Notes

Introduction

1. Walter Kretchik, Robert F. Baumann, and John T. Fishel, Invasion, Intervention, “Intervasion”: A Concise History of the US Army in Operation Uphold Democracy (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CGSC Press, 1998), 52; Sean Goldstein, “Talks Barely Beat Invasion US Intervention in Haiti,” Baltimore Sun, September 20, 1994; Conrad C. Crane, “Phase IV Operations: Where Wars Are Really Won,” Military Review, May–June 2005, 19.

2. Rachael Riley, “Commander of 82nd Airborne Division to Deploy to Afghanistan,” Fayetteville (NC) Observer, August 18, 2021, https://www.fayobserver.com/story/news/2021/08/17/pentagon-82nd-airborne-division-role-afghanistan-maj-gen-christopher-donahue-military-biden-taliban/8165782002/; Jeff Schogel, “Why a 2-Star General Was the Last American Service Member to Leave Afghanistan,” Task & Purpose, August 31, 2021.

3. Andrew Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The US Army between Korea and Vietnam (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1986), 107; Walter E. Kretchik, U.S. Army Doctrine: From the American Revolution to the War on Terror (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 172; Brian Linn, Elvis’s Army: Cold War GIs and the Atomic Battlefield (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 40; Robert T. Davis, The Challenge of Adaptation: The US Army in the Aftermath of Conflict, 1953–2000 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CSI Press, 2008), 37n55.

4. Frank G. Hoffman, Mars Adapting: Military Change during War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2021), 235.

5. Robert Palmer, Bell I. Wiley, and William R. Keast, The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops (Washington, DC: GPO, 1948), 13–22, 492; and Marc R. DeVore, When Failure Thrives: Institutions and the Evolution of Postwar Airborne Forces (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Army Press, 2015), 32, 59; James M. Gavin, interview by Donald Andrews and Charles Ferguson, 1975, box 1: Oral History Transcripts, James M. Gavin Papers, USAHEC.

6. Hoffman, Mars Adapting, 235.

7. Roger Beaumont, Military Elites: Special Fighting Units in the Modern World (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974), 103–12; Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1967), 177; “Paratroopers in Algeria Irked by Political Weakness in Paris,” New York Times, May 16, 1958. See Charles R. Schrader, The First Helicopter War: Logistics and Mobility in Algeria, 1954–1962 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999); DeVore, When Failure Thrives, 41; Steven J. Zaloga, Inside the Blue Berets: A Combat History of Soviet and Russian Airborne Forces, 1930–1995 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1995), 117–63; Jacob W. Kipp, “The Political Ballet of General Aleksandr Lebed,” Problems of Post-communism 43, no. 4 (July 1, 1996): 43–53, https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.1996.11655688.

8. Allan D. English, Understanding Military Culture: A Canadian Perspective (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2004), 10; Peter R. Mansoor and Williamson Murray eds., The Culture of Military Organizations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 1; Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 89; Edgar H. Schein and Peter Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2016), 87–102, 111.

9. Schein and Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 2, 87–102, 111.

10. Schein and Schein, 2, 291–317, 181.

11. Schein and Schein, 152; English, Understanding Military Culture, 15, 23.

12. Wayne E. Lee, Barbarians and Brothers: Anglo-American Warfare, 1500–1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 6; John Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2003), xx; Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 97–98, 92; Wayne E. Lee, “Mind and Matter—Cultural Analysis in American Military History: A Look at the State of the Field,” Journal of American History 93, no. 4 (2007): 1135–36, https://doi.org/10.2307/25094598; Wayne E. Lee, ed., Warfare and Culture in World History (New York: NYU Press, 2011), 3; Peter H. Wilson, “Defining Military Culture,” Journal of Military History 72 (2008): 18; Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 6; Eric Michael Burke, Soldiers from Experience: The Forging of Sherman’s Fifteenth Army Corps, 1862–1863 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2022).

13. Heather P. Venable, How the Few Became the Proud: Crafting the Marine Corps Mystique, 1874–1918 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019); Aaron B. O’Connell, Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); Craig M. Cameron, American Samurai: Myth, Imagination, and the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division, 1941–1951 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 15; see also Allen Millett, “The US Marine Corps, 1973–2017: Cultural Preservation in Every Place and Clime,” in Mansoor and Murray, Culture of Military Organizations, 379, 391.

14. Malcom Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War (New York: Little, Brown, 2021); Melvin G. Dealie, Always at War: Organizational Culture in Strategic Air Command, 1946–62 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2018); Michael W. Hankins, Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021). For more on strategic bombardment see John Curatola, Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow: The Strategic Air Command and American War Plans at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 1945–1950 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015); Edward Kaplan, To Kill Nations: American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). For more on strategic mobility see Keith Hutcheson, Air Mobility: The Evolution of Global Reach (Vienna, VA: Point One, 1999), and Robert C. Owen, Air Mobility: A Brief History of the American Experience (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2013).

15. For more on World War II airborne operations see James A. Huston, Out of the Blue: US Army Airborne Operations in World War II (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1972); Clay Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers: The American Airborne in World War II (Garden City, NY: Dial, 1985); Gerald Devlin, Paratrooper! The Saga of the US Army and Marine Parachute and Glider Combat Troops during World War II (New York: St. Martin’s, 1986); William B. Breuer, Geronimo! American Paratroopers in World War II (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992); E. M. Flanagan, Airborne: A Combat History of American Airborne Forces (New York: Presidio, 2002); Mitchell Yockelson, The Paratrooper Generals: Matthew Ridgway, Maxwell Taylor, and the American Airborne from D-Day through Normandy (Guilford, CT: Stackpole Books, 2020). For more on the 1950s army see Bacevich, Pentomic Era; Ingo Trauschweizer, The Cold War US Army: Building Deterrence for Limited War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008); Linn, Elvis’s Army; Donald Carter, The US Army before Vietnam (Washington, DC: CMH, 2015); Kalev I. Sepp, “The Pentomic Puzzle: The Influence of Personalities and Nuclear Weapons on US Army Organization 1952–1958,” Army History 51 (Winter 2001): 9; John J. Midgley Jr., Deadly Illusions: Army Policy for the Nuclear Battlefield (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986).

1. The Birth of American Airborne Culture

1. Donald L. Deam, General Toothpick: The WWII Memoirs of 1st Sgt. Donald L. Deam (Fort Campbell, KY: 101st Airborne Division, 2008), 6.

2. “U.S. Trains Parachutists,” Life, August 19, 1940; “U.S. Trains More Parachute Troops,” Life, May 12, 1941; Leslie Goodwins, dir., Parachute Battalion (RKO Pictures, 1941); Edward M. Coffman, The Regulars: The American Army, 1898–1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 403. The 501st Parachute Battalion, including William P. Yarborough, provided extras for the film and conducted all live jumps.

3. Walter Duranty, “Soviets Initiate Parachute Attack,” New York Times, September 16, 1935; Zaloga, Inside the Blue Berets, 13–14; James S. Herndon and Joseph O. Baylen, “Col. Philip R. Faymonville and the Red Army, 1934–43,” Slavic Review 34, no. 3 (September 1975): 488, https://doi.org/10.2307/2495561; Franz Kurowski, Jump into Hell: German Paratroopers in World War II (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2010), 165.

4. DeVore, When Failure Thrives, 22; William P. Yarborough oral history interview, 1975, box 1, William P. Yarborough Papers, USAHEC; James M. Gavin, On to Berlin: A Fighting General’s True Story of Airborne Combat in World War II (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), 2.

5. The War Department ordered the formation of the first three parachute regiments on January 30, 1942, and the Provisional Parachute Group became the Airborne Command on March 21, 1942; see Memorandum for General Bull, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3, Subj: Air-borne Divisions, April 4, 1942, in The Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower: The War Years, vol. 1, ed. Alfred D. Chandler (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 226; DeVore, When Failure Thrives, 57; Gordon Rottman, US Army Airborne, 1940–1990 (New York: Osprey, 1990), 7.

6. A. D. Rathbone IV, He’s in the Paratroops Now (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1943), 24; Tania Chaco, “Why Did They Fight? American Airborne Units in World War II,” Defence Studies 1, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 71–72, https://doi.org/10.1080/714000045; Devlin, Paratrooper!, 49–51, 109; Cole C. Kingseed, Conversations with Major Dick Winters: Life Lessons from the Commander of the Band of Brothers (New York: Berkley Caliber, 2014), 49.

7. James M. Gavin oral history, 1975, section 1, pp. 11–12, box 1, James M. Gavin Papers, USAHEC (hereafter Gavin Oral History); “Paratroops “Best Outfit in the Army,” Says Corporal Jim Perham, Home on Leave,” Daily Tribune (Wisconsin Rapids, WI), September 14, 1942; Vincent J. Speranza, NUTS! A 101st Airborne Division Machine Gunner at Bastogne (Atlanta: Deeds, 2014), 3; Jeremy C. Holm, When Angels Fall: From Toccoa to Tokyo (Salt Lake City, UT: Holm, 2019, 19; Samuel A. Stouffer et al., The American Soldier, vol. 2, Combat and Its Aftermath (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), 329.

8. Palmer, Wiley, and Keast, Procurement and Training, 14, 20, 67; Peter R. Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe: The Triumph of American Infantry Divisions, 1941–1945 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), 41.

9. Kurt Gabel, The Making of a Paratrooper: Airborne Training and Combat in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 31–32; “Procurement of Infantry Personnel for the Parachute Battalion,” memorandum, September 18, 1940, Early Airborne, box 5, WMM82.

10. US War Department, FM 31–30, Tactics and Technique of Air-borne Troops (Washington, DC: GPO, 1942), 31 (hereafter FM 31–30, Tactics and Technique); Holm, When Angels Fall: 26–33; Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 16; William Guarnere and Edward Heffron with Robyn Post, Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends: Two WWII Paratroopers from the Original Band of Brothers Tell Their Story (New York: Berkley Caliber, 2007), 25; Kingseed, Conversations with Major Dick Winters, 170; Gideon Aran, “Parachuting,” American Journal of Sociology 80, no. 1 (July 1974): 150, https://doi.org/10.1086/225764.

11. Gabel, Making of a Paratrooper, 37, 44; James B. Carlaw, oral history interview by Shaun Illingworth, July 21, 2006, Rutgers Oral History Archives, New Brunswick, NJ, John Foster Magill Oral History Transcript (AFC/2001/001/80043), LOC.

12. Mark J. Alexander and John Sparry, Jump Commander: In Combat with the 505th and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments, 82nd Airborne Division in World War II (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2018), 44; Donald R. Burgett, Currahee! A Screaming Eagle at Normandy (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1967), 8; Matthew B. Ridgway as told to Harold H. Martin, Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway (New York: Harper, 1956), 53; Richard Holmes, Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle (New York: Free Press, 1986), 48.

13. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 51–54.

14. Parachute Training Course Curriculum, Early Airborne, box 6, WMM82.

15. Patent number 134963, US Patent Office, June 19, 1942, Early Airborne, box 17, WMM82; Guarnere, Heffron, and Post, Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends, 99; Peter Harclerode, Wings of War: Airborne Warfare 1918–1945 (London: Cassell, 2005), 33–34.

16. “Approve New Emblem for Parachutists,” Schenectady Gazette, July 2, 1941; Stouffer et al., American Soldier, 2:329; Coffman, Regulars, 403; Guy LoFaro, The Sword of St. Michael: The 82nd Airborne Division in World War II (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2011), 19; Gerald Astor, Battling Buzzards: The Odyssey of the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team 1942–1945 (New York: Dell, 1993), 9.

17. Francis L. Sampson, Look Out Below! A Story of the Airborne by a Paratrooper Padre (Sweetwater, TN: 101st Airborne Division Association, 1989), 16; McNair quoted in Breuer, Geronimo!, 9. For more on fighting see Spencer F. Wurst and Gayle Wurst, Descending from the Clouds: A Memoir of Combat in the 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division (Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2004), 51; John Foster Magill Oral History; Gavin Oral History, section 1, p. 15, USAHEC; for more on the downside of airborne culture see R. F. M. Williams, “‘Our Problem Children’: Masculinity and Its Discontents in American Parachute Units in World War II,” Journal of Military History 87, no. 3 (July 2023): 675–702.

18. Bob Bearden, To D-Day and Back: Adventure with the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment and Life as a World War II POW (Minneapolis, MN: Zenith, 2007), 23; “Prop Blast Ceremony Rules,” 1951, WWII, box 17, WMM82; Devlin, Paratrooper!, 90–91; T. Michael Booth and Duncan Spencer, Paratrooper: The Life of Gen. James M. Gavin (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 77. For more on songs see Wurst and Wurst, Descending from the Clouds, 44; Devlin, Paratrooper!, 124.

19. Alexander and Sparry, Jump Commander, 49; Ambrose, Band of Brothers, 34; Kingseed, Conversations with Major Dick Winters, 133.

20. Ridgway, “Outline,” n.d., box 58, Official Papers, 82nd Airborne Division, XVIII Airborne Corps, 1942–1945, Ridgway Papers, USAHEC; Beaumont, Military Elites, 6; Holmes, Acts of War, 48.

21. FM 31–30, Tactics and Technique, 32, 49; John T. Ellis, The Airborne Command and Center, Army Ground Forces Historical Section Study No. 25 (Washington, DC: Army Ground Forces, 1946), 9.

22. AGF M/S, TRC to CoS, June 22, 1942, “Policy re Training of Airborne Troops, appendix 23, in Ellis, Airborne Command and Center, 132; Kent R. Greenfield, Robert R. Palmer, and Bell I. Wiley, The Organization of Ground Combat Troops (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1947), 340; “Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of the Airborne Division,” p. 9, Study No. 16, Reports of the General Board, US Forces, European Theater, CARL; Airborne Division Table of Organization (T/O 71) 15 Oct 42, WWII, box 43, WMM82; Ridgway to Marshall, November 1, 1944, George C. Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office Collection, Selected Materials, GCMRL; Marshall to Ridgway, December 18, 1944, Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office Collection, GCMRL; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 126.

23. Jack Thompson, “Lack of Planes Delays Training of Paratroops,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 14, 1941; “Allocation of Transport Planes for U.S.S.R.,” Meeting Minutes, 16th Meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, April 21, 1942, cited from Minutes of Meetings of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Post-Arcadia, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Joint History Office, 2003), 130; Christopher R. Gabel, The U.S. Army GHQ Maneuvers of 1941 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1992), 41.

24. Commander, 82nd A/B Division, to Commander-in-Chief, Allied Force, memorandum, “Summary of Principles Covering Use of the Airborne Division,” November 27, 1943, Personal Papers, box 46, Matthew B. Ridgway, WMM82; Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 31, 49–51; Ellis, Airborne Command and Center, 10.

25. FM 31–30, Tactics and Technique, 61; Gavin, On to Berlin, 2.

26. Briton Cooper Busch, Bunker Hill to Bastogne: Elite Forces and American Society (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2006), 167; HQ Airborne Command to CGs 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, memorandum, “Training Directive,” November 4, 1942, appendix 25, in Ellis, Airborne Command and Center, 137–42; Gabel, Making of a Paratrooper, 71; Wurst and Wurst, Descending from the Clouds, 46.

27. HQ Airborne Command to CGs 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, memorandum, “Training Directive,” November 4, 1942, appendix 25, in Ellis, Airborne Command and Center, 137–42; Burgett, Currahee, I; Hoffman, Mars Adapting, 235.

28. Larry Alexander, Biggest Brother: The Life of Major Dick Winters, the Man Who Led the Band of Brothers (New York: Penguin, 2005), 41; Gavin Oral History, section 1, 7–9, USAHEC; Henry Langrehr and Jim DeFelice, Whatever It Took: An American Paratrooper’s Extraordinary Memoir of Escape, Survival, and Heroism in the Last Days of World War II (New York: William Morrow, 2020), 40.

29. William Ryder to James Gavin, May 17, 1941, box 7, Gavin Papers; Gavin, On to Berlin, 2; James M. Gavin, War and Peace in the Space Age (New York: Harper, 1958), 46.

30. Maxwell D. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), 43–45; John M. Taylor, General Maxwell Taylor: The Sword and the Pen (New York: Doubleday, 1989), 43.

31. FM 31–30, Tactics and Technique, 32.

32. Irvin Williams Seelye Oral History Transcript (AFC/2001/001/02027), LOC; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 47; Jörg Muth, Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901–1940 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2011), 102; Stouffer et al., American Soldier, 2:118–25.

33. Marshall Andrews, “Our New Army,” Washington Post, May 9, 1942; John Thompson, “Chute Troopers’ Morale Goes Up with Each Fall,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 2, 1942; Lamar Q. Ball, “Today’s Paratrooper Scorns Fatalism Fad,” Atlanta Constitution, November 27, 1942.

34. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 45; Andrew Carrico, as quoted in Holm, When Angels Fall, 50; see also p. 30.

35. Gavin Oral History, section 1, p. 15, USAHEC; Theodore Wilson in Gabel, Making of a Paratrooper, xi–xii; David Bergman, Marie Gustafsson Senden, and Erik Berntson, “Preparing to Lead in Combat: Development of Leadership Self-Efficacy by Static-Line Parachuting,” Military Psychology 31, no. 6 (October 2019): 489, https://doi.org/10.1080/08995605.2019.1670583; on division patches see Peter S. Kindsvatter, American Soldiers: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 133, 134; see also Mansoor, GI Offensive in Europe, 264.

36. HQ Airborne Command to CGs 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, “Training Directive,” November 4, 1942, appendix 25, in Ellis, Airborne Command and Center, 137–42.

37. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 7; FM 31–30, Tactics and Technique, 30, 32.

38. Alexander and Sparry, Jump Commander, 50; Gavin, On to Berlin, 2–3.

39. Gavin Oral History, section 1, p. 14, USAHEC; Gavin, On to Berlin, 3.

40. John A. Lynn, Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791–94 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), 262–63; Holger Herwig, “The Dynamics of Necessity: German Military Policy during the First World War,” in Military Effectiveness, vol. 1, The First World War, ed. Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 101. For a robust exploration of German tactical development see Bruce I. Gudmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914–1918 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995).

41. For more on infantry evolution since at least the mid-eighteenth century see Burke, Soldiers from Experience, 269–72; John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and John A. English and Bryce I. Gudmundsson, On Infantry (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994). For a broader perspective see Clifford J. Rogers, ed., The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Revolution of Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 1995).

42. Mansoor, GI Offensive, 31; Keast, Palmer, and Wiley, Procurement and Training, 596–97; Guarnere, Heffron, and Post, Brothers in Battle, 43.

43. FM 31–30, Tactics and Technique, 32; Richard Seitz, as quoted in Astor, Battling Buzzards, 28–29.

44. Ellis, Airborne Command and Center, 9; Langrehr and DeFelice, Whatever It Took, 38.

45. Palmer, Wiley, and Keats, Procurement and Training, 442–69; Mansoor, GI Offensive, 82–83; W. Forrest Dawson, ed., Saga of the All American (Atlanta: Albert Love, 1946).

46. Gabel, Making of a Paratrooper, 134; Guarnere, Heffron, and Post, Brothers in Battle, xx; Dick Eaton, as quoted in Astor, Battling Buzzards, 395.

47. Robert J. MacCoun, Elizabeth Kier, and Aaron Belkin, “Does Social Cohesion Determine Motivation in Combat? An Old Question with an Old Answer,” Armed Forces and Society 32, no. 1 (2005): 1–9, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48608737; Anthony King, The Combat Soldier: Infantry Tactics and Cohesion in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 25–34, 350; William Cockerham and Lawrence E. Cohen, “Volunteering for Foreign Combat Missions: An Attitudinal Study of U.S. Army Paratroopers,” Pacific Sociological Review 24, no. 3 (July 1981): 351, https://doi.org/10.2307/1388810; Sheldon G. Levin, Mathematical Models for Prediction of Neuropsychiatric and Other Non-battle Casualties in High Intensity Combat (Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD: US Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, 1986), 15.

48. Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 27.

49. John Foster Magill Oral History; Sampson, Look Out Below!, 15; Jack P. Nix, “505 Parachute Infantry Regiment (a Legacy of Lessons),” US Army War College Military Studies Program Paper, Carlisle Barracks, PA, 1989, 7.

50. Rathbone, He’s in the Paratroops Now, 109; Huston, Out of the Blue, 49.

51. Palmer, Wiley, and Keast, Procurement and Training, 258; Beaumont, Military Elites, 97, 102. Although most paratroopers attended the Parachute School, some made their first jumps in combat. See Werner T. Angress, Witness to the Storm: A Jewish Journey from Nazi Berlin to the 82nd Airborne, 1920–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 257–62.

52. William Cockerham, “Selective Socialization: Airborne Training as a Status Passage,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 1 (Fall 1973): 215–29, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45293603.

2. World War II and the Foundation of the Airborne Mafia

1. Maj. Gen. William M. Miley to Lt. Col. J. B. Shinberger, October 13, 1943, box 2, folder 20, William M. Miley Papers, USAHEC (hereafter Miley Papers).

