I’m currently reading a biography of John Boyd, and in light of Sunday’s post, I found a recent chapter particularly interesting. Boyd was a Fighter Pilot in the Air Force. He flew in Korea, made a real name for himself at Fighter Weapons School (which was later copied by the Navy – you may have heard of their version: Top Gun), and spent the latter part of his career working on groundbreaking strategic theories. He was an instructor at FWS for several years, and before leaving, he made his first big contributions to the Air Force. He wrote a tactics manual called Aerial Attack Study. Despite the passage of Vietnam and the Gulf War, nothing substantial has been added to it. It’s served as the official tactics manual all over the world for over 40 years (actually, more like 50 at this point).
And Boyd almost didn’t write it. Robert Coram (the author of the aforementioned biography) summarizes the unconventional manner in which the manual was written (on page 104 of my edition):
Boyd could not write the manual and continue flying and teaching; there simply wasn’t enough time. Plus, the idea of sitting down at a desk and spending hundreds of hours writing a long document brought him to the edge of panic. He was a talker, not a writer. When he talked his ideas tumbled back and forth and he fed off the class and distilled his thoughts to the essence. But writing meant precision. And once on paper, the ideas could not be changed. …
Spradling came up with the solution. “John, don’t make this a big thing. We have some good Dictaphones. Why don’t you just dictate the damn thing?”
It’s a subject I didn’t really cover much in my last post: the method of communication can impact the actual message. The way we communicate changes the way we think. Would Boyd’s work have been as great if he didn’t dictate it? Maybe, but it probably wouldn’t have been the same.
Incidentally, I don’t normally go in for biographies, but this is an excellent book so far. Part of that may be that Boyd is a genuinely interesting guy and that he was working on stuff that interests me, but I’m still quite enjoying myself.