可借阅:*
图书馆 | 资料类型 | 排架号 | 子计数 | 书架位置 | 状态 | 图书预约 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
正在检索... Science | Book | 358.43 C81B 2002 | 1 | Stacks | 正在检索... 未知 | 正在检索... 不可借阅 |
链接这些题名
已订购
摘要
摘要
John Boyd may be the most remarkable unsung hero in all of American military history. Some remember him as the greatest U.S. fighter pilot ever -- the man who, in simulated air-to-air combat, defeated every challenger in less than forty seconds. Some recall him as the father of our country's most legendary fighter aircraft -- the F-15 and F-16. Still others think of Boyd as the most influential military theorist since Sun Tzu. They know only half the story.
Boyd, more than any other person, saved fighter aviation from the predations of the Strategic Air Command. His manual of fighter tactics changed the way every air force in the world flies and fights. He discovered a physical theory that forever altered the way fighter planes were designed. Later in life, he developed a theory of military strategy that has been adopted throughout the world and even applied to business models for maximizing efficiency. And in one of the most startling and unknown stories of modern military history, the Air Force fighter pilot taught the U.S. Marine Corps how to fight war on the ground. His ideas led to America's swift and decisive victory in the Gulf War and foretold the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
On a personal level, Boyd rarely met a general he couldn't offend. He was loud, abrasive, and profane. A man of daring, ferocious passion and intractable stubbornness, he was that most American of heroes -- a rebel who cared not for his reputation or fortune but for his country. He was a true patriot, a man who made a career of challenging the shortsighted and self-serving Pentagon bureaucracy. America owes Boyd and his disciples -- the six men known as the "Acolytes" -- a great debt.
Robert Coram finally brings to light the remarkable story of a man who polarized all who knew him, but who left a legacy that will influence the military -- and all of America -- for decades to come . . .
评论 (3)
出版社周刊评论
John Boyd (1927-1997) was a brilliant and blazingly eccentric person. He was a crackerjack jet fighter pilot, a visionary scholar and an innovative military strategist. Among other things, Boyd wrote the first manual on jet aerial combat, was primarily responsible for designing the F-15 and the F-16 jet fighters, was a leading voice in the post-Vietnam War military reform movement and shaped the smashingly successful U.S. military strategy in the Persian Gulf War. His writings and theories on military strategy remain influential today, particularly his concept of the "OODA (Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action) Loop," which all the military services-and many business strategists-use to this day. Boyd also was a brash, combative, iconoclastic man, not above insulting his superiors at the Pentagon (both military and civilian); he made enemies (and fiercely loyal acolytes) everywhere he went. His strange, mercurial personality did not mesh with a military career, making his 24 years in the Air Force (1951-1975) difficult professionally and causing serious emotional problems for Boyd's wife and children. Coram's worthy biography is deeply researched and detailed, down to describing the fine technical points of some of Boyd's theories. A Boyd advocate (he "contributed as much to fighter aviation as any man in the history of the Air Force," Coram notes), Coram does not shy away from Boyd's often self-defeating abrasiveness and the neglect and mistreatment of his long-suffering wife and children, and keeps the story of a unique life moving smoothly and engagingly.(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus评论
Profanity-laden, action-filled biography of legendary Air Force pilot, instructor, and aircraft design theorist John Richard "Forty-Second" Boyd. Veteran journalist, novelist, and nonfiction author Coram (Caribbean Time Bomb, 1993, etc.) portrays Boyd as a visionary whose no-quarter-taken pursuit of weapons improvement so infuriated the bureaucrats that he was denied a generalship despite being recognized as a near genius. After two years as an Air Force mechanic, Boyd made his mark as a pilot in Korea and became a legend teaching others to fly, using his unique acrobatics to get on the tail and "hose" a mock enemy fighter in less than 40 seconds, a feat that taxed both pilot and aircraft. The highly inquisitive Boyd persuaded the Air Force to finance his engineering studies at Georgia Tech, where he learned thermodynamics and formulated his revolutionary theory on design factors that would quicken a fighter pilot's ability to get the better of an enemy. Real information (potential and kinetic energy from engine thrust, aircraft lift and drag, g-forces endurable, etc.) replaced conventional reliance on the often-inflated aircraft speed and range claims of bureaucrats who believed that the more complex a weapon, the more gizmos it carried, and the greater its cost, the better. Higher costs meant added layers of command and accelerated promotions for the spear-carriers, who cared far less about actual performance vis-`-vis that of prospective enemies' weapons. But Boyd's graphs of the swept-wing F-111 fighter and the acclaimed B-1 bomber showed that neither could withstand an onslaught from an ordinary MIG fighter. Soon his theories swept the government, the defense industry, and Congress; the crafts he designated "lemons" never saw combat. Nonetheless, Boyd died in poverty as a retired colonel, best remembered by a handful of supporters he called "Acolytes." Required reading for frustrated innovators, aviation buffs, and Horatio Algers intent on improving the world against the best efforts of ever-prevailing deal-busters and naysayers.