2. WSEG, “A Historical Study of Some World War II Airborne Operations,” WSEG Staff Study No. 3, 1951, 139; Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn (New York: Henry Holt, 2002), 90; Edson Raff, We Jumped to Fight (New York: Eagle Books, 1944), 64; William Yarborough, Bail Out over North Africa: America’s First Combat Parachute Missions, 1942 (Williamstown, NJ: Phillips, 1979), 92; Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 66–67.

3. Yarborough, Bail Out over North Africa, 97, 101, 126; Raff, We Jumped to Fight, 78–103, 138; Huston, Out of the Blue, 152–53.

4. 505th Parachute Infantry AAR, memorandum to CG, 82nd Airborne Division, August 14, 1943, World War II Operational Documents, CARL; Allied Force Hdqtrs, N Africa—Rep of Allied Force Airborne Board on Op “HUSKY” Department of the Navy, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Intelligence Division, World War II War Diaries, RG 38: Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1875–2006, NARA II; H.Q., 82nd A/B Division, “The 82d Airborne Division in Sicily and Italy,” November 1, 1945, 5–6, World War II Operational Documents, CARL.

5. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 68–69; Gavin, On to Berlin, 19.

6. Lt. Col. Charles Billingslea, “Report of A/B Operations, ‘Husky’ and ‘Bigot,’” August 15, 1943, A/B Overseas Rpts, p. 11, World War II Operational Documents, CARL; Albert Garland, Howard Smyth, and Martin Blumenson, Sicily and the Surrender of Italy: The Mediterranean Theater of Operations (Washington, DC: GPO, 1965), 182; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 50; Alexander and Sparry, Jump Commander, 87.

7. Alexander and Sparry, Jump Commander, 81; William B. Breuer, Drop Zone Sicily: Allied Airborne Strike, July 1943 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1983), 20–21.

8. Billingslea, report, August 15, 1943, p. 10, CARL; Gavin, On to Berlin, xiii; 82nd Airborne Division in Sicily and Italy, HQ, 82nd A/B Division, November 1, 1945, p. 13, World War II Operational Documents, CARL; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 69–70; see James M. Gavin, Airborne Warfare (Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press, 1947), 16.

9. Gavin, On to Berlin, 90. For Patton comments see report of Maj. Gen. F. A. M. Browning, July 24, 1943, World War II Operational Documents, CARL.

10. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1948), 173; Eisenhower to Marshall, September 20, 1943, in Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower: The War Years, 3:1440; Swing in Huston, Out of the Blue, 164.

11. Gavin, On to Berlin, 52; Edwin M. Sayre, “The Operations of Company A, 505th Parachute Infantry (82nd Airborne Division), Airborne Landings in Sicily, 9–24 July 1943 (Sicily Campaign) Personal Experiences of a Company Commander” (Fort Benning, GA, 1947), 21.

12. War Department, Training Circular No. 113, Employment of Airborne and Troop Carrier Forces, October 9, 1943, 2, 4; Eugene G. Piasecki, “The Knollwood Manuever: The Ultimate Test,” Veritas 4, no. 1 (2008); E.M. Flanagan, Airborne, 103.

13. “Suitability of the Planned Operations for Execution by Airborne Troops,” memorandum, HQ, 82nd Airborne Division, October 25, 1943, and letter from Lt. Gen. Mark Clark to Maj. Gen. Matthew Ridgway, September 13, 1943, World War II, box 6, HQ Paperwork, WMM82; Yarborough Oral History, 47–48, USAHEC; Martin Blumenson, Salerno to Cassino (Washington, DC: GPO, 1969), 131.

14. Mark Clark, Calculated Risk (New York: Harper Collins, 1950), 169; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 86; Chester G. Starr, From Salerno to the Alps: A History of the Fifth Army, 1943–1945 (Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press, 1948), 29.

15. “Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of the Airborne Division,” 4, Study No. 16, Reports of the General Board, U.S. Forces, ETO, CARL; Gavin, On to Berlin, 133; Lynn “Buck” Compton with Marcus Brotherton, Call of Duty: My Life before, during, and after the Band of Brothers (New York: Berkley Caliber, 2008), 14; Dwayne Burns with Leland Burns, Jump into the Valley of the Shadow: The World War II Memories of a Paratrooper in the 508th P.I.R., 82nd Airborne Division (Philadelphia: Casemate, 2006), 40.

16. Field Order No. 6, 82nd Airborne Division, May 28, 1944, World War II Operational Documents, CARL; Maj. Salve H. Matheson, “The Operations of the 506th Parachute Infantry (101st Airborne Division) in the Normandy Invasion, 5–8 June 1944 (Normandy Campaign), Personal Experience of a Regimental Staff Officer,” Fort Benning, GA, 1949, p. 7, DRL; “Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of the Airborne Division,” 3; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 73.

17. Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 63; Eugene Andrew Drance Collection (AFC/2001/001/85477), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, LOC; for Taylor quote see Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 80–82; Huston, Out of the Blue, 182.

18. 82nd Airborne Division in Normandy, France—Operation Neptune, U.S. Army Unit Records, box 6, DDEL; “Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of the Airborne Division,” 4; Ridgway to Eisenhower, memorandum, July 10, 1944, folder Ridgway, Matthew B., box 98, Pre-presidential Papers, DDEL; 505th PIR Regimental S3 journal, Normandy, WWII, box 30, WMM82; After Action Report, “Operations of the 507th RCT following the Drop,” WWII, box 33, WMM82; Huston, Out of the Blue, 183.

19. Maj. Knut H. Raudstein, “The Operation of the 506th Parachute Infantry (101st Airborne Division) in the vicinity of Carentan, June 6–8, 1944 (Normandy Campaign),” Infantry School student paper, Fort Benning, GA, 1948, 41; Gavin Oral History, section 2, p. 8, USAHEC; Burns, Jump into the Valley of the Shadow, 59; “Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of the Airborne Division,” 4. For more on La Fière see Robert M. Murphy, No Better Place to Die: The Battle for La Fière Bridge (Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2009); Letter to Combined Chiefs of Staff, Cable #90024, Top Secret, June 8, 1944, Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower: The War Years, 3:1736–39.

20. Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (New York: Henry Holt, 1951), 235; Alexander and Sparry, Jump Commander, 233; Blair, Ridgway’s Paratroopers, 295–96.

21. WSEG Staff Study No. 3, p. 21; Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 66; Matheson, “Operations of the 506th Parachute Infantry in the Normandy Invasion,” 7.

22. Record of Debriefing Conference, Operation Neptune, August 13, 1944, 13–14, Personal Papers, box 13, WMM82; Gavin, On to Berlin, 133.

23. Allan R. Millett, “The United States Armed Forces in the Second World War,” in Military Effectiveness, vol. 3, The Second World War, ed. Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 68; Huston, Out of the Blue, 191–92.

24. Blumenson, Salerno to Cassino, 77; Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 28.

25. Clark, Calculated Risk, 161; Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 28; Lt. Gen. Mark Clark to Maj. Gen. Matthew Ridgway, September 13, 1943, World War II, box 6, WMM82.

26. Mansoor, GI Offensive in Europe, 114; Yarborough Oral History, 40; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 85.

27. 504th Staff Journal, Italy, September 1943, box 261, Veteran Survey Collection, USAHEC; Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 29; Clark, Calculated Risk, 167; HQ, 82nd Airborne Division, “The 82d Airborne Division in Sicily and Italy,” 49, box 12346, RG 407, NARA; Blumenson, Salerno to Cassino, 127; Gavin, On to Berlin, 72, 74.

28. HQ, 82nd Airborne Division, “82d Airborne Division in Sicily and Italy,” 50; Irvin Seelye Oral History (AFC/2001/001/02027), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, LOC; Mansoor, GI Offensive in Europe, 114.

29. Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 31.

30. William A. Wellman, dir., Battleground (MGM, 1949); Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, prods., Band of Brothers, episode 6, “Bastogne,” dir. David Leland, aired October 7, 2001, HBO; Maxwell D. Taylor interview with Richard A. Manion, section 1, pp. 3–4, November 10, 1972, Senior Officers Debriefing Program, Maxwell Taylor Papers, USAHEC (hereafter Taylor Oral History); John D. McKenzie, On Time, on Target: The World War II Memoir of a Paratrooper in the 82d Airborne (Novato, CA: Presidio, 2000), 51.

31. Ridgway to Gavin, Ridgway to Taylor, November 14, 1944, box 21, Ridgway Papers; James Megellas, All the Way To Berlin: A Paratrooper at War in Europe (New York: Presidio, 2003), 180; Taylor to Ridgway, November 7, 1944, box 21, Ridgway Papers; Guarnere, Heffron, and Post, Brothers in Battle, 153; Speranza, NUTS!, 42.

32. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 97; Maxwell Taylor interview with Forrest C. Pogue, July 16, 1959, 9, Pogue interviews, GCMRL; Gavin, On to Berlin, 228.

33. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 114; Bradley, Soldier’s Story, 256, 467, 480; LoFaro, Sword of St. Michael, 445; Ozzie Schock to Al Ireland, August 11, 1997, box 17, Gavin Papers, WMM82; McKenzie, On Time, on Target, 67.

34. Phil Nordyke, All American, All the Way: The Combat History of the 82nd Airborne Division in World War II (St. Paul, MN: Zenith, 2005), 627; XVIII Airborne Corps (@18airbornecorps), Twitter Thread, December 23, 2020, 6:49 a.m., https://twitter.com/18airbornecorps/status/1341727627359498242; US Army CMH, “23 December 1944—Wednesday Wisdom—Battle of the Bulge,” Facebook, December 23, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/armyhistory/photos/a.410473127852/10159179358687853/?type=3.

35. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 113–16; Stephen R. Taaffe, Marshall and His Generals: U.S. Army Commanders in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 271–72.

36. Ralph Mitchell, The 101st Airborne Division’s Defense of Bastogne (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CSI Press, 1986), 9–10; Mark Bando, 101st Airborne: The Screaming Eagles in World War II (St. Paul, MN: Zenith, 2007), 187–88; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 98; Speranza, NUTS!, 46.

37. Harry W. O. Kinnard Oral History, 1983, tape k50, pp. 44–46, box 1, Harry W. O. Kinnard Papers, USAHEC (hereafter Kinnard Oral History); Bradley, Soldier’s Story, 472.

38. “Tank Leader Tells of Bastogne Fight,” New York Times, June 25, 1945; George S. Patton, War as I Knew It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), 205; John S. D. Eisenhower, The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge (New York: Da Capo, 1969), 345; “U.S. Tanks Smash into Bastogne, Break Siege,” New York Times, December 28, 1944; Letter to Omar Bradley and Jacob Devers, March 12, 1945, Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower: The War Years, 4:2523–24; “Wounded Pleaded for Bastogne Role,” New York Times, January 3, 1945; Cable to Combined Chiefs of Staff, Cable S 75872, Top Secret, January 20, 1945, Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower: The War Years, 4:2447.

