Soon after completing the Backfire research, Boyd walked into the personnel office and said, “I want to retire. Now.” On August 31, 1975, John Richard Boyd retired after twenty-four years in the Air Force. He was forty-eight years old. He told Spinney and Sprey and Christie and Burton that the secretary of the Air Force pleaded with him not to retire. He said the secretary promised to make him a general if he would stay in the Air Force. “I told him no. I don’t want to get on the cocktail and pussy circuit.”
