Boyd gave her a beatific smile and said, “I got the son of a bitch in my pipper.”
A day or so later there was a rash of hot platters and cape jobs and Boyd won another battle and his triumphant laughter was
heard in the halls.
Afterward, when Boyd put his feet atop his desk and began moving his pencil around and staring at the eraser, someone would
say, “Oh, God. He’s got somebody in his pipper.” They knew hell was about to break loose all over again.
TAC always has seen speed as a vital part of air-to-air combat and wanted the F-X to have a Mach 3 top speed. Never mind that
combat always starts at subsonic cruise speed and almost never reaches supersonic speed. Never mind that the trade-offs necessary
for an airplane to reach such speeds would seriously degrade dogfighting performance. As for range, there is no faster way
to degrade performance on a fighter than to ask for too much.
The Air Force feeling about weight was demonstrated during a meeting when the TAC colonel in charge of fighter requirements
stood up and said, “I don’t give a damn what the airplane weighs. The specs we gave you are the absolute validated TAC requirements.
We have to have these things and I don’t care about the weight. Besides, everyone knows a good big airplane is better than
a good little airplane.”
This was the very antithesis of what E-M revealed to Boyd.
In late spring of 1968, the Air Force was still so influenced by the F-111, so mesmerized by the heavy and expensive variable-geometry
wing, that it had not made the fundamental decision as to whether the F-X would be a swing-wing or a fixed-wing design.
By now Boyd was losing major design battles. The Air Force insisted on a speed greater than Mach 2. The Air Force insisted
on a radar with a thirty-six-inch dome—a requirement that dictated a much larger fuselage than Boyd wanted. Despite orders
from the chief of staff, the F-X was now at an estimated 42,500 pounds (actually, it was much larger), and the performance,
while unprecedented, was far degraded from what it could have been.
Sprey called the heavy and expensive additions “gold-plating.” He had no patience with those who wanted to add so many heavy
items
that had nothing to do with shooting down another airplane—everything from nose wheel steering to boarding ladders to tail
hook. “If you take off all the nonkill horseshit—everything not necessary to kill another aircraft—you can’t believe how the
performance goes up.”
Boyd and Sprey were desperate. They decided to make one final effort to save the F-X. They would go back to the ideal aircraft.
Night after night they labored at the Pentagon, drawing plans for an airplane they called the “Red Bird,” a 33,000-pound stripped-down
version of the F-X. Boyd briefed the Air Staff at the Pentagon. On July 18, 1968, Sprey wrote a letter to General James Ferguson,
head of the Systems Command. The letter became famous and was passed around the Pentagon, where a few young officers saw it
as a masterful dissection of how the Air Force had gone wrong. They admired the brilliance of the man who wrote it and privately
wondered if they would have the courage to do such a thing. Others saw the letter as the bitter fulminations of the infamous
Boyd / Sprey collaboration. The letter, classified “secret,” said the Air Force had exercised no design discipline on the
F-X, no willingness to forego items that did not directly contribute to shooting down MiGs, but only added weight. Sprey detailed
items such as the tail hook, nose wheel steering, and maintenance ladder and said the Air Force was so anxious to add gold-plating
to the F-X that it was ignoring the ever-rising cost of the airplane. Accompanying the letter was a twenty-three-page, single-spaced
list of technical recommendations to clean up the F-X.
Then Boyd and Sprey briefed General Ferguson, the man who would make the final decision on the F-X. The general agreed with
everything Boyd and Sprey said. He liked their plans for the Red Bird and said it clearly was superior to the F-X.
Then the general dropped the other shoe. He said all the three-stars who worked for him wanted the bigger and heavier version
of the F-X and that he could not go against their recommendations. He tried to console Boyd and Sprey by saying the F-X would
be the best maneuvering fighter in history; why should they get wrapped around the axle trying to make it the perfect airplane?
Once again, the school of Bigger-Higher-Faster-Farther had won.
