Flying Camelot

Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia. Michael W. Hankins. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021.

A fascinating aspect of Hankins’ work is the chapters analyzing fighter pilot culture. In many ways these chapters and this book pair well with the research done by Timothy Schultz in The Problem With Pilots, which analyzes the limitations of the pilot, but also examines pilot culture.[1] Like Schultz, Hankins shows that fighter pilots have a unique culture where they envision themselves as specialized individual combatants like knights from the medieval period. As Hankins shows this culture, the allure of aerial combat in the First World War to pilots and the public at large was because it was a new venue for combat. Flying the aircraft required great skill. Also, with ground combat stalled in trench warfare, the public looked to other domains to see progress or the success of the individual combatant. Soon politicians on both sides of the aisle saw the potential of fighter pilots as propaganda and recruiting tools.[2] Hankins does an excellent job at showing how that initial concept of knightly pilots gets passed down from generation to generation and still influences both the culture of fighter pilots today but also the expectations that the public has of fighter pilots in the twenty-first century.

The Ghost of Kyiv (Andriy Dankovych)

One of the more interesting aspects that Hankins touches upon is the change in leadership of the Air Force during the Vietnam War. Prior to the 1960s and 1970s much of the upper echelons of the officer corps in the Air Force included bomber pilots, who turned the attention of the Air Force towards strategic bombing and bomber production. During the Vietnam War many of these bombing advocates began getting replaced by officers with a fighter pilot background. Hankins argues when the Air Force began developing a new fighter, which eventually became the McDonnell Douglas F-15 “Eagle,” Colonel John Boyd and Pierre Sprey saw this as an opportunity to develop their ideal fighter which would be a pure air superiority fighter.

Hankins argues that the Fighter Mafia, which included Boyd, wanted the new F-15 to be a purely air to air weapons platform rather than a fighter that conducted additional missions including close air support. The result was that the Fighter Mafia were able to change the development of the F-15 to an aircraft whose primary role was air to air combat and secondarily to provide ground support.[5] Hankins points out that this fell far short of what Boyd and Sprey sought in a fighter. They did not want a repurposed fighter but one built specifically for the kind of aerial warfare that they envisioned and romanticized. Hankins argues that the Fighter Mafia found that perfect fighter in the development and procurement of the General Dynamics F-16 “Falcon.” He argues that the Fighter Mafia wanted to create a fast and maneuverable single seat fighter designed to replicate the combat of the First World War. In the end the product that they helped produce created the ideal fighter that they sought and at the same time was more cost effective to the Air Force.[6] Hankins shows in these chapters through the acquisition process for the F-15 and F-16 how Boyd and the Fighter Mafia went from being outsiders to playing prominent roles within the Air Force. Furthermore, he shows how they sought to move the Air Force towards an emphasis on air to air combat missions.

Hankins argues that the military reform movement played a key role in the development of the F-16. More commonly known as the Reformers, they clashed with both the defense industry and those in favor of a more fire power centric doctrine within the Pentagon. They also disagreed with those in the political establishment who viewed new technologies as the means to solving some of the problems from the Vietnam War. In contrast, the Reformers were skeptical of the new complex technologies and stressed the importance of the pilot. They sought to create a cost-effective military with equipment that could be easily produced and molded to the user.[7] They also feared the attritional costs of a high intensity war. Therefore, they were skeptical of those in the Pentagon and weapons development who pushed for an Air Force that emphasized more expensive stealth aircraft and long-range missiles in favor of aircraft that were cheaper, easier to make, and pilot friendly. As Hankins shows, this group played a key role in supporting the F-16 program.

The big test case for these theories came during the Persian Gulf War from 1990 to 1991. While Boyd, the Fighter Mafia, and the Reformers had created their two ideal jets, the strategy used during the war was influenced by Colonel John Warden, who had a different view of air power. Whereas the Fighter Mafia sought to achieve air superiority through close quarter dogfighting and maneuver warfare, Warden sought to apply warfare at the operational and strategic level. Warden believed that the best method for destroying the enemy was to find the enemy’s center of gravity and knock them off their equilibrium through the use of air power.[8] During the war the Air Force struck hard at operational and strategic targets. Instead of using the F-16 for air superiority missions and dog fighting, the fighter became the most effective fighter-bomber of the war conducting air interdiction and close air support missions. As Hankins points out due to the technology at the fingertips of the pilots, the air-to-air combat during the war was not the kind of fighting that Boyd had envisioned. There were very few dogfights and most occurred at long range beyond the vision of the pilots. As a result, it was the new long-range air to air missiles and radar that played the biggest role in these fights. Most dog fights were over in a few moves. This was not the close in maneuvers of the First World War that Boyd had envisioned.[9] As Hankins argues, the Persian Gulf War showed to many that the days of dogfighting in visual range of an opponent were over. Afterwards different weapon systems were sought such as fighters that used stealth, drones, and more advanced missile systems. He concludes by pointing out that while Boyd, the Fighter Mafia, and the Reformers lost the debate, their ideas still percolate in American society today.