39. Taylor’s other great disappointment was that the planned airborne assault on Rome was not feasible; see Taylor Oral History, section 6, p. 11; Kinnard Oral History, tape K50, p. 52; Eugene Andrew Drance Collection (AFC/2001/001/85477), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, LOC.

40. James Huston, “Thoughts on the American Airborne Effort in World War II,” Military Review, May 1951, 20.

41. For more on adaptation in combat see Hoffman, Mars Adapting, and David Barno and Nora Benashel, Adaptation under Fire: How Militaries Change in Wartime (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Williamson Murray, Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Huston, Out of the Blue, 187; Millett, “United States Armed Forces in the Second World War,” 68.

42. M. B. Ridgway to CG, FIFTH ARMY, memorandum, Subj: “Operations,” August 20, 1943, box 19, Ridgway Papers; Army Ground Forces Historical Section, Study No. 25, 1946, 6; “Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of the Airborne Division,” 6–7, 10.

43. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 12, 62; Sayre, “Operations of Company A,” 22; “Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of the Airborne Division,” 9.

44. Mansoor, GI Offensive in Europe, 257; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 50; Maj. Gen. J. M. Swing, memorandum, “Analysis of the Airborne Participation in Operation ‘Husky,’” Am HQ Force 141, July 16, 1943, World War II Operational Documents, CARL; Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 163.

45. Airborne Division Table of Organization (T/O 71) 15 Oct 42 and 24 Feb 44, WWII, box 43, WMM82; Huston, Out of the Blue, 187; Huston, “Thoughts on the American Airborne Effort,” 23.

46. Ridgway to Marshall, November 1, 1944, and Marshall to Ridgway, December 18, 1944, George C. Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office Collection, Selected Materials, GCMRL; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 126; Col. Edwin W. Chamberlain to Maj. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, memorandum, December 11, 1944, box 21, Ridgway Papers; Millet, “United States Armed Forces in the Second World War,” 71.

47. Taylor Oral History, section 2, pp. 29–30; Huston, “Thoughts on the American Airborne Effort,” 23.

48. James Fenelon, Four Hours of Fury: The Untold Story of World War II’s Largest Airborne Operation and the Final Push into Nazi Germany (New York: Scribner, 2019), 135. Glider pilots in the British airborne were formally assigned to their own infantry companies once on the ground.

49. Phil Nordyke, All American, 105; Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 61–62; HQ, 505th Parachute Infantry, “Air Re-Supply Plan,” May 28, 1944, box 1, William E. Ekman Papers, USAHEC; Inspector General to CG, 82nd Airborne Division, “Glider Operation NEPTUNE,” August 4, 1944, box 21, Ridgway Papers; Teddy H. Sanford remarks in Record of Debriefing Conference, Operation Neptune, August 13, 1944, Personal Papers, box 13, WMM82; Eisenhower to Marshall, cable, and Ridgway to Marshall, letter, July 23, 1944, box 20, Ridgway Papers.

50. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 82; Wurst and Wurst, Descending from the Clouds, 128–29; James E. Mrazek, Airborne Combat: The Glider War / Fighting Gliders of World War II (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2011), 148–50; 82nd Airborne Division, Action in Normandy, Report of Maj. Gen. Ridgway, WWII, box 80, Normandy Historical Data, WMM82; Fenelon, Four Hours of Fury, 132.

51. HQ, XVIII Airborne Corps, Report of Airborne Phase (September 17–27, 1944) Operation “Market,” October 5, 1944, CARL; John L. Lowden, Silent Wings at War: Glider Combat in World War II (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1992), 126–29; Mrazek, Airborne Combat, 212–17.

52. Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 137; Gerald M. Devlin, Silent Wings: The Saga of the U.S. Army and Marine Combat Glider Pilots during World War II (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985), 301–4; HQ, 17th Airborne Division, Operation Varsity, July 1945, CARL; HQ, XVIII Corps (Airborne), Report on Operation Varsity, April 25, 1945, box 2B, Miley Papers; Mrazek, Airborne Combat, 248.

53. Alexander, Jump Commander, 184–85; Lowden, Silent Wings at War, 111–14.

54. War Department, Study No. 17, Types of Divisions—Post War Army, Reports of the General Board U.S. Forces, European Theater of Operations, 1945, pp. 15–16, quote on 15, CARL; Glider Breeze, March 14, 1946, WWII, box 13, 325th GIR, WMM82; CS 2045/8, April 26, 1951, Records of the Air Force Representative on the Joint Airborne Troop Board, RG 340, NARA; Joint Airborne Troop Board Administrative and Project Files, 1950–1954, RG 337, NARA.

55. Maxwell D. Taylor, interview with Charles R. Smith, p. 8, June 12, 1974, Maxwell Taylor Papers, USAHEC; Message to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Radio, August 2, 1945, Marshall Papers, Pentagon Office Collection, Selected Materials, GCMRL; War Department, Study No. 17: Types of Divisions—Post War Army, Reports of the General Board U.S. Forces, European Theater of Operations, 1945, p. 15, CARL.

56. Gavin, On to Berlin, 327; Flanagan, Airborne, 300–302; Werner T. Angress, Witness to the Storm: A Jewish Journey from Nazi Berlin to the 82nd Airborne, 1920–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019), 307; Burns, Jump into the Valley of the Shadow, 204; Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 137.

57. Correspondence regarding Inactivation of Airborne Divisions, box 37, Gavin Papers; Ridgway to Floyd Parks, September 26, 1945, box 61, Ridgway Papers; Ridgway to Chief of Staff, memorandum, “Inactivation of Airborne Divisions,” October 18, 1945, and Eisenhower to Ridgway, message, November 5, 1945, folder Ridgway, box 98, Pre-presidential Papers, DDEL; Letters to Barbara, March 21, 1945, October 11, 1945, and November 12, 1945, in Barbara Gavin Fauntleroy, The General and His Daughter: The Wartime Letters of General James M. Gavin to His Daughter Barbara (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007); Meyer Berger, “City Millions Hail the 82d in GI Tribute,” New York Times, January 13, 1946; Bradley Biggs, Gavin (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1980), 65.

3. The Airborne Way of War and Its Strategic Implications

1. Epigraph from Robert Haldane oral history, 1985, p. 33, box 1, Robert Haldane Papers, USAHEC (hereafter Haldane Oral History); Hamilton Howze oral history, 1973, section 4, p. 25, box 1, Howze Papers (hereafter Howze Oral History); Lyman Lemnitzer oral history, 1972, section 1, p. 4, box 1, Lyman Lemnitzer Papers, USAHEC (hereafter Lemnitzer Oral History).

2. Devore, When Failure Thrives, 58–59; Trauschweizer, Cold War U.S. Army, 2–3; Department of the Army, Field Manual 100–5, Field Service Regulations: Operations (hereafter FM 100–5, Operations), September 1954, 6. For contemporary discussions on the differences see Morton H. Halperin, Limited War in the Nuclear Age (New York: John Wiley, 1963); Otto Heilbrunn, Conventional Warfare in the Nuclear Age (New York: Praeger, 1965); Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1957); and Robert Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).

3. Brian Linn, Real Soldiering: The US Army in the Aftermath of War, 1815–1980 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2023), 115.

4. Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946), 74.

5. NSC 68, April 4, 1950, FRUS: 1950, vol. 1, 237–39 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1977); Report to the President Pursuant to the President’s Directive of January 31, 1950, April 7, 1950, box 13, National Security Council File, Papers of Harry S. Truman, HSTL; Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 267; David T. Fautua, “The ‘Long Pull’ Army: NSC 68, the Korean War, and the Creation of the Cold War U.S. Army,” Journal of Military History 61, no. 1 (January 1997): 93, 95–96, https://doi.org/10.2307/2953916.

6. Orders, December 31, 1945, box 1, Ridgway Papers; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 163–74; “Delays imposed by the USSR in the Work of the Military Staff Committee,” memorandum, February 3, 1947, box 65, Ridgway Papers; MSC Report No. 8, February 3, 1947, box 8, Ridgway Papers; Jonathan Soffer, General Matthew B. Ridgway: From Progressivism to Reaganism, 1895–1993 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998), 175.

7. Linn, Elvis’s Army, 26; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 110, 124–27, 130; Maxwell D. Taylor, “West Point Looks Ahead” (March 1946), Maxwell D. Taylor Letters, USMAA; Annual Reports of the Superintendent, United States Military Academy, 1947–1989, Digital Collections, USMAA, see specifically 1947 report, p. 39, https://digital-library.usma.edu/digital/collection/superep/id/53; John M. Taylor, General Maxwell Taylor, 92–93, 148; Ingo Trauschweizer, “Berlin Commander: Maxwell Taylor at the Cold War’s Frontlines, 1949–51,” Cold War History 21, no. 1, 52–53.

8. Gavin, War and Peace, 109; Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 170, 175.

9. James Forrestal, memo, “Establishment of Weapons Systems Evaluation Group,” December 11, 1948, box 84, John H. Ohly Papers, HSTL; “Weapons’ Values to Be Appraised,” Spokane Daily Chronicle, December 15, 1948; David C. Elliot, “Project Vista and Nuclear Weapons in Europe,” International Security 11, no. 1 (1986): 163–83, https://doi.org/10.2307/2538879; OSD to CG Sandia Base, message, May 19, 1949, and DA Office of the Adjutant General, Orders to Maj. Gen. James M. Gavin, April 29, 1949, box 2, entry UD 54-A, Ass Sec Def (R+D) WSEG Research & Records Section, General Decimal File, 1948–53, RG 330, NARA; Brief of Final Report, Project VISTA, September 6, 1951, box 20, entry UD 54-A, Ass Sec Def (R+D) WSEG Research & Records Section, General Decimal File, 1948–53, RG 330, NARA; Gavin Oral History, section 2, pp. 33–34; Gavin, War and Peace, 132–37.

10. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 187, 190; Clay Blair, The Forgotten War (New York: Times Books, 1987), 19; Curatola, Bigger Bombs, 71; Jeffrey Barlow, Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945–1950 (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1993), 184–88.

11. Hanson W. Baldwin, “Need of Training Revealed in Korea,” New York Times, November 3, 1950; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 191; Virginia Pilot and Ledger-Star, February 12, 1984, box 34, Ridgway Papers; Matthew B. Ridgway, “Man: The Vital Weapon,” Army Combat Forces Journal 5 (March 1955): 16–19; Thomas Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 189–90; Gertrude Samuels, “Ridgway—Three Views of a Soldier,” New York Times Magazine, April 22, 1951, 10; Blair, Forgotten War, 570–74; Bradley to MacArthur, message, JCS 88180, April 11, 1951, and Ridgway to JCS, message, C 60965, April 1951, box 14, Harry S. Truman Papers, Korean War File, HSTL; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 277; CINCFE to JCS, flash message, July 21, 1951, box 115, Harry S. Truman Papers, President’s Secretary’s Files, General File 1940–1953, HSTL.