The Air Force was so busy fighting Boyd that it neglected to stay abreast of what the Navy was doing. A few weeks after the
Ferguson meeting, the Navy announced that its version of the F-111—the
F-111B—had turned out not to be carrier compatible and would not be accepted. The Navy told General Dynamics to cancel its
F-111. Then Great Britain cancelled its order for the aircraft. This meant the Air Force was left holding the bag containing
the expensive remains of the F-111 program. (The Air Force liked the airplane and continued buying it until the mid-1970s.)
But that was not the half of it. Admirals testified to Congress that just because the Navy could not accept the F-111B, it
did not mean the Navy could not continue to perform its vital role in national defense. In fact, they announced, the Navy
had been secretly working on a plane called the F-14 Tomcat and if Congress would give the Navy the money already allocated
for the F-111B, the Navy could go ahead and build the F-14.
The Navy theory about interservice politics is that once the enemy is down, they should slash his throat, burn his remains,
bury the ashes, then sow salt over the land where the ashes are buried. So not surprisingly, the Navy told Congress the F-X
had a fundamental flaw, a flaw so serious that development should be stopped: the F-X could not reach the high speeds or high
altitudes of the MiG-25 and thus could not shoot down the most serious threat presented by Soviet aircraft. But America should
not worry. If the Air Force was unable to design an aircraft capable of meeting the Soviet threat, the Navy was glad to help
out. This phantasmagorical aircraft we are developing, this F-14, will do everything and more than the F-X is supposed to
do. We will be glad to sell the F-14 to the Air Force.
The Air Force countered the first Navy attack by saying the Mach 2.5 “burst speed” of the F-X and the addition of Sparrow
missiles meant the F-X could handle the MiG-25. But the Navy had powerful friends. Some of those friends in Congress had serious
questions about the F-X. The Navy’s offer to sell the F-14 to the Air Force quickly gained acceptance.
An Air Force general was summoned to testify about the F-X to an ad hoc tactical aviation subcommittee that was part of the
House Armed Services Committee. Boyd was the expert on the F-X, so he accompanied the general. Representative Mendel Rivers
of South Carolina, a state about to sink into the Atlantic from the weight of the Navy bases located there, chaired the House
Armed Services Committee. His presence dominated the Tactical Aviation Subcommittee. Boyd and the general were testifying
before a group that openly
believed the F-14 was superior to the F-X. And Rivers was always willing to help out the Navy.
As the general answered question after question, Boyd realized where the queries were leading. The survival of the F-X would
be based on a single issue: whether or not it was a swing-wing design. The subcommittee and the committee and Representative
Rivers were not going to approve a swing-wing design for the F-X when the Navy was building a swing-wing aircraft that was
farther along in production.
A member of the subcommittee scratched his head and in a noncommittal tone, almost as an aside, asked the general if the Air
Force had made a decision about the wing design.
The general paused. Boyd knew that the future of the nonnuclear Air Force hung in the balance; all the work he had done on
the F-X was crystallized in that one frozen moment. He leaped into the breach. “Yes, Sir, we have. The Air Force does not
believe a variable-geometry wing is the answer. In fact, we believe the fixed-wing aircraft is a superior design. The F-X
will be a fixed-wing aircraft.”
It is difficult to know who was the most surprised—the general or the members of the subcommittee. The general stared at Boyd
in disbelief. No decision had been made on the wing design. And now a lieutenant colonel on his own initiative had made a
decision that was the prerogative of a four-star general.
“General, is that correct?” asked a member of the committee.
Boyd whispered to the general what was happening. The general thought for a moment, looked at the congressman, swallowed,
and said, “That is correct. The Air Force has decided our aircraft will be a fixed-wing design.”
Upon his return to the Pentagon, Boyd immediately called the colonel who worked for the chief of staff and told him why he
had made the decision. “I don’t have the final numbers,” he said. “WrightPat is sitting on data I need. But I believe the
weight penalties of the variable-geometry wing more than offset the aerodynamic benefits. I believe the fixed wing is better.
If we had said anything else, the committee would have forced the F-14 on us.” The chief agreed.
Which is how the F-X came to be a fixed-wing aircraft.
Which is how John Boyd saved the Air Force from having to eat another saltwater airplane.
