Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War | Robert Coram

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War | Robert Coram | A True American Hero - Warts and All!!

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Boyd: The Fighter ...

	Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War Robert Coram Back Bay Books, 2004 - 504 pages average customer review:based on 92 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Important Man...

This is a great book and he was a VERY IMPORTANT man! It is sad that very few people have ever heard of him and that his body of work has been ignored by the military (except for the Marines) and the media. His contributions to the business world are also a well-kept secret. What is interesting, though, is that those companies that employ his methods are probably pretty successful.

A True American Hero - Warts and All!!

This book was brought to my attention by a fellow docent at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Az. We had been E-mailing on matters involving the military, military planes and those that fly them when he indicated that as far as he was concerned "BOYD, THE FIGHTER PILOT WHO CHANGED THE ART OF WAR," was "required reading" for someone with my interests.

Was he ever right, with that assessment.

John Boyd had a certain genius about many things. When it came to military aircraft, how to fly them, how to fight them he was without peer. He expanded his knowledge and thinking into military theory and in doing so has had untold influence on many of our leaders, both military and political. He was uncompromising, often uncouth and ferocious in his passion to seek the truth. He did not suffer fools well, especialy those with stars on their shoulders.

Those who measured up to his values and beliefs were friends for life. Those that stood in his way were challenges to overcome and in that regard, although he was never a true American ace as a fighter pilot, he was one many times over in dealing with the arrogant, the self absorbed and the career chasers.

His life is an amazing story. He was a failure as a parent and sadly lacking as a husband and that part of his life is difficult to read about.

John Boyd's life covered a tumultuous time in the military history of the United States. Robert Coram has told it in a manner which is true to both his memory and his accomplishments. The author himself put it best when he noted: "For while America likes to believe that it often produces men like John Boyd, the truth is that men who embody a warrior spirit combined with sweeping and lasting intellectual achievement are rare, not only in America, but in any country. They seldom pass among us. And they do so only when there is a great need."

John Boyd is a person that anyone with an interest in military history needs to know about and there is no better way than in the pages of this book.

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The best stories friends could tell

In 2008, John Arquill (Netwars) will publish a book on American military reform. In it he makes three recommendations, the elimination of the Pentagon, the end of strategic bombing strategy, and force reductions to 100,000 in each of the main services.

This book, published in 2002, tells the story of a man who fought to realize these same notions in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

The book reads like a novel. As told, John Boyd is a flawed genius on a lonely mission, assisted by a few friends. There isn't much work done to place Boyd in context. Instead, Boyd is the context. He is Newton, Sun Tzu and George Washington blended into one great, tragic master. I think the story would stand on its own merits without the hype.

Within the excited rhetoric, one can get a sense of the dark bureaucratic games played in Washington. This alone is worth the time spend reading.

One of the most interesting themes involves bureaucratic wars between Army, Navy, Air Force and any politician in power. As told here, true Air Force vitriol was not expended on foreign enemies, it was saved for the Navy, Marines and Army. After all, there is always a much higher chance that your career will be cripled by a competing service, than by a foreign power. As Orwell wrote in "1984", "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power; pure power."

These tales occupy half the book and are told almost exclusively from the recollections of Boyd's friends. In fact, the second half of the book is really about the activities of Boyd's friends, not Boyd. Frankly, I don't know what to make of this. You can read it with blind faith in Boyd, or take any one of many over-generalizations and dismiss the whole thing. There are plenty of gratuitous insults against anyone not a fighter pilot to turn off any but the most friendly reader. Perhaps, it is best to see it as an attempt to see it like Boyd saw the Pentagon bureaucracy battles. As such, you get to ride copilot and enjoy the ride. At a minimum, it will make your next reading of Sun-Tzu more interesting.

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Well Written, Entertaining, Flawed

Robert Coram deserves high praise for being the first to write about a true American hero, but this first biography has serious flaws and should not constitute the "final word" on Boyd or his work. Another biographer is needed to more closely examine Boyd the man, and render the kind of judgement in that regard that is usually required of a serious biographer.

John Boyd personified, more than any other person in living memory, the fine line between genius and madness. Perhaps it's too soon to be exploring this aspect of his legacy--the gunsmoke hasn't yet dissipated from the most recent "Boyd inspired" military action, so it's no surprise that we might hesitate to "get into all that." But it's obvious from reading Coram, even if he simply chooses to state the bald facts without comment, that Boyd wasn't just "eccentric." "Eccentric" is having oddball hobbies and peculiar clothing. Boyd was indeed eccentric in those areas. But he was "more than eccentric" when he became obsessive, when his insomnia caused him to spend hours reciting this theories to people over the telephone, when he yelled at general officers and when he, yes, neglected his family. Some spark of madness drove him on--he was what they used to call "touched"--as in "touched by the Divine."

The history of mental illness in Boyd's family is something that Coram does mention, but he skirts over the implications when he introduces Boyd's children as they begin their life in a Washington, D.C. apartment. They are described as "quiet" and "sensitive" as if these words still meant "strange." Apparently, these "code words" are supposed to "clue us in" that all is not well, but straight, simple and direct language grants people the dignity they deserve. By tip-toeing around the subject Coram gives the impression that it's somehow obscene. If that's the way he feels about it--well, it's his book.

If, on the other hand, Coram's discomfort with mental illness reflects a reaction to the many "psychoanalysis biographies" that crowd the shelves, then he picked the wrong subject. If he wanted to write a biography of Boyd that minimized his emotional problems, he should have spared us the "embarrassment and shame" of having to read the book's epilogue. This portion the book slanders Boyd's survivors in an attempt to "once and for all" dismiss the notion that mental or emotional instability may have played a role in the dazzling career of this extraordinary person, who bullied the biggest and the baddest and came out smiling. Boyd was a winner--but he was also a man with some serious issues. But using language (as Coram does) like "embarrassing" and "shameful"--what, exactly, is he attempting to say there? It reads like some bizarre recollection of the attitudes from the nineteenth century, when they considered anything involving mental health to be "embarrassing and shameful." Writing those words is not something that you do if you are a professional, as Coram certainly is.

Finally, it seems that Coram is just not willing to state the obvious conclusion--that "divine madness" may be more divine than mad. That people like John Boyd could be routinely overlooked, ignored, rejected and thrown out--and only the fact that Boyd had managed to cleverly wedge himself into the military system saved him from being dismissed as a "crank." Boyd's true legacy should be an inspiration to the cranks and the crackpots of this world--since quite a few of them turn out to be right, eventually. Coram doesn't want to go down that road--so he should have left well enough alone and ignored the issue entirely. But he had to tack on that epilogue. Four stars reduced to three by the epilogue and the damage it does.

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