12. For reports from Gavin’s trip to the Far East with a delegation led by Dr. Edward Bowles see folder: Far East Reports, box 6, entry UD 54-A, Ass Sec Def (R+D) Weapons Systems Evaluation Group Research & Records Section, General Decimal File, 1948–53, RG 330, NARA; James M. Gavin, “The Tactical Use of the Atomic Bomb,” Combat Forces Journal 1 (November 1950): 9–11; James M. Gavin, “Cavalry, and I Don’t Mean Horses,” Harper’s, April 1954.

13. Soffer, General Matthew B. Ridgway, 157; Matthew B. Ridgway, “How Europe’s Defenses Look to Me,” Saturday Evening Post, October 10, 1953; Walter Mills, “General Greunther’s Headaches,” Collier’s, July 11, 1953; Mitchell, Matthew B. Ridgway, 115–17, 123; Ridgway to Bradley, June 19, 1952, box 24, Ridgway Papers; Omar N. Bradley and Clay Blair, A General’s Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), 639.

14. Special Orders No. 99, December 8, 1952, box 20, folder 1, Gavin Papers; Booth and Spencer, Paratrooper, 341–42; Donald A. Carter, Forging the Shield: The U.S. Army in Europe, 1951–1952 (Washington, DC: CMH, 2015), 91–94.

15. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 147–57; Ingo Trauschweizer, Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2019), 62.

16. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 152; Jenkins to Taylor, October 6, 1953, Security Classified Correspondence, 1948–1954, 1953, box 411, Korea-10–1953, RG 319, NARA.

17. NSC 162/2, “Basic National Security Policy,” October 30, 1953, RG 273, Records of the National Security Council, NARA; Dwight David Eisenhower to Charles E. Wilson, October 20, 1951, box 24, Senate Republican Memo, March 10, 1955, “National Defense under the Republican Administration,” box 51, Charles E. Wilson Papers, NLAU (hereafter Wilson Papers); Annual Report of the Secretary of Defense, July 1, 1959, to June 30, 1960 (Washington, DC, 1961), 34; “1956 Defense Budget,” Army–Navy–Air Force Register, January 22, 1955; House Appropriations Subcommittee, Hearings on Army Appropriations for FY 1955, 83rd Congress, 2nd session, 1953, 2, 9, 58; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 446–47.

18. Robert F. Williams, “Integrating Army Capabilities into Deterrence: The Early Cold War,” Parameters 53, no. 5 (Winter 2023): 69–82, https://doi.org/10.55540/0031-1723.3260; see also Kenneth A. Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006).

19. Linn, Real Soldiering, 117; see also Linn, Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 156–61; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 191, 277, 298, 312; Andrew J. Bacevich, “The Paradox of Professionalism: Eisenhower, Ridgway, and the Challenge to Civilian Control, 1953–1955,” Journal of Military History 61, no. 2 (April 1997): 311–14, 316.

20. John M. Taylor, General Maxwell Taylor, 204; Charles L. Bolte, “Do We Need an Army?,” Army Information Digest 5, no. 6 (June 1954): 3–6. For more on Project Solarium see “Project Solarium,” box 9–10, NSC Series, Subject Subseries, White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs: Records 1952–1961, DDEL; George F. Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), 84; John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), 63; Hogan, Cross of Iron, 100. For more on the air-atomic strategy and its origins see Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987).

21. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 7, 1954, DDEL; Robert H. Ferrell, ed., The Diary of James C. Hagerty: Eisenhower in Mid-course, 1954–1955 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 182 (Tuesday, February 1, 1955); Joe Buccino, “Ike vs. Ridgway: Lessons for Today from the Philosophical Battle between Two of America’s Greatest Military Leaders,” Modern War Institute, April 14, 2020, https://mwi.usma.edu/ike-vs-ridgway-lessons-today-philosophical-battle-two-americas-greatest-military-leaders/.

22. Jeffrey H. Michaels, “Managing Global Counterinsurgency: The Special Group (CI) 1962–1966,” Journal of Strategic Studies 35, no. 1 (February 2012): 36–38, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2011.592002.

23. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 269–70; Matthew B. Ridgway interview with Col. John M. Blair, section 4, p. 31, box 89B, Matthew B. Ridgway papers, USAHEC, Carlisle, PA; Charles E. Wilson, confirmation hearing, January 15, 1953, nomination hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 83rd Congress, 1st Session, p. 26; Justin Hyde, “Recalling an Awkward Phrase,” Detroit Free Press, September 14, 2008; Matthew Ridgway interview with Forrest C. Pogue, 1959, p. 38, Pogue interviews, GCMRL; Barksdale Hamlett oral history interview, 1976, Barksdale Hamlett papers, USAHEC; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 288; House Army Appropriations Subcommittee, Hearings for FY 1955, 83rd Congress, 2nd Session, 1954, pp. 45, 49.

24. Hanson W. Baldwin, “Ridgway to the Rescue,” New York Times, November 23, 1954; Rebecca Grant, “Dien Bien Phu,” Air Force Magazine 87, no. 8 (August 2004), https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/0804dien/; John Prados, Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945–1975 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009), 26–31; George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: ‘The Day We Didn’t Go to War’ Revisited,” Journal of American History 71, no. 2 (September 1984): 343–63, https://doi.org/10.2307/1901759.

25. “Army Outline for U.S. Support to France in Vietnam (Proposed),” memorandum, April 19, 1954, box 19, Gavin Papers; Ridgway to the Secretary of the Army, April 24, 1954, Records of the Chief of Staff of the Army, 1954, RG 319, NARA; James M. Gavin, Crisis Now (New York: Random House, 1968), 46–47.

26. US Senate, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, Defense Appropriations Hearings for FY 1956, April 4–June 6, 1955, p. 105; Hanson W. Baldwin, “Ridgway vs. Eisenhower: A Review of the Apparent Contradiction in Their Remarks on Manpower Slashes,” New York Times, January 24, 1956; Ridgway quoted in “1956 Defense Budget,” Army–Navy–Air Force Register, January 22, 1955.

27. “Army to Retain Gen. Ridgway,” Army–Navy–Air Force Register, January 22, 1955; “President Pays Honor to Retiring General Ridgway,” New York Times, June 29, 1955; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 260; in Ferrell, Diary of James C. Hagerty, 182 (Tuesday, February 1, 1955); Ridgway to Wilson, June 27, 1955, box 18, Ridgway Papers; “Ridgway Challenges President on Troops,” New York Times, January 17, 1956.

28. Gavin, War and Peace, 155; Matthew B. Ridgway, Saturday Evening Post, January 21 to February 25, 1956; Soffer, General Matthew B. Ridgway, 186; Bacevich, “Paradox of Professionalism,” 307, 311, 332–33; Conrad Crane, “Matthew Ridgway and the Value of Persistent Dissent,” Parameters 51, no. 2 (Summer 2021): 18, https://doi.org/10.55540/0031-1723.3064.

29. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 152; Trauschweizer, Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War, 67–68.

30. Palmer reinjured an old horse-inflicted injury while attempting to qualify as a parachutist in 1950: see Maj. Gen. Williston B. Palmer to Maxwell D. Taylor, May 29, 1959, box 5, Williston B. Palmer Papers, USMAA (hereafter Palmer Papers, USMAA); Palmer was quoting Brucker in a memorandum: see Vice Chief of Staff Memorandum, “Good Will for the Army,” August 17, 1955, box 5, Palmer Papers, USMAA; Maxwell D. Taylor, Oral History interview, section 3, pp. 32–33, 1974, Maxwell Taylor Papers, USAHEC.

31. Office of the Adjutant General, “Army Position on Major Issues,” memorandum, April 4, 1956, box 9, Palmer Papers, USMAA; Ricks, Generals, 219; Address by General Maxwell D. Taylor, Chief of Staff, United States Army, at the First Annual Meeting of the Association of the United States Army, Fort Benning, GA, October 22, 1955, Taylor Papers, Special Collections, NDU; Chief of Staff, US Army, to the Joint Chiefs, memorandum, “Army, Naval, and Air Force Forces under Imposed Budgetary Limitations,” July 9, 1956, and Chief of Staff, July 25, 1957, statement at National Security Council meeting, box 6, White House Office, Office of the Staff Secretary, 1952–61 Subject Series, DoD Subseries, DDEL; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 158.

32. Andrew Birtle, US Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976 (Washington, DC: CMH, 2006), 157–59, 179n59; W. W. Culp, “Resident Courses of Instruction,” Military Review 36 (May 1956): 17, 20.

33. Gavin, “Cavalry, and I don’t Mean Horses”; Gavin quoted in Booth and Spencer, Paratrooper, 352; Gavin, War and Peace, 124; James M. Gavin, “Arms Vigilance for Peace,” Ordnance 39, no. 209 (March–April 1955): 716–19.

34. Taylor oral history, section 3, p. 31; Maxwell D. Taylor, “The Army—an Appeal to the Record,” speech to the Al Smith Memorial Dinner, New York, October 20, 1955, box 5, Taylor Papers, NDU; transcript of press conference with Maxwell D. Taylor, January 10, 1956, box 37, Administrative Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers as President (Ann Whitman file), DDEL.

35. Anthony Leviero, “Military Forces Split by Conflict on Arms Policies,” New York Times, May 19, 1956; James E. Hewes, From Root to McNamara: Army Organization and Administration, 1900–1963 (Washington, DC: CMH, 1975), 239–24; see “Employment Assignment of the IRBM,” box 9, Palmer Papers, USMAA, and “A U.S. Military Program,” June 1961, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Series 4: Departments and Agencies, box 269, JFKL.

36. Anthony Leviero, “Radford Seeking 800,000 Man Cut; 3 Services Resist,” New York Times, July 13, 1956; Gavin quoted in Booth and Spencer, Paratrooper, 356; Correspondence with James Hollingsworth and Lyal Metheny, 1977–1978, box 20, folder 4, Gavin Papers; Douglas Kinnard, “Civil-Military Relations: The President and the General,” Parameters 15, no. 1 (1985): 19–29, https://doi.org/10.55540/0031-1723.1387; Trauschweizer, Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War, 79; David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1969), 473–77.

