February 12, 2015 A Man's Life, Podcast Podcast #101: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War With Robert Coram John Boydis one of the greatest military strategists that hardly anyone knows about. Unmatched in the cockpit during the Korean War, his mind was also without rival. He was not simply a warrior of combat, but a warrior-engineer and warrior-philosopher. Boyd wrote “Aerial Attack Study,” which codified the best dogfighting tactics for the first time, helped design the legendary F-15, F-16, and A-10 aircraft, and developed the strategic tool known as the OODA Loop. Robert Coram, who wrote Boyd’s biography, argues that the OODA Loop made Boyd “the most influential military thinker since Sun Tzu.” In today’s podcast I talk to Mr. Coram about his book Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War,and about the life and career of this fascinating warrior- Podc ast: Rober t Cora m on Joh n Boyd | Th e Ar t of Manli ness ht tp :/ /www .a rt of ma nl in ess.com/ 2015/02/ 12 /podca st -101 -t he -f ight er -pil ... 1 sur 12 19/01/2016 21:19
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BOYD Podcast_ Robert Coram on John Boyd _ the Art of Manliness
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8/18/2019 BOYD Podcast_ Robert Coram on John Boyd _ the Art of Manliness
Podcast #101: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
With Robert Coram
John Boyd is one of the greatest military strategists that hardly anyone knows about. Unmatched in the
cockpit during the Korean War, his mind was also without rival. He was not simply a warrior of combat,
but a warrior-engineer and warrior-philosopher. Boyd wrote “Aerial Attack Study,” which codified the
best dogfighting tactics for the first time, helped design the legendary F-15, F-16, and A-10 aircraft, and
developed the strategic tool known as the OODA Loop.
Robert Coram, who wrote Boyd’s biography, argues that the OODA Loop made Boyd “the mostinfluential military thinker since Sun Tzu.” In today’s podcast I talk to Mr. Coram about his book Boyd:
The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War , and about the life and career of this fascinating warrior-
cast: Robert Coram on John Boyd | The Art of Manliness http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/02/12/podcast-101-the-fighter-pil...
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8/18/2019 BOYD Podcast_ Robert Coram on John Boyd _ the Art of Manliness
: re c ay ere an we come o ano er e on o e r o an ness po cas . ow
there are a lot of great military strategist in history that come to mind when you mention military strategy.
Most obvious, Sun Tzu wrote the Art of War thousands of years ago, there’s also Carl von Clausewitz, but
there’s another one. One of the most greatest military thinkers and strategist since Sun Tzu.
His name is John Boyd. He started his career as a fighter pilot, during the Korean War, and then he wenton to revolutionize air tactics of the design of fighter planes. He also went on to just developed these grand
theories that are being used today, in branches of the military around the world on how to win wars.
We’ve heard about John Boyd on the site. He’s one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever read about
and written about. Today, we have his biographer on, his name is Robert Coram. He wrote this biography
called Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War . Today we’re going to discuss John Boyd’s
contribution to military strategy, his life, his idiosyncrasies, his battles within the bureaucracies of the
Pentagon, and then talk about what we can learn from Boyd on being a better man.
Also learn from his faults as well, it’s a fascinating discussion, I think you’re really going to like this, so
let’s do this. Robert Coram, welcome to the show.
Robert Coram: I’m glad to be here, thank you.
Brett McKay: For our listeners who are familiar with you and your work, can you tell us a little bit a
background about your career, and what ultimately led you to writing a biography about an obscure
military strategist that not a lot of people know about named John Boyd?
Robert Coram: When I was in college, I work for the student newspaper, and some of my columns came
to the attention of the people at the Atlanta Journal, and I was offered a job there, and was there for 4 or 5
years and left, freelance write for Atlanta Magazine. Wrote a number of magazine articles for most of themajor, national publications desk bar or the New Yorker.
Then in 1980, I went back to the newspaper this time to the constitution. There were 2 separate
newspapers at the town. After a couple of years, like every reporter I wanted to write the great American
novel. I let the paper, and I wrote 5 novels before I ever published one, and so I have read a long learning
curve in this business.
