The Air Force maverick ‘who changed the art of war’

During World War I, fighter pilots became “knights of the air,” — romanticized as noble, masculine heroes who guarded the ground from violence above. That mythology lasted, creating a heritage that still tinges new fighter pilots with pride. “Military culture is different from civilian culture, military aviation culture is distinct from both, but fighter pilot culture is a world unto itself,” writes Michael W. Hankins in Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia. However, things were different for Vietnam War pilots. Century Series fighters had struggled in the conflict’s air combat and the Air Force’s front-line fighter was the two-seater F-4 Phantom. The mythos of the fearless, individualistic fighter and the desire for turn-and-burn dogfights seemingly evaporated. Col. John Richard Boyd and his “Fighter Mafia” strove to change that. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1927, Boyd entered the U.S.

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