《书目》(Booklist)书评
The late Colonel John Boyd, United States Air Force, began his career as a supremely proficient fighter pilot in the Korean War, after which he went on to develop the concept of energy maneuvering that has been the basis for fighter tactics and designs for 30 years. He proceeded militantly to advocate simpler fighter designs and attracted a group of like-minded civilian and uniformed reformers, known as the Acolytes, who were mostly as unorthodox as he. After his retirement, he developed strategic concepts based on the velocity of attack, which, while they may not be as original as Coram claims, reminded the armed forces of velocity of attack at a time when they direly needed reminding. On the personal front, Boyd, the product of a dysfunctional family, generated another, which doesn't make pretty reading. The sheer mass of information Coram pumps out requires some military knowledge, if only not to be taken in by all of Coram's claims about Boyd, and such knowledgeable readers will most appreciate this study of an American military reformer. Roland Green.
目录
Acknowledgments | p. ix |
Prologue: Reminiscences | p. 3 |
Part 1 Fighter Pilot | |
1. Haunted Beginnings | p. 13 |
2. The Big Jock and the Presbyterian | p. 30 |
3. Fledgling | p. 39 |
4. K-13 and MiG Alley | p. 49 |
5. High Priest | p. 58 |
6. Pope John Goes Severely Supersonic | p. 75 |
7. Rat-Racing | p. 90 |
8. Forty-Second Boyd and the Tactics Manual | p. 101 |
Part 2 Engineer | |
9. Thermo, Entropy, and the Breakthrough | p. 123 |
10. P[subscript s]=[T-D/W] V | p. 135 |
11. The Sugarplum Fairy Spreads the Gospel | p. 154 |
12. Pull the Wings Off and Paint It Yellow | p. 169 |
13. "I've Never Designed a Fighter Plane Before." | p. 188 |
14. Bigger-Higher-Faster-Farther | p. 202 |
15. Saving the F-15 | p. 221 |
16. Ride of the Valkyries | p. 232 |
17. The Fighter Mafia Does the Lord's Work | p. 243 |
18. A Short-Legged Bird | p. 257 |
19. Spook Base | p. 266 |
20. Take a Look at the B-1 | p. 278 |
21. "This Briefing Is for Information Purposes Only." | p. 290 |
22. The Buttonhook Turn | p. 305 |
Part 3 Scholar | |
23. Destruction and Creation | p. 317 |
24. OODA Loop | p. 327 |
25. Reform | p. 345 |
26. The Great Wheel of Conspiracy | p. 360 |
27. Boyd Joins the Marines | p. 369 |
28. Semper Fi | p. 380 |
29. Water-Walker | p. 398 |
30. They Think I'm a Kook | p. 413 |
31. The Ghetto Colonel and the SecDef | p. 420 |
Epilogue: El Cid Rides On | p. 437 |
Appendix "Destruction and Creation" | p. 451 |
Sources | p. 463 |
Bibliography | p. 465 |
Index | p. 471 |