In 1988, published a first novel, and over the next 10 years published 7 novels, and 3 non-fiction books,
and I got to tell you, except for one of those books, they were all somewhere South and mediocre. By
1999, I was 62 years old my career was in the toilet, my agent was about to fire me, and one of JohnBoyd’s friends whom I have known for 10 to 15 years, and he was been after me, for most of those 15
years to write a biography of Boyd have contacted me again.
He said, “It’s time to write the biography of Boyd.” Not having anything else to do at the time, I thought I
would go to Washington and talk to a couple of Boyd’s friends, primarily to get Boyd’s friend, Chuck
Spinney who was a good friend by then getting to leave me alone about this. Frankly I didn’t think it was
much of a book.
Chuck was big into hero worship[ I went to Washington and talk to Tom Christie and Pierre Sprey, and it
linked to Chuck, and I realized this is one of the biggest story I’ve ever come across. I wrote a proposal,
and send it off.
Brett McKay: That’s how it happen, okay that’s the thing that’s amazing. John Boyd he’s one of the
greatest military strategist in the history of the world, and some people called him that, like he’s up there
Brett
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8/18/2019 BOYD Podcast_ Robert Coram on John Boyd _ the Art of Manliness
Robert Coram: Yeah, quick is more important than fast. You get inside the tempo and act quicker than
your opponent is. He’s always behind, and if it does matter whether you’re playing tennis, or you’re in a
combat situation. It doesn’t matter where this corporate takeover or any area of tennis match, any area of
conflict you can use this principle.
Brett McKay: Fascinating and I think, why is that more people don’t know about John Boyd that he was
behind a lot of this really amazing theories about strategy, and how to deal with ambiguity. He was a very
prolific. He put out a lot of presentations, but it seems like there’s not a lot out there that he wrote
specifically. I mean there’s like just a few papers, or that he wrote.
Robert Coram: Yeah the military culture is an oral culture, and most of his work came in briefings and he
only wrote a couple of things in his life and therefore there’s nothing for academics to pour over, and
therefore he’s been ignored by academics, his greatest legacy is a couple of briefings.
There’s a website called Slightly East of New. It’s run by Dr. Chad Richards who was one of boards close
friends. It’s got a lot of articles in there about Boyd, and all of Boyd work is on their including the patterns
of conflict briefing.
Brett McKay: Excellent, John Boyd to say the least was an interesting character. Very brilliant but he also
had a lot of these idiosyncrasies about them. When I was reading your biography, I laugh out loud, some
of these confrontations you had, or just some of these glitches you had that was part of his personality. Can
you talk about what some of these idiosyncrasies were, and are there any stories in particular that stuck out
in his life where his personality, clash with others?
Robert Coram: Let me list some hiss of better known characteristics. He was ill mannered, he wasuncamped, loud, opinionated, intolerant of anybody who disagrees with him. He had a table manners of a
5 year old. He was profaned, one of the most profaned man you’ll ever meet. Abrasive, he’s a terrible
father, and the worst husband, he had a habit of chewing on the quick of his fingers. When he started
working with Whites the calluses on his hand, he would chew on those and spit them out during meetings
which was so disconcerting to other people in the room.
He smoke cigars and several times we get so in gross in the conversation, he would stick his cigar into the
tie of the shirt, of the person he was talking with. After he retired he was 48 years old, and he looked like a
homeless person after that, he kept his glasses, and old sock. He drove a rattletrap of a car.
He said only 2 kinds of people can be truly independent, that was, you have an unlimited resources, and
those who have no resources. Because if you have no resources, people can’t oppress you or do anything
to bid you to their will, and you’re as independent in someone who’s quite wealthy. Boyd was … When he
work in his later years as a unpaid Pentagon consultant, he wore his old Babylon flare bottom pants, and a
shirt that was plaid.
Really he looks like a homeless person, but he was one of those man who wanted to get as close to the
truth as possible and that was the only thing in his life that mattered there is no absolute truth. He came
close to the most people to finding it. He saw himself as an outsider, he’s a man of virtue who was
babbling superiors who were devoid of virtue and going back to having a cause, it’s something I think
every man, especially a young man want is a cause and those others who can, can find the cause are
fortunate indeed and Boyd found a cause and didn’t care about all the other stuff.