37. US Senate, Study of Airpower, hearings before the Subcommittee on the Armed Services, United States Senate, 84th Congress, 2nd Session, April 16–June 1, 1956, vol. 1, 860–62; Anthony Leviero, “Army Fails to Bar Bomb Testimony,” New York Times, June 29, 1956; Linda McFarland, Cold War Strategist: Stuart Symington and the Search for National Security (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 78–80.

38. Gavin Oral History, section 2, pp. 40–45; US Senate, Inquiry into Satellite and Missile Programs, Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee, Senate Armed Services Committee, 85th Congress, 1st Session, December 13, 1957, 505–10; John Norris, “Gen. Gavin Would End Joint Staff,” Washington Post and Times Herald, December 14, 1957; Memo to Adjutant General, subj. “Voluntary Retirement,” December 23, 1957, box 20, folder 13, Gavin Papers.

39. Gavin quoted in Hanson Baldwin, “Gavin Explains Decision; Warns of ‘Another Korea,’” New York Times, January 12, 1958; see also folder 273: Correspondence with James M. Gavin, box 6, Hanson Weightman Baldwin Papers (MS 54), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library (hereafter Baldwin Papers); Alvin Schuster, “Gen. Gavin, Missile Aide, to Quit; Criticized Joint Chiefs System,” New York Times, January 5, 1958; Allen Drury, “Gavin’s Quitting Will Be Studied by Senate Unit,” New York Times, January 6, 1958; “Gavin Urged as Senator,” New York Times, January 8, 1958; James Reston, “President Asks More Missiles, Further Aid, Pentagon Unit,” New York Times, January 10, 1958; “Gavin Retires, Backs Atomic Tests,” New York Times, April 1, 1958.

40. Ridgway and Martin, Soldier; Gavin, War and Peace; Maxwell Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959); National Security Council Report, “NSC 5906/1, Basic National Security Policy,” August 5, 1959, FRUS, 1958–1960, vol. 3, National Security Policy, Arms Control and Disarmament, Document 70; Raymond Millen, “The Post-Korean War Drawdown under the Eisenhower Administration,” in Drawdown: The American Way of Postwar, ed. Jason W. Warren (New York: NYU Press), 201–2. For a view from the field-grade level on agreeing with scholarly criticism of the New Look see G. A. Lincoln and Amos A. Jordan Jr., “Limited War and the Scholars,” Military Review 37, no. 10 (January 1958): 50–60.

41. Statement of General Maxwell D. Taylor, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, before the Subcommittee on Department of Defense Appropriations, House of Representatives, Relative to the Department of the Army Budget for Fiscal Year 1957, Taylor Papers, NDU; “Security through Deterrence,” address by Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor before the Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, August 20, 1956, Selected Speeches as Army Chief of Staff, 1955–1959, box 4, Taylor Papers, NDU.

42. John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace, ed. Allan Nevins (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 34. See also Christopher A. Preble, John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004); “Text of Kennedy’s Speech to Senate Advocating New Approach on Foreign Policy,” New York Times, June 5, 1960; Martin Clemis, “Once Again with the High and Mighty,” in Warren, Drawdown, 213; Kennedy, Strategy of Peace, 184; James N. Giglio, The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 48.

43. Kennedy to Taylor, letter, n.d., Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Special Correspondence, Taylor, General Maxwell D., JFKL; Trauschweizer, Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War, 101–36.

44. Maxwell Taylor oral history interview by Elspeth Rostow, April 12, 1964, 1–2, John F. Kennedy Oral History Collection, JFKL; Correspondence between Cornelius Ryan and James Gavin, 1961, box 2, Supplementary Material, Cornelius Ryan Collection of World War II Papers, Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, Athens, OH; Booth and Spencer, Paratrooper, 398–418.

45. Kennedy, Strategy of Peace, 37–38; Dealie, Always at War, 200; Taylor, Uncertain Trumpet, 6; “A U.S. Military Program,” June 1961, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Series 4: Departments and Agencies, box 269, JFKL; FM 100–5, Operations, 1962; Jane E. Stromseth, The Origins of Flexible Response: NATO’s Debate over Strategy in the 1960s (London: Macmillan, 1988), 1.

46. Kennedy, Strategy of Peace, 33–45; Giglio, Presidency of John F. Kennedy, 47–49; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 212–14, 217; Preble, John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap, 4, 9; Kaplan, To Kill Nations, 174.

47. Stromseth, Origins of Flexible Response, 26; Taylor, Uncertain Trumpet, 159; Robert S. McNamara, The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 82; McNamara to Kennedy, May 10, 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 8, National Security Policy, Document 27; Clemis, “Once Again with the High and Mighty,” 216; Department of Defense, Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1964 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1965), 16–17; “Text of the President’s Message and Budget Analysis,” New York Times, January 19, 1962.

48. Maxwell D. Taylor, “The American Soldier,” remarks for commencement address, West Point, June 5, 1963, Maxwell Taylor Letters, USMAA; Kennedy, Special Message to the Congress on the Defense Budget, March 28, 1961, Document 99, JFK PP: 1961, 230–31.

49. Conversations between President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev, June 3–4, 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 5, Soviet Union, Document 95; Michaels, “Managing Global Counterinsurgency,” 38–42; NSAM 124 in FRUS: 1961–1963, vol. 2, Document 26.

50. McNamara to Kennedy, “Report to the President, FY 1961 and 1962 military programs and budgets,” Annex A, attachment 2: Limited War Proposals, February 21, 1961, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Departments and Agencies: Defense, JFKL; Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 216; Boyd L. Dastrup, The US Army Command and General Staff College: A Centennial History (Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1982), 110–11.

51. Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 108–9; Kenneth Finlayson, “Lieutenant General William P. Yarborough,” Veritas 2, no. 2 (2006): 45, https://arsof-history.org/articles/pdf/v2n2_yarborough.pdf.

52. Walt W. Rostow, draft, “Basic National Security Policy,” March 26, 1962, 110–11, in FRUS: 1961–1963, vol. 8, Document 70; Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 223; Michael Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); David Steigerwald, The Sixties and the End of Modern America (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), 13. For more from Rostow see W. W. Rostow, The Diffusion of Power, 1957–1972 (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 216, 424–25, 429–30. For more on the genesis of the Peace Corps see Gavin correspondence, Peace Corps, folder 3, box 29, Gavin Papers. See also Coates Redmon, Come as You Are: The Peace Corps Story (New York: Harcourt Brave Jovanovich, 1986), 3–21, and Booth and Spencer, Paratrooper, 399–401; Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 144; Hubert Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 184.

53. Trauschweizer, Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War, 103; Sepp, “Pentomic Puzzle,” 11; Lewis Sorley, Thunderbolt: General Creighton Abrams and the Army of His Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); Adrian Lewis, The American Culture of War: The History of US Military Force from World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom (New York: Routledge, 2007), 220.

54. John J. Tolson, “The Future of Army Aviation,” Army War College student paper (April 1, 1953), 28–30, USAHEC; Taylor Oral History, section 3, p. 31, USAHEC.

55. Brian McAllister Linn, “Eisenhower, the Army, and the American Way of War,” Lecture, Eisenhower Lecture Series at Kansas State University, 2003; Norman E. Martin, “Dien Bien Phu and the Future of Airborne Operations,” Military Review 36, no. 3 (June 1956): 19; Bruce C. Clarke, “Abe,” Armor 84, no. 1 (January–February 1975): 17.

56. National Security Council Report, “NSC 5906/1,” August 5, 1959, FRUS: 1958–1960, National Security Policy, Arms Control and Disarmament, vol. 3, Document 70; Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, August 6, 1958, in The Department of Defense: Documents on Establishment and Organization, 1947–1978, ed. Alice C. Cole (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office, 1978), 188–230; Donald A. Carter, “Eisenhower versus the Generals,” Journal of Military History 71, no. 4 (October 2007): 1198–99, https://doi.org/10.1353/jmh.2007.a222498; Hewes, From Root to McNamara, 297.

57. Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 163; Gavin Oral History, 1975, pp. 43–45, Gavin Papers.

4. The Airborne Influence on Atomic Warfare

1. US House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Hearings before Committee on Armed Services, 85th Cong., 1st Session, 1956, 143–44; Theodore C. Mataxis and Seymour L. Goldberg, Nuclear Tactics: Weapons and Firepower in the Pentomic Division, Battle Group, and Company (Harrisburg, PA: Military Service, 1958), 1.

2. “Your Army in the Atomic Age,” remarks of Secretary of the Army Frank Pace Jr. before the National Wool Manufacturers Association Convention, New York City, May 8, 1952, box 15, Frank Pace Jr. Papers, HSTL; Kaplan, To Kill Nations, 2; “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Bigger Bang for the Buck; an Interview with James Gavin, 1986,” February 25, 1986, GBH Archives, Boston; “Major Duties and Responsibilities of the Secretary of the Army,” September 21, 1955, Briefing for Meet the Press appearance 1955, box 16, Wilbur M. Brucker Papers, BHL; Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey Michaels, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 4th ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 135; President Dwight Eisenhower quoted in “1956 Defense Budget,” Army–Navy–Air Force Register, January 22, 1955; Gavin quote from Linn, Elvis’s Army, 73.

3. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 171; Trauschweizer, Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War, 66; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 74.

4. Mataxis and Goldberg, Nuclear Tactics, 4; Dr. Ellis A. Johnson, staff memorandum, “The Long Range Future of the US Army,” July 11, 1955, Operations Research Office, Johns Hopkins University, box 6, DoD Subseries, 1952–61 Subject Series, White House Office of the Staff Secretary, DDEL; Gavin, Airborne, 170, 181–83; Gavin, War and Peace, 112; Gavin, “Tactical Use of the Atomic Bomb,” 11; Linn, Real Soldiering, 129; “Gavin Says Air Mechanization Will Win Wars of the Future,” Army and Navy Bulletin 3 (April 5, 1947): 3.

5. Elliot, “Project Vista,” 164; Gavin, War and Peace, 129–35.

6. Theodore H. White, “An Interview with General Gavin … Tomorrow’s Battlefield,” Army Combat Forces Journal 5 (March 1955): 22; Gavin, War and Peace, 137.

7. White, “Interview with General Gavin,” 23; Gavin, “Tactical Use of the Atomic Bomb,” 11; Gavin, War and Peace, 137–39; “New Divisional Organization,” Army–Navy–Air Force Journal and Register, February 12, 1955, 1–2.

8. Office of the Chief of Army Field Forces, memorandum, Subj: Tactical Employment of the Atomic Bomb, October 7, 1951, file 00.9/35, box 4, entry 55B, RG 337, NARA; Department of the Army, Field Service Regulations: Operations, Field Manual 100–5 (hereafter DA, FM 100–5, Operations), 1954, 40; Frank Pace Jr., “Your Army in the Atomic Age”; Maxwell Taylor, “Missions of the United States Army,” remarks at Armed Forces Staff College, November 1956, Taylor Papers, NDU; Maxwell Taylor, “Security through Balanced Deterrence,” Calvin Bullock Forum, December 10, 1956, Taylor Papers, NDU; “Gavin Says Air Mechanization Will Win Wars of the Future,” Army and Navy Bulletin 3 (April 5, 1947): 3.

