John Boyd’s bird. What a genius.
The F-16 is NOT John Boyd's bird. John Boyd, Pierre Sprey, and the rest of the fighter mafia wanted the F-16 to be a lightweight day fighter with no air to ground, and no radar.
Had the fighter mafia had their way, the F-16 would have gone the way of the F-5 decades ago as an obsolete one-trick pony.
I was District Sales Manager for the old Cleveland based American Monorail Company in Texas as that production cranked up and walked that mile long plant many times when the overhead cranes AMCo supplied during WWII required some service/parts attention.
I still have a piece of aluminum honey cone given to me by one of the engineers at GD.
Fascinating process to watch those planes go together!
After transfer back to Atlanta sold a number of cranes to Lockheed for the C-5 and C-130 production lines.