The late 40s and 50s were the Jet age. The Jet age began right after Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound and it later spawned the book
Early Military Career and Fighter Weapons School
John Boyd was a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. He began his career in 1945. He went to flight school and flew combat missions at the end of the Korean War. He was considered an excellent pilot and was sent to Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base right after the war.
Fighter Weapons School was the premier training facility for fighter pilots. After graduating from the school, students were sent back to their squadrons to teach other pilots the tactics they learned. (The navy later copied the Air Force version of FWS and called it Top Gun.) Six months after returning to their squadron, some of the best students were called back to FWS to be instructors. Once in a rare while, a student was considered so good that they didn’t even return to their squadron and were immediately made an instructor at FWS. John Boyd was one of those rare students.
The test pilots like Chuck Yeager at Edwards Air Force Base were better known because of the media attention given to them. They were excellent pilots but their skills were not in combat but in researching and evaluating aircraft. They had to fly the plane in a manner prescribed by engineers and record the results rather than flying by the seat of their pants like the pilots at FWS. In aerial combat training, a FWS instructor was expected to win every time, even against the media darlings at Edwards.
40 Second Boyd
If the FWS instructors were the best in the nation, probably the best in the world, then John Boyd was the best of them.
Boyd had a standing wager as an instructor at the school. Meet him in the air at 30,000 feet and get on his tail. He would reverse the positions and get you in his guns in 40 seconds or he would give you 40 dollars.
That was a quite a bit of money on a Captain’s salary in 1950. It would be equivalent to $356 today. He challenged anyone and everyone including students, other FWS instructors, and the best fighter pilots in the US and other countries. He never lost.
Others began calling him 40 second Boyd. He was the best fighter pilot in the nation at that time. Many consider him the best fighter pilot ever.
Combat for Police Officers
So what does that have to do with combat for police officers? Boyd was flying a plane and his battleground was in the air. What does that have in common with us?
When someone is considered the best of the best in any type of combat there are probably things we can learn from them. Who among us could challenge all other officers to gunfighting or groundfighting challenges and win every time. In Boyd’s case, two things stood out that allowed him to beat all others.
He was the master of his weapon, the Super Sabre F-100, and he was an unmatched student, teacher, and researcher of tactics. Those will be focus of some forthcoming articles on Boyd.
Best book and reference on John Boyd: Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
Other posts about the OODA Loop:
The OODA Loop: A simple concept for modern combat strategy
How to zip through the OODA Loop
Slowing down your opponent’s OODA Loop
Related posts:
- Weapon Proficiency: John Boyd’s Mastery of the Hun One of the reasons John Boyd was the greatest fighter...
- 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...
- The Ultimate Weapons System: Training the Mind Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Sgt. Steve...
- Rebooting the OODA Loop Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Ron Borsch....
- Excellent teaching techniques for the next police school you instruct I attended a school on Leadership taught by Bill Westfall....
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For a list of books about John Boyd, click on the website link above. I am building a complete bibliography of Boydiana in preparation for writing my dissertation on the applicability of the OODA loop to counter-insurgency doctrine. Blue skies! — Dan Ford
Thank you Dan. We are honored that you found our website. Your article When Sun-tzu met Clausewitz: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and the invasion of Iraq is excellent.