9. Harold H. Martin, “Paratrooper in the Pentagon,” Saturday Evening Post, August 28, 1954, 81; Paul Disney, “Armor in Atomic Warfare,” Armor 63 (May–June 1953): 30–31; Paul D. Adams, “Final Report, Exercise Sage Brush,” January 1956, p. 3, Reference Material box 5, Training Exercises, WMM82; Linn, Echo of Battle, 175.

10. George C. Reinhardt and William R. Kintner, Atomic Weapons in Land Combat (Harrisburg, PA: Military Service, 1953), 49–50; Mataxis and Goldberg, Nuclear Tactics, 164, 211; Hanson W. Baldwin, “Infantry Adjusts Role,” New York Times, November 23, 1953; Bacevich, Pentomic Era, 109–10.

11. DA, FM, Operations, 1954, 96; Mataxis and Goldberg, Nuclear Tactics, 211.

12. Reinhardt and Kintner, Atomic Weapons in Land Combat, 51–52; DA, FM 100–5, Operations, 1954, 117; Mataxis and Goldberg, Nuclear Tactics, 127–29, 131; Willard G. Wyman, “Let’s Get Going on Our New Combinations for Combat,” Army 6 (July 1956): 40.

13. Hamilton H. Howze, “Combat Tactics for Tomorrow’s Army,” Army 8 (October 1958): 28; Frank W. Moorman, “Logistical Problems in Future Warfare,” Military Review, July 1950, 9; White, “Interview with General Gavin,” 21.

14. Donald A. Carter, “War Games in Europe: The U.S. Army Experiments with Atomic Doctrine,” in Blueprints for Battle: Planning for War in Central Europe, 1948–1968, ed. Jan Hoffenaar and Dieter Krüger (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 135; Trauschweizer, Cold War U.S. Army, 57; Review of Initial Manuscript, C3 to FM 100–5, Field Service Regulations—Operations, February 15, 1956, box 17, and Col. Adam S. Buyonski to CG, CONARC, December 20, 1958, Final Manuscript of FM 100–5, FSR, Operations, box 30, entry UD 3, CGSC, Fort Leavenworth, RG 546 Records of the United States Continental Army Command, NARA.

15. Script of Interview of Chief of Staff by Richard Harkness, October 13, 1954, box 77, Ridgway Papers; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 298; Trauschweizer, Cold War U.S. Army, 57; Bacevich, Pentomic Era, 108–10.

16. Semiannual Report of the Secretary of the Army, FY 1958, p. 106, box 784, folder 319.1, Office of the Secretary of the Army, General Correspondence January 1957–December 1960, RG 335, NARA; Infantry School Comments to Report of Army Tests Exercise Sage Brush, March 21, 1956, box 3, entry A1 109, Security Classified General Records, Infantry School, R and D General Correspondence, RG 546, NARA; General Plan, Exercise Flash Burn, April–May 1954, box 57, entry UD 35176: General Records [XVIII (Airborne) Corps, 1951–1963], RG 338, NARA.

17. Maxwell D. Taylor, “The Army, Today and Tomorrow,” speech to AUSA annual convention, Washington, DC, October 25, 1956, box 5, Taylor Papers, NDU; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 152–53; “The U.S. Army Today,” n.d. (possibly 1958), folder: Miscellaneous papers of Secretary of the Army, box 17, Brucker Papers, BHL; Henry E. Kelly, “Verbal Defense,” Military Review 35 (October 1955), 48, 51–52; Francis X. Bradley, “The Fallacy of Dual Capability,” Army 10 (October 1959): 18–19, and Arthur S. Collins, “The Other Side of the Atom,” Army 10 (November 1959): 18–19; William E. DePuy, “The Case for Dual Capability,” Army 10 (January 1960), 32–34, 38.

18. Douglas Lindsey, “No Time for Despair,” Armor 65 (May–June 1956), 38–39; Jane Erikson, “US Surgeon Lindsey, Korean War Vet, Dies,” Arizona Daily Star, January 5, 2006; Nevada Test Organization, press release, August 24, 1957, RM, Training Exercises, box 6, WMM82; “Troops Carry on after Atomic Blast 2.7 Miles Away,” New York Times, September 3, 1957; Paul D. Adams, “Final Report, Exercise Sage Brush,” January 1956, p. 2, Reference Material, box 5, Training Exercises, WMM82.

19. Michael Evans, “The Primacy of Doctrine: The United States Army and Military Innovation and Reform, 1945–1995,” Army Occasional Paper No. 1, Washington, DC, 1996, 5.

20. Key West Agreement, “Functions of the Armed Forces and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” (revision) October 1, 1953, original dated April 21, 1948, appendix A, Association of the United States Army, “The Security of the Nation: A Study of Current Problems of National Defense” (Washington, DC, 1957), p. 21, box 24, Wilson Papers; Kenneth Campbell, “Pace Urges Army Built on Science,” New York Times, June 7, 1950; Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 171.

21. Carter, “War Games in Europe,” 138; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 104; K. D. Nichols, “Atomic Guns,” US News & World Report, July 10, 1953; remarks of Secretary of the Army Frank Pace Jr. at Public Demonstration of the AT-280 Gun, Aberdeen Proving Ground, October 15, 1952, box 15, Frank Pace Jr. Papers, HSTL; Report on the 280mm gun, ca. 1952, box 16, 280 MM Gun 1952, box 16, J. Lawton Collins Papers, DDEL.

22. Key West Agreement, “Functions of the Armed Forces and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” appendix A, 21; DA, AR 525–50, Army Air Defense Operations (Washington, DC, 1956); “Missiles and Space,” presentation, Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris, September 25, 1959, Sixth Annual Conference of Civilian Aides to the Secretary of the Army, September 23–25, 1959, folder: Papers, 1959, box 17, Brucker Papers; Gavin Oral History, section 2, p. 35; Richard E. Mooney, “Army’s Explorer Cheers Congress,” New York Times, February 2, 1958.

23. Key West Agreement, “Functions of the Armed Forces and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” appendix A, 21; Charles E. Wilson, memorandum, “Clarification of Roles and Missions to Improve the Effectiveness of Operation of the Department of Defense,” November 26, 1956, box 6, DoD Subseries, 1952–61, White House Office of the Staff Secretary, DDEL; Anthony Leviero, “Air Force Calls Army Nike Unfit to Guard Nation,” New York Times, May 21, 1956; Anthony Leviero, “Air Force Doubts Carriers’ Value,” New York Times, May 20, 1956; “The Army’s Bird in Hand,” Air Force Magazine, June 1956, 42; Department of the Army, Army Air Defense Operations, AR 525–50 (Washington, DC, 1956).

24. Gavin, War and Peace, 161, 218, 226; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 105; Maxwell Taylor, remarks to Army Commander’s Conference, Fort Bliss, TX, April 5, 1956, box 9, Taylor Papers, NDU.

25. Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 172; Gavin, War and Peace, 112–13; Sidney Shalett, “Arnold Reveals Secret Weapons, Bomber Surpassing All Others,” New York Times, August 18, 1945.

26. Department of the Army, Army Missiles, AR 525–20 (Washington, DC, 1956), 1; James W. Bragg, Development of the Corporal: The Embryo of the Army Missile Program (Redstone Arsenal, AL: Army Ballistic Missile Agency, 1961), 115; Gavin, War and Peace, 145, 154; Department of the Army, Army Missiles and Rockets, DA Pamphlet 355–13, May 1958, 36.

27. Gavin, War and Peace, 145, 153; Final Report of the Director of Guided Missiles, Office of the Secretary of Defense, September 17, 1953, folder May 1956 (1), box 7, Correspondence, May 1956–June 1957, Brucker Papers; “Employment Assignment of the IRBM,” box 9, Palmer Papers, USMAA; DA Pamphlet 355–13, May 1958, 8; William M. Blair, “Wilson Restricts Army on Missiles and Air Program,” New York Times, November 27, 1956.

28. Gavin, War and Peace, 155; US Senate, Study of Airpower, Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Air Force of the Committee on Armed Services, 84th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, DC: GPO, 1956), 1287; Association of the United States Army, “The Security of the Nation: A Study of Current Problems of National Defense,” (Washington, DC, 1957), 17, box 24, Wilson Papers; “Missile Unit Set Up,” New York Times, January 18, 1958; Jack Raymond, “Thor Is Selected Over the Jupiter,” New York Times, September 29, 1958.

29. Quote in Bacevich, Pentomic Era, 86; Mataxis and Goldberg, Nuclear Tactics, 32, 39, 36; DA Pamphlet 355–13, May 1958, 12; “Army’s New Guided Missile Takes Off,” New York Times, September 20, 1951; “New Atom Missile Ready for Troops,” New York Times, April 18, 1954; “Missiles and Space,” presentation, Maj. Gen. John B. Medaris, September 25, 1959.

30. Mataxis and Goldberg, Nuclear Tactics, 41; DA Pamphlet 355–13, May 1958; Janice E. McKenney, Organizational History of Field Artillery 1775–2003 (Washington, DC: CMH, 2007), 230–34.

31. Maxwell Taylor, “Military Objectives of the Army, 1960–1962,” Address at the Secretaries’ Conference, Quantico, VA, June 21, 1958, Taylor Papers, NDU; DA Pamphlet 355–13, May 1958, 17.

32. Leonard C. Weston, Project Management of the Davy Crockett Weapons System, 1958–1962 (Rock Island, IL: Rock Island Historical Branch, 1964), 12; Matthew Seelinger, “The M28/M29 Davy Crockett Nuclear Weapon System,” Army Historical Foundation, https://Armyhistory.org/the-m28m29-davy-crockett-nuclear-weapon-system/; DA, Field Manual 23–20, Davy Crockett Weapons System in Infantry and Armor Units, 1961; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 108.

33. US Senate, Inquiry into Satellite and Missile Programs, 490; Semiannual Report of the Secretary of the Army January 1–June 30, 1957 (Washington, DC, 1958), 104; Gavin, War and Peace, 161.

34. Bacevich, Pentomic Era, 103; Trauschweizer, Cold War U.S. Army, 81; Maj. Gen. James M. Gavin to CAFF, “Airborne Role of the Infantry Center,” August 21, 1954, 358 (Abn) file, box 24, E 55F RG 337, Records of Army Ground Forces, NARA II; William E. Ekman, “The Helicopter in Our Future Army,” March 31, 1953, Army War College student paper, USAHEC.