This is a well-researched book. Hankins has brought together a wide variety of sources. These include important culture sources which include films, books, and even comic books to show the cultural attitude that developed in society about the expectations of fighter pilots. At the same time, Haskins also uses archival research and oral histories quite effectively. Hankins has done an excellent job at blending these diverse sources together to shape his arguments throughout the text. It is quite difficult to find a place to criticize him here.

Hankins’s book is an important addition to the historiography of air power during the Second Inter-War Period, which took place between the Vietnam and Persian Gulf Wars. Hankins offers a glimpse into how the culture of the Fighter Mafia affected the doctrinal and weapons procurement debates that the Air Force experienced during this period. Hankins also shows how Vietnam was not the only influencing factor behind the military reforms that took place after the war. In fact, as Hankins argues, the First World War dogfights had the greatest influence on the Fighter Mafia who tried to recreate that type of combat in the aftermath of Vietnam.

This book is incredibly important outside the academic community. The general public still yearn for fighter pilot culture and dogfights that this work addresses. As Hankins correctly argues the fighter pilot nostalgia played a major role in the development and acquisition of two major fighter systems. Today the public still embraces fighter pilots and their culture. In Ukraine we see the Ghost of Kyiv playing a major role in crafting the culture of these knights of the air. For example, on 7 August 2022, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry posted on their Facebook page a photo about their fighter pilots. The caption stated, “In the photos-Mirgorod aviators. Our guardian angels. Our knights of the sky.”[10] These messages are not just designed to galvanize the support of the Ukrainian public but also to target Americans by embracing fighter pilot culture. As the Fighter Mafia sought to use romanticized views of pilots to advance their agenda, so too is Ukraine tapping into that culture to convince both American politicians and the public to continue backing Ukraine in its war with the Russian Federation. It is not hard to imagine that the discussions Hankins writes about during the Second Inter-War Period will be revived as the United States prepares for potential conflicts with larger rivals such as the Russian Federation and China.

Hankins effectively shows how fighter pilot culture drove the Fighter Mafia to acquire the F-15 and F-16 in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. He argues that the romanticized view of the fighter pilot from the First World War drove reformers like Boyd to try and create the perfect air superiority fighters. While Boyd and the Fighter Mafia were able to acquire their ideal fighters, they were ultimately employed in the Persian Gulf War contrary to their intended use. Hankins’ work is an excellent analysis of how the perception of fighter pilots inside and outside of the Air Force affected the evolution of the institution in the 1960s and 1970s. He uses a wide range of sources to advance his narrative. Hankins work builds on new trends to start analyzing and asking hard questions of pilot culture within the Air Force. This book is incredibly important to the public at large as the United States enters a new age of air power dominated by drones and less by fighter pilots.

Luke Truxal is an adjunct at Columbia State Community College in Tennessee. He completed his PhD in 2018 from the University of North Texas with his dissertation “Command Unity and the Air War Against Germany.” His previous publications include ‘Bombing the Romanian Rail Network,’ in Air Power History. He has also written “The Politics of Operational Planning: Ira Eaker and the Combined Bomber Offensive in 1943” in the Journal of Military Aviation History. He is currently working on his book Uniting Against the Reich: The American Air War in Europe which will be published in late 2023.

This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge.

[1] Timothy Schultz, The Problem with Pilots: How Physicians, Engineers, and Airpower Enthusiasts Redefined Flight, (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 2018).

[2] Michael W. Hankins, Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021) 22-23.

[3]Lawrence Peters, “How Ukraine's 'Ghost of Kyiv' legendary pilot was born,” May 1, 2022 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61285833.

[4] Hankins, Flying Camelot, 50.

[5] Ibid, 92-95.

[6] Ibid, 115-121.

[7] Ibid, 146.

[8] Ibid, 179-181.

[9] Ibid, 182-186.

[10] Міністерство оборони України, “Without days off and full-fledged rest, they "minusu вихідtʹ" the Russians, protecting the Ukrainian sky.” August 5, 2022. https://www.facebook.com/MinistryofDefense.UA.