He was with definition genius as the ability to concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of all others, and
Brett
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8/18/2019 BOYD Podcast_ Robert Coram on John Boyd _ the Art of Manliness
energy maneuverability study, he was confronted during the briefing, and someone tried to diminish his
work, and this all have been done, and he would say, “Okay, tell me your source. He used other people’s
word, and information against them which is devastating if he can do it.”
He would ask the person to tell me the source, “Where did you get this information? You tell me who did
this work before, and if you’re correct, I’ll step aside.” Of course nobody done the work before. Boyd said
that by asking leading questions like that, he was holding out a cape and the bull charge, and went ahead
long over the cliff and he was the master of that technique.
Brett McKay: I guess the question is why … Boyd seem like someone who didn’t really fit in with
hierarchy. I guess it’s that whole fighter pilot mentality seems like that was for the culture with amongst
fighter pilots of the time, and I guess still today. Military is very hierarchical, very structured. Why did he
stick around instead of pursuing civilian work?
Did he ever think about pursuing, I mean did he ever have those moments, “I’m just done with this, I want
to go do something else.”
Robert Coram: Yeah, he made a couple of fancy retiring. What he was doing was too important for the
country, and he knew that, and he stayed and he knew he would never be promoted beyond colonel. If you
look at the awards he won, and the thing his contributions to the military. Few people in military history
has contributed as much as he did. He worked outside the system, he stood up and was recognize as an
opponent to a lot of senior officers.
His career came to an end. The irony here, and I’ve discussed this with the Air Force academy people.
They said that, and all of the service academy do this. They teach their cadets their students to be principle
people and people with honor to always do the right thing. What they don’t teach them, is that when theystand up, and be like Boyd that there’s a price to pay. When you do the right thing, there’s always a price
to pay.
Many of these young officers who graduated and were fans of Boyd found out to their other dismay that
their careers have gotten side track by doing what they thought was the right thing.
Brett McKay: We haven’t talk about is Boyd’s career as a fighter pilot. Before he got into all the energy
maneuverability theory and the OODA Loop. He was actually one of the best fighter pilots in the history
of the Air Force, they called them 42nd Boyd, or 22nd Boyd?
Robert Coram: Yeah, that was in the 60s after he came back from Korea. When you look at his career,
you can’t connect the dots until you look back. When you look back, his career you will see the stepping
stones, and how he developed and evolved always in an upward fashion. When he came back from Korea,
he just had a passion about trying to figure out why the F-86 had such a high victory ratio, when it was
inferior aircraft.
He would put all that to play as an instructor. What was in a fighter weapon skill, now its Air Force base
here in Las Vegas. He had a standing offer to let any student, and these are the best fighter pilots in the Air
Force and come after the fighter weapon skill. He would put them on his tail in a 6:00 position and
guaranteed that in 40 seconds he could reverse their positions and be on their tail.
He did it by whether drastic maneuver that nobody else had the courage to emulate, and he won every one
of those engagements.
Brett
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8/18/2019 BOYD Podcast_ Robert Coram on John Boyd _ the Art of Manliness
equivalent to 16 films of gun camera film which is consider enough for a kill. Just as the student was
getting ready to host him, he would reverse position and he would be on their 6s, screaming guns, guns,
guns.
Brett McKay: Yeah these are few instance where he did that too like planes, who weren’t even in like
involved in training. This is like sneak up behind them, and just scare the crap out of them.
Robert Coram: One was a B-52 landing at Eglin and those back in the days the B-52s has flew this long
10, 12, 14 hour mission and this guy was coming into land and he was in the landing pad, and these guys
were exhausted, they wanted to just go through the debriefing and go home and sleep for 2 days, and Boyd
makes a head on pass at the B-52 and rolls in and boarded right in front of him, goes 100, he was so close
they could count the rivets on his belly.
He was screaming, guns, guns, guns. The pilot, the aircraft commander, got really upset and was just
raising Cain over the radio. Boyd decided he needed another lesson of that. What amazing people fighter
pilot were also he made an attack from the side the deflection attack and he came right across the cockpit
and he got grounded because of that.
The B-52 pilot learned probably more about fighter pilots.
