Skyediamonds
Staff Sergeant
- 1,221
- May 26, 2018
Victory:
You are correct in just about all areas describing Boyd, particularly as a husband & more so as a father. Insofar as what the book has described him, he wasn't physically abusive but his absence from his family coupled with his disdain for things he considered luxury, when oftentimes they were actually a necessity, really took its toil. His house was a small ramshackle place in a bad neighborhood & he professed ignorance at what was taking place in the family when his own world was flying & theory.
Note: I mentioned "the" family instead of using the proper syntax "his" family because it was exactly as how he treated them. He professed his puzzlement about youngest daughter whom he called "snookem" when she turned to drugs & went downhill fast & violently took her actions against him. Yet despite please from his wife to do something, John just turned he back & went to work as if nothing had happened.
His theories & codes were at farsighted, at least in his time, which were well over 50 years ago. True, Navy & Air Force were dogfighting for years & the kill ratio fell dismally low during the Viet Nam War. As the book described it, very little was done about it.
As it was stated " the air force pilots were turning & learning" wasn't all that cut out to be. If they were truly learning as they were turning the kill ratio would ( or at least should ) be different.
The overstatement of John as 40-second Boyd may have been true, but it was backed up by countless witnesses & was well documented. So there has to be some validity somewhere.
The "blue suiters" as John so disdainfully put it, loved to add systems to an otherwise clean design & just as well continue managing their careers to retirement.
The F-111 Aardvark program, a plane that was shoved down the Navy's throat was a very good example of the blue suiters & McNamara's "Wiz Kids" & their collective actions.
John said it best when asked his opinion on the swing-wing bomber: "Just rip the wings off, give it a bench seat in the back & paint it yellow."
In his later years, McNamara admitted his mistakes in forcing the services to accept a multipurpose aircraft that could do a "little bit of everything but accomplished nothing."
If the Marines were the only service to accord John the honors of a soldier, then so be it. One must remember that at the time of John's passing he was a civilian.
You are correct in just about all areas describing Boyd, particularly as a husband & more so as a father. Insofar as what the book has described him, he wasn't physically abusive but his absence from his family coupled with his disdain for things he considered luxury, when oftentimes they were actually a necessity, really took its toil. His house was a small ramshackle place in a bad neighborhood & he professed ignorance at what was taking place in the family when his own world was flying & theory.
Note: I mentioned "the" family instead of using the proper syntax "his" family because it was exactly as how he treated them. He professed his puzzlement about youngest daughter whom he called "snookem" when she turned to drugs & went downhill fast & violently took her actions against him. Yet despite please from his wife to do something, John just turned he back & went to work as if nothing had happened.
His theories & codes were at farsighted, at least in his time, which were well over 50 years ago. True, Navy & Air Force were dogfighting for years & the kill ratio fell dismally low during the Viet Nam War. As the book described it, very little was done about it.
As it was stated " the air force pilots were turning & learning" wasn't all that cut out to be. If they were truly learning as they were turning the kill ratio would ( or at least should ) be different.
The overstatement of John as 40-second Boyd may have been true, but it was backed up by countless witnesses & was well documented. So there has to be some validity somewhere.
The "blue suiters" as John so disdainfully put it, loved to add systems to an otherwise clean design & just as well continue managing their careers to retirement.
The F-111 Aardvark program, a plane that was shoved down the Navy's throat was a very good example of the blue suiters & McNamara's "Wiz Kids" & their collective actions.
John said it best when asked his opinion on the swing-wing bomber: "Just rip the wings off, give it a bench seat in the back & paint it yellow."
In his later years, McNamara admitted his mistakes in forcing the services to accept a multipurpose aircraft that could do a "little bit of everything but accomplished nothing."
If the Marines were the only service to accord John the honors of a soldier, then so be it. One must remember that at the time of John's passing he was a civilian.
