boyd aside, nodded toward Lieutenant Brooks, who was standing across the room, and said, “John,
is this a good idea?”
“Is what a good idea?”
“Taking Oscar to the Sahara. They will throw us out if Oscar goes. He’s going to be embarrassed.”
Boyd turned to Spradling and his voice was low and urgent and intense. “Sprad, goddammit, he’s going. We’re going down there
as a group and if they kick us out they’ll have to kick out the whole base. They’ll have to kick out the fucking U.S. Air
Force.”
“But, John, I was just—”
“Sprad, if they object to Oscar, they have to object to all of us. The Air Force is integrated. We have been for years. We
don’t have a problem. It’s their goddamn problem.”
A fighter pilot is a fighter pilot is a fighter pilot. If a man can drive a Hun it doesn’t matter what color he is.
Go as a group they did.
Spradling was nervous. He was in civilian clothes but Boyd and the six other pilots wore Class A summer uniforms and were
conspicuous in the crowd of about one hundred diners in the large dining room. Spradling wondered if the waiters would refuse
to serve them or if the manager would ask them to leave. He wondered how Lieutenant Brooks would react. He wondered most of
all how Boyd would react.
The group walked through the buffet line and took their plates to the table. Waiters came with drinks. A manager hovered nearby.
But if anyone thought of asking the group to leave, one look at Boyd’s glowering face was enough to give them pause. Boyd
had on his hard look, the one he had learned from his mother. It was a stern and foreboding
visage that brooked no disagreement. He was daring anyone in the hotel to make any sort of scene. He was anxious for battle.
Nothing happened. Everyone was served quickly and courteously and the manager hovered nearby to make sure everything went
smoothly.
Boyd and his fighter pilots desegregated Las Vegas that Friday in 1957. It was not a one-time event. They went back almost
every Friday until Boyd was transferred in the summer of 1960.
By then the city of Las Vegas had followed their lead.
Boyd became an Air Force legend not only for his flying, but for his abilities as a teacher. A typical day in the classroom
went something like this:
At about 8:00
A.M
., Captain John Boyd strode briskly into a classroom in the old World War II frame building that served as the Academic Section
of the FWS. He stepped up on the platform, walked to the lectern, and picked up two F-100 models mounted on dowels. Then he
turned to the ten or twelve young men sitting in straight-backed wooden chairs and said, “Good morning, gentlemen.”