Brett McKay: I thought this is amazing to you. Despite his contributions to military strategy, and
particularly to designing new generations of warplanes and like just basically revolutionizing air combat.
When Boyd died there was no member of the Air Force that attended his funeral. Do they claim … In fact
it was filled with Marines.
Can you explain why were Marines went there to honor, pay respects to Boyd and the Air Force didn’t?
Robert Coram: Let me back up again, when the book came out. The Venom toward me and toward the
book from the Air Force was just startling. I never expected that. Chuck Spinney one of Boyd’s friend still
work in the Pentagon at the time, and he called and said, “You better standby for some incoming fire
they’re after you.”
He said 2 full colonels, in the Air Force had been assigned the job of debunking the book, and they didn’t
have much luck with that. There was also a professor over at the Air War College in Montgomery
Alabama. Who is the only person to write a really mean nasty critical review about the Boyd book.
Even today they hide board material at the Air War College because they think these young majors andlieutenant colonels will have their minds poisoned by reading Boyd. At the Air Force Academy, they have
what they call a class exemplar, for each class and this is to pick someone who is a role model to what
these young cadets want to be, in their careers, and 4 or 5 times, the senior classes, tried to pick Boyd as
the exemplar.
In every instance, senior officers have stopped them from doing that. Even today, and here’s a story that I
wrote another military biography about a col. Bud Day who’s most highly decorated officer in our great
story by he’s being a POW in Vietnam. I was at a reunion of pilots and the chief of staff of the Air Force
was there and he came over and he said, “Thank you for writing the Bud Day book. The Air Force needs
to recognize it’s heroes.” I said, “Why don’t you recognize John Boyd?”
He spun on his heels and walk away. Even today the Air Force refuses to give him the institutional
recognition he deserves, and I get e-mails from young officers 2 or 3 times a week. They read the book.
Brett
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8/18/2019 BOYD Podcast_ Robert Coram on John Boyd _ the Art of Manliness
I’m not sure the Air Force will ever honor and recognize Boyd. That’s okay, the Army has recognized him,
the Marine Corps most of all, because the Marine Corps is always fighting for his very existence and
they’re always looking for something new, and something innovative and they really latched on to Boyd’s
idea and because of him, the Marine Corps change their whole way too went to war because of Boyd.
Today he’s one of the iconic figures in the Marine Corps and the Air Force pilot who’s recognize as a great
military theorist by the Marine Corps which is you know military culture, that’s impossible to grasp.
Brett McKay: I think you said at his funeral there was actually like as burial the … The Marines did
something that they don’t … They only do for Marines that they did it for John Boyd.
Robert Coram: One of the Marine colonel highly decorated a combat officer, took the ego globe and
anchor which is the insignia of the Marine Corps and put it on the earn that Boyd’s funeral, that’s
unprecedented. It’s rarely done at the funerals of Marines and to do it for a retired Air Force colonel is no
precedent for that. But the Marines love John Boyd.
Brett McKay: I guess they went on in the first Desert Storm in the 90s, they used a lot of Boyd strategies
to basically take down Kuwait like in few days, right? Or take back Kuwait.
Robert Coram: Boyd had retired by then, the big change he was secretary of defense. Then a young
congressman when Boyd first started working on his ideas as a congressman, had been to a number of
Boyd’s briefing and a new board didn’t like him, and had a pretty good understanding of his work. The
secretary of defense and short cough, was beating his chest, and pounding and jumping up and down.
Cheney called Boyd out of retirement and brought him to Washington, and they talk about how to conducta warfare, and that Left Hook and the [Faint 31:05] by the Marines. The whole battle plan came from John
Boyd. When Cheney was Vice President, I was working on the book I made arrangements.
To my surprise, he took about 15 or 20 minutes to talk to me about Boyd and he was open, and he was
acknowledge when Boyd’s contributions to him as secretary of defense.
Brett McKay: Boyd would famously tell the young men he mentored something all the time, it’s a phrase
that sticks out to me, stuck out to me from the book. It was that, you can either be somebody or you can do
something. What did John Boyd mean by that?
Robert Coram: You could pick up that one part of the book, that probably has drawn the single greatestresponse. I would say most of the e-mail I get from then, and 95% of my e-mail is about the book are from
men. The thing that most of them glam on to is the to be or to do speech. In essence he would take a young
officer, and he would say that in life his role call, and you have to decide what you want to do.
