Boydmania

Air & Space Power Journal, Fall, 2004 by David R. Mets

Boyd and the acolytes utilize the Korean War model as a sacred example of the air-to-air mission yet ignore it in the case of CAS. To be sure, in Korea the P-51 did yeoman's service in this role. However, the single-engine (like the P-51) P-47 proved itself the superior CAS airplane in World War II, but without the liquid-cooling system that made the P-51 vulnerable even to small-arms fire. Although the early jets took a tough rap for not delivering ground support in the early days of the war, the addition of drop tanks and bomb racks to them diminished the P-51's payload advantage. The latter's romantic aura proved so strong that we even witnessed attempts to resurrect an updated Mustang during the Vietnam War. Lost in all of this, as well as in Coram's CAS arguments, is the fact that the slower P-51 had double the loss rate of the F-80--partly because of the vulnerable cooling system and partly because the enemy could hear the P-51 coming, whereas the Shooting Star arrived over the fight almost as soon as the sound it generated. Furthermore, the F-80 spent substantially less time within range of the enemy's ground fire. Consequently, the jet had double the in-commission and sortie rates of the Mustang as well as half the losses, as mentioned above. Without doubt, the Navy/Marine Corsairs and the Mustangs did crucial work in the very early days when no jet runways were available. But in time, flying twice as many sorties, even with lighter bomb loads, and experiencing half the losses were bound to have an effect. Ground forces have perennially complained about the lack of responsive CAS from the Air Force. The jets did not need the warm-up of the Mustangs, and they could get from the airfield to the battle area much quicker--that, too, was a factor. (28)

Thus, the case of the Goliaths, even if it were as Coram paints it, perhaps has some merit. The armament of the A-10 requires that it go low and get close to an irate enemy. The aircraft does that more slowly than, say, the F-16, so enemy gunners and missileers have more time to aim and fire their weapons before the A-10 gets close enough to fire its fearsome GAU-8 or even its Maverick missiles. The extra engine proves helpful here, as does the load of armor carried by the "Hog." But the A-10 also takes longer than the F-16 to get out of the range of enemy weapons, and it does not have the effectiveness of the AC-130 from altitudes above most of the ground fire. (29) In the end, Coram accuses the Goliaths of finally accepting the "loathed" A-10 only to guarantee that the Army would not snatch away the CAS mission. Perhaps it is well that they did so, given the results with attack choppers in the second war against Iraq. (30)

   Myth Four:

   John Boyd changed the art of war;
   he is the greatest military theorist
   since Sun Tzu.

According to Coram, "The academics who know of Boyd agree that he was one of the premier strategists of the twentieth century and the only strategist to put time at the center of his thinking. That is as far as they will go. But Boyd was the greatest military theoretician since Sun Tzu." (31) That is a pretty strong statement. It passes over some rather distinguished theoreticians: Carl yon Clausewitz, Henri Jomini, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Julian Corbett, Giulio Douhet, Billy Mitchell, and even John Warden--all of whom wrote books. Can Coram's statement possibly be valid?