No transcripts from either the Senate Armed Services Committee or the House Armed Services Committee indicate when the F-X
became a fixed-wing aircraft. It is clear from the transcripts of both committees that the Air Force wanted the variable-geometry
wing until late 1968. (The ad hoc committee kept no transcripts.) But both Tom Christie and Pierre Sprey talked with Boyd
immediately after the hearing and are convinced events took place as Boyd described them. Also, from the day of the hearing
onward, there were no more Air Force references to the F-X being a swing-wing aircraft.
History has proven Boyd correct in picking the fixed-wing design. The variable-sweep wing was one of the major aviation engineering
blunders of the century. Hollywood and the movie
Top Gun
notwithstanding, the F-14 Tomcat is a lumbering, poor performing, aerial truck. It weighs about fifty-four thousand pounds.
Add on external fuel tanks and missiles and the weight is about seventy thousand pounds. It is what fighter pilots call a
“grape”: squeeze it in a couple of hard turns and all the energy oozes out. That energy cannot be quickly regained, and the
aircraft becomes an easy target.
Navy admirals strongly discourage simulated battles between the F-14 and the latest Air Force fighters. But those engagements
occasionally take place. And when they do, given pilots of equal ability, the F-14 always loses.
After the Air Force was locked into the fixed-wing design for the F-X, the “X” designation was dropped in favor of a numerical
designation, and since the Navy had the F-14, the F-X became the F-15.
Boyd was disgusted. He could tell that his dream for the pure fighter aircraft had vanished. Yes, he had cut some weight,
and yes, he had killed the variable-sweep wing. But it had taken just about everything out of him to fight and fight and fight
for so much that was so obvious. He knew that in its inexorable way the Air Force would add more gold-plating, more missions,
to the F-15 until one day it would be barely recognizable. On October 24, 1968, he submitted papers saying he would retire
the next year.
T
HE
year 1969 was a curious and bewildering one for America. It was the year Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the year of Woodstock,
and the year
Sesame Street
made its debut on public television. It was the year of war rallies and the year the My Lai story broke—the year a humiliated
Lyndon Johnson left Washington to be replaced by an exultant Richard Nixon, who announced the beginning of troop withdrawal
from Vietnam.
The year 1969 was also the year that Pierre Sprey demonstrated just what sort of men were these Acolytes, these men beginning
to gather around Boyd and devote their lives to his goals and ideals. Sprey was even more bitter than Boyd over what happened
to the F-15. He had come to the Pentagon from the defense industry solely because he wanted to have an impact on the bloated
defense budget and be part of acquiring better weapons for soldiers and airmen. His first effort, born in high idealism and
great hope, had been gold-plated by Blue Suiters and transmogrified into something far less than it could have been. The F-15
was a learning experience that prepared him for an even more difficult task. He was about to loose his considerable talents
on developing another airplane,
an airplane the Air Force did not want
.
To fully appreciate what Sprey did, one must remember that close air support—bombing missions that support ground troops—has
never been a priority mission for the Air Force. Nevertheless, the Air Force officially owned the CAS mission, and no branch
of the service wants to lose a mission, because losing a mission means losing money. The Air Force paid lip service to the
CAS mission, making just enough effort to prevent the Army from taking it over. The best way to show how the Air Force looked
upon CAS is that it
never
—not in World War II, not in Korea, and not in 1969—had an airplane dedicated to CAS. Air Force practice was to take one of
the worst aircraft in its inventory and designate it a close air support airplane. The F-84 in Korea is an example. In Vietnam,
the Air Force used a cast-off Navy airplane: the propeller-driven A-1, which was forced on the Air Force by Secretary of Defense
McNamara. The Air Force was embarrassed by the A-1, never mind that it turned out to be one of the best CAS aircraft used
in combat up to that time. But in 1969 the Air Force learned that the Army wanted to develop a new helicopter called the “Cheyenne.”
The most startling thing about the Cheyenne was that it was so technologically complex that it cost more than an F-4. This
frightened the Air Force. This meant the Army was going to make a run at taking over the CAS mission
and
the CAS money.