He would point of to one side, and say if you want to be somebody, you can go that way. Your friends will
like you, and you’ll get good assignment and promoted faster. Your career will be good. At the end of the
day, end of your career, the end of your life, you might wonder what the hell that was all about?
Then it would point the other way, and say if you want to do something you can go this way, and you will
not be popular, and you may not get promoted, and you won’t get good assignments but you will donesomething for yourself, for your branch of the service and for the country. He said, “Every man comes to
fork in the road, and you have to decide if you want to be somebody or to do something. Which way do
you want to go.”
Brett
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8/18/2019 BOYD Podcast_ Robert Coram on John Boyd _ the Art of Manliness
Brett McKay: Yeah it’s a really powerful speech. It’s convicting it’s what it is. What did you personally
learn about being a man, whatever that means to you, from studying Boyd’s life and writing about it.
Robert Coram: Let me respond on 2 level. Professionally Boyd changed my life, as I said my career was
sort of bottomed out when I wrote that book. When a publisher got the book, he sent me the contract for 2
more book, 2 book contract and stipulated that each book the a military biography. I never planned on this,
I didn’t see myself writing military biographies, and I went back and re-read Boyd to try to figure out what
was it about him, that made the publisher want 2 more books about military people.
I think we’ve talked about how Boyd love the truth, he was a man of commitment and passion and
principle. He was somebody who wanted to do something, The irony is it my heroes have always been a
man of conviction a man of belief, a man who sacrifice for their beliefs who suffered, Sir Thomas Moore
has always been a great hero of mine, so as St. Gregor who spent years in jail for his beliefs, and the
German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was jailed and later killed by the Nazis, these are my heroes.
Then I want to write a books about people who manifest those same characteristics. Col. Bud Day who
was a topic of my subject of my second book, was a POW in Vietnam. There’s a chapter in that book I still
can’t read without weeping, and it’s the chapter when Bud was being tortured and they were going to kill
him, and he would have died for his beliefs.
What gets me, is it would have been so easy for him to stop torture. All he have to do is to sign up a per se
he thought the war in Vietnam was unfair, or unjust. Everybody in America was saying that, the Attorney
General of the United States that it was an unjust war, half of the members of congress will say that.
That great example of all things good and noble Jane Fonda was saying the same. Everybody was saying
that. Col. Day was a serving officer, in the hands of the enemy in the time of war, and he did not have thatluxury, and he would have died before he had broken his oath, and then the next defining a subject is
always the hardest part of what I do.
The next book was about Lt. Gen Victor H. Krulak. Brute Krulak in the essence of his life, he was a 3 star
general about to be receive his 4th star in the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Of his own volition, and
that’s a crucial thing. He went to the White House with his own volition.
He was the only senior officer in the military doing that long war in Vietnam who went to the White
House and confronted president Johnson over the prosecution of the war. He said, “You’re doing this
wrong, and unless you change everything you’re doing, you’re going to lose the war and you’re going to
lose the next election.”
Johnson was so annoyed he stood up and put his hand in the small of Krulak’s back and physically pushed
him out of the Oval Office. Brute Krulak because of being a man of principle, did not get his 4 star, he did
not become commandant of the Marine Corps. His life’s dream was gone because he acted on principle.
That’s how he’s remembered today, and I don’t think Lyndon Johnson is remembered by history in the
same light. We were known a personal, what Boyd taught me about being a man, I saw in this in first in
Boyd, and then Col. Day, and then Gen. Krulak the same attributes, devotion that Judy commitment never
making an excuse doing the job no matter the cost.
My dad spent 31 years in the Army. He and I didn’t get along, for most of my life I was running from
everything he represented. When I started 50 years after my dad died, writing about military people. I
realized my dad had the same virtues, qualities, attributes, that these people that I was writing down. I was
Brett
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cast: Robert Coram on John Boyd | The Art of Manliness http://www.artofmanliness.com/2015/02/12/podcast-101-the-fighter-pil...
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8/18/2019 BOYD Podcast_ Robert Coram on John Boyd _ the Art of Manliness