John Boyd

John Boyd was born in 1927 in Erie, Pennsylvania, one of five children; his father died when he was three. He served in the Army Air Forces at the end of the Second World War and later earned a degree in economics at the University of Iowa. As a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force he flew in the Korean War and then became an instructor at the Fighter Weapons School in Nevada, where he was known as 'Forty-Second Boyd' for his standing bet that he could defeat any opponent in a mock dogfight within forty seconds. His Aerial Attack Study (1960) became a basic manual of air combat tactics. After studying engineering at Georgia Tech, he and the mathematician Thomas Christie developed energy–maneuverability theory, which measures how well an aircraft can gain or lose energy in combat and changed how fighter planes were designed; he helped shape the F-15 and F-16. In his briefings, including Destruction and Creation and Patterns of Conflict, he described the OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, act. He retired as a colonel and died in Florida in 1997.

John Boyd is also an author in the library: author page and works.

Faith: Faith not well documented; his father was raised Catholic and his mother was a Presbyterian. Source: Wikipedia