Weapon Proficiency: John Boyd’s Mastery of the Hun

One of the reasons John Boyd was the greatest fighter pilot is because he was the master of his weapon, the F-100 Super Sabre. Among pilots, the F-100 was called “the Hun” which was short for hundred.

The Hun was a difficult aircraft to fly. It had a whole bunch of peculiarities that caused it to “depart flight”. One quarter of all the Huns in service crashed and many considered the plane a widow maker.

John Boyd loved the Hun’s eccentricities. He didn’t let the danger keep him from flying the Hun like every other aircraft he had flown. This meant that he flew it beyond the parameters of the instruction manual, trying a wide variety of unorthodox manuevers to discover for himself the most effective tactics for the Hun’s abilities.

The Hun was the fastest military fighter built at that time and pilots believed that the Hun was safer at fast speeds. But Boyd also explored the Hun’s slow speed spectrum and he found that the Hun would decelerate faster than other planes and could still fly even when the airspeed indicator would sometimes read zero.

One maneuver that Boyd could do better than anyone else was “flat-plating the bird”. He would pull the stick straight back with both hands, nosing the aircraft up and turning all the surfaces that normally fly the plane into a giant speed brake. His opponent could not slow down fast enough and would pass right by. (Visually demonstrated in the movie Top Gun.) Boyd learned to do this not just at level flight, but at any angle of attack and even during turns.

While teaching tactics at Fighter Weapon School, Boyd would occasionally encounter a hotshot pilot that believed that he knew it all and resisted further instruction. Boyd called this resistance an “obstruction” which needed to be removed. Boyd would offer up his 40 second challenge as bait for the student.

Boyd would start the challenge by doing a few maneuvers that were easy to counter luring his opponent into a false sense of security. Then he would suddenly unleash his unconventional tactics based on the OODA Loop and his mastery of the Hun. When his opponent got behind in his loop, Boyd would finish the fight by flat-plating the bird. This would cause the hotshot to shoot right past and hear Boyd’s laughter cackling in his ear, “Guns, guns, guns!” It usually only took Boyd 20 seconds, not the whole 40.

On the ground, Boyd would brag about the beating to all the other pilots. Humiliated in an ego-driven culture, the obstruction had been removed.

Boyd had the luxury of only needing to master one weapon. As a police officer one weapon isn’t appropriate for all levels of resistance. Some officers take this fact to an extreme and put every weapon possible on their duty belt and attempt to learn every possible defensive tactic . A more effective strategy would be to carry a few weapons and learn a few control techniques that are effective and appropriate over the force spectrum range and master them. If you mimicked Boyd, when you master a weapon or technique, use it every appropriate chance.

An example is Robert Hindi. He appears to be a ninja with an ASP Baton. He has several videos that show his ability and knowledge of it. He even made some improvements on the ASP to make it better, the Hindi Baton Cap. When Robert Hindi comes up against resistance that allows him to use his ASP, I’m sure he is grinning as he removes the “obstruction” from the suspect’s thoughts.

Most police officers won’t have the drive to become as proficient as John Boyd or Robert Hindi, but the fact that you are seeking out information at Spartan Cops means you are more driven than most officers. Focus on becoming better at a few weapons and control techniques and you will be better than 95% of other officers and more confident in your abilities when confronted by a suspect.

Related posts:

1. Developing the Warrior Mind: Boyd’s OODA loop and Cooper’s Color Code lay the foundation Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Sgt. John...
2. Edged Weapon Mass Murder Editor’s Note:This is a guest post from Ron Borsch. Ron’s...
3. Video: Firearms Training for Contact Shots Most firearms tactics and techniques tend to focus on having...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.