35. Linn, Elvis’s Army, 114–15; Anthony L. Wermuth, “Modernization-Minus,” Army 9 (October 1958): 31; Ellsberg quote in Halberstam, Best and the Brightest, 22.

36. Taylor, remarks at the Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, August 20, 1956, box 9, Taylor Papers, NDU; Al Gruenther to Gen. Palmer, July 3, 1958, box 2, Palmer Papers, USMAA.

37. Meeting of Subcommittee III, study group on Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, February 15, 1956, vol. 61, Council on Foreign Relations, box 20, Gavin Papers; White, “Interview with General Gavin,” 22; Gavin, War and Peace, 137; Semiannual Report of the Secretary of the Army, FY 1958, 106; Bacevich, Pentomic Era, 105.

38. “Text of President Eisenhower’s Budget Message to Congress for the Fiscal Year 1955,” New York Times, January 22, 1954; OCoS to OCAFF, memorandum, April 19, 1954, subj: “Organizational Studies to Improve the Army Combat Potential-to-Manpower Ratio,” RG 337, NARA; John B. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades (Washington, DC: CMH, 1998), 267; Matthew Ridgway, “The Army’s Role in National Defense,” Army Information Digest 9, no. 5 (May 1954): 25.

39. Advanced Study Group, Project Binnacle: Concepts and Doctrine for Future Warfare, Conventional or Nuclear, 1960–1970 (January 1955), USAHEC; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 83.

40. Linn, Elvis’s Army, 52; G-3 to CG, CONRAC, November 17, 1954, “Organization of the Army during the Period FY 1960–1970,” entry P 218, Records of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1954, RG 319, NARA; Briefings and Conferences ATFA-1 file, entry 30B, box 488, RG 337, NARA; Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower, 267; “New Divisional Organization,” Army–Navy–Air Force Register, February 12, 1955.

41. Brig. Gen. Carl F. Fritzsche to Commandant, CGSC, memorandum, “Project ATFA-1,” July 10, 1954, box 2, entry A1 109, Security Classified General Records, Infantry School, R&D General Correspondence, RG 546, NARA.

42. Paul D. Adams, “Final Report, Exercise Sage Brush,” January 1956, 4, Reference Material box 5, Training Exercises, WMM82; Maj. Gen. Joseph H. Harper, “Third Infantry Division’s Final Evaluation Report on the ATFA Infantry Division (TOE 7T),” February 15, 1956, box 3, entry A1 109, Security Classified General Records, Infantry School, R and D General Correspondence, RG 546, NARA; Office of the Deputy Maneuver Director, Headquarters, “Exercise Sagebrush (Oct. 31, 1955),” 2, and Lt. Col. Frank Meszar, “Report of Phase V: Exercise Sagebrush,” Infantry School Tactical Department (January 10, 1956), 3–5, box 5, entry A1 109, RG 546, NARA; Paul L. Davis, “Organization of the Army,” Report of the Advisory Committee on Army Organization, December 18, 1953, 39, box 12, and Williston B. Palmer, memorandum, “The Continental Army Command,” May 1, 1957, box 8, Palmer Papers, USMAA.

43. Department of the Army, Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, Briefing for Chief of Staff on Army Organization 1960–70 (PENTANA), May 15, 1956, USAHEC; “Reorganization of the Airborne Division,” June 27, 1956, entry P 218, Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1956 records, box 66, RG 319, NARA; John M. Taylor, General Maxwell Taylor, 198–99; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 90–91.

44. Reorganization of the Airborne Division,” June 27, 1956, entry P 218, Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1956 records, box 66, RG 319, NARA; “New Divisional Organization,” Army Information Digest 12, no. 5 (May 1957): 198–99.

45. T. L. Sherburne, “Reorganizing the 101st Airborne Division: An Interim Report,” Army Information Digest 12, no. 6 (June 1957): 13; Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower, 272–76; XVIII Airborne Corps, memorandum, “Review of Training Tests,” July 20, 1956, box 7, entry P 50470, 3rd Army, G-3 Records Relating to Training 1957–1960, RG 338, NARA; Detailed Plan of Test, Troop Test JUMP LIGHT, HQ 3rd Army, box 57, entry UD 35176: General Records [XVIII (Airborne) Corps, 1951–1963], RG 338, NARA; “Mission and Use of 101st Airborne Division,” memorandum, March 12, 1956, entry P 218, Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1956 records, box 62, RG 319, NARA.

46. Transcript of press conference with Maxwell D. Taylor, January 10, 1956, box 37, Administrative Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers as President (Ann Whitman file), DDEL; Ernest B. Furgurson, Westmoreland: The Inevitable General (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), 239–40; CDCOPS to CSA, memorandum, May 2, 1957, entry P 218, Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1957 records, RG 319, NARA; Department of Defense, Semiannual Report of the Secretary of the Army, FY 1958, 105.

47. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 171; “New Divisional Organization,” Army Information Digest 12, no. 5 (May 1957): 17; Paul C. Jussel, “Intimidating the World: The United States Atomic Army, 1956–1960” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2004), 167.

48. Sherburne, “Reorganizing the 101st Airborne Division,” 15–18; “New Divisional Organization,” Army Information Digest 12, no. 5 (May 1957): 22; Everett C. Royal, “The Team of Mobile Warfare: Armor and Airborne,” Armor 65 (March–April 1955): 4.

49. Taylor, Swords and Plowshares, 171; Sepp, “Pentomic Puzzle,” 9; John J. McGrath, The Brigade: A History of Its Organization and Employment in the US Army (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CSI Press, 2004), 59; Taylor Oral History, section 3, p. 36, Taylor Papers, USAHEC; William M. Donnelly, “Bilko’s Army: A Crisis in Command?,” Journal of Military History 75, no. 4 (October 2011): 1183–1215.

50. Trauschweizer, Cold War U.S. Army, 96–98; Gavin Oral History, section 2, p. 45; White, “Interview with General Gavin,” 21.

51. C. D. Eddleman, “The Pentomic Reorganization—a Status Report,” Army Information Digest 13, no. 9 (September 1958): 4; “Phased Reorganization Schedules,” in Reorganization of Current Infantry Divisions, October 15, 1957, entry P 218, Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1957 records, RG 319, NARA; Anthony L. Wermuth, “Modernization-Minus,” Army 9, no. 3 (October 1958): 31.

52. Freedman and Michaels, Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 151; “MOMAR I: Modern Mobile Army, 1965–1970,” Staff Study, HQ, CONARC, February 10, 1960, 1–4, USAHEC; Lyman L. Lemnitzer, “Why We Need a Modern Army,” Army 10, no. 2 (September 1959): 16–21; Davis, Challenge of Adaptation, 29.

53. Trauschweizer, Cold War U.S. Army, 99–106.

54. Trauschweizer, 111–11; Carter, US Army before Vietnam, 37.

55. “MOMAR II,” US Army CGSC Study, November 16, 1960, USAHEC; Clyde D. Eddleman, Address to 15th Annual Conference of the Aerospace Industries Association, Williamsburg, VA, June 8, 1961, box 1, Eddleman Papers; Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower, 305–6; Defense Budget FY ’64, vol. 1: Recommended General Purpose Forces, December 4, 1962, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Department of Defense, Papers of John F. Kennedy, JFKL; Appraisal of Capabilities of Conventional Forces, May 12, 1961, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, Papers of John F. Kennedy, JFKL.

56. Carter, US Army before Vietnam, 38; Trauschweizer, Cold War U.S. Army, 162–80.

57. Memorandum 19, from HQ, CONARC, “Staff Organization for the Tactical Employment of Atomic Weapons,” July 27, 1957, box 7, entry P 50470 Third Army, G-3 Records Relating to Training 1957–1960, RG 338, NARA; “The U.S. Army Today,” n.d. (possibly 1958), folder: Miscellaneous papers of Secretary of the Army, box 17, Brucker Papers; DA Pamphlet 355–13, May 1958; Lewis, “American Culture of War,” 290.

58. DA, FM 100–5, Operations, 1962, 3–6; Lewis, American Culture of War, 219–21.

59. US Senate, Study of Airpower, 1618; Gavin, War and Peace, 91.

5. Tactical Mobility and the Airmobile Division

1. Robert H. Scales, Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 1997), 218–20; William B. Ostlund, “The Largest Air Assault in History,” The Spear (podcast), January 29, 2020, prod. John Amble, MP3 audio, 29:45, https://the-spear.castos.com/episodes/the-largest-air-assault-in-history; “Air Assault in the Gulf,” oral history interview of Maj. Gen. J. H. Binford Peay III, commanding general, 101st Airborne Division, June 5, 1991, by Robert K. Wright, Rex Boggs, and Cliff Lippard, CMH.

2. James M. Gavin, War and Peace, 112–14, 257; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 311–14; Kinnard Oral History, 147–48.

3. Hanson W. Baldwin, “The Cavalry Charges On,” New York Times, July 2, 1950.

4. Gavin, “Cavalry, and I Don’t Mean Horses,” 59.

5. See James M. Gavin to Hamilton Howze, April 13, 1959, folder 3, box 1, Howze-Hawkins Family Papers, USAHEC; Gavin, “Cavalry, and I Don’t Mean Horses,” 54–55; Gavin, War and Peace, 216–18.

6. Gavin, War and Peace, 109, 137, 271–72.

7. “Army Building Up Own Airlift Force,” New York Times, November 16, 1952; address by the Under Secretary of the Army Earl D. Johnson before the Air Power Preparedness Symposium of the Seventh Annual National Convention of the Air Force Association, Washington, DC, August 21, 1953, and address by Johnson before Dallas Council on World Affairs Symposium on Air Power, Dallas, TX, November 20, 1953, box 7, Earl D. Johnson Papers, HSTL.

8. “Airmobility for the New Army,” speech by Frank Pace, Secretary of the Army, May 15, 1952, before the American Helicopter Society, Washington Hotel, Washington, DC, entry UD 390-D, box 293, RG 407, NARA; Matthew B. Ridgway, testimony before Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations, February 7–8, 1955, 23.

9. Gavin, War and Peace, 44; Gavin Oral History, section 1, pp. 28–29; Gavin, “Cavalry, and I Don’t Mean Horses,” 60.

10. Col. Joseph W. Stilwell Jr., Comments, Infantry Instructors Conference, June 21–26, 1954, Report, Donovan Research Library, Fort Benning, GA; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 111; James J. Haggerty, “No More Paratroops?,” Colliers, March 18, 1955, 23; Carl I. Hutton, “The Commandant’s Column: An Air Fighting Army?,” Army Aviation Digest, July 1955, 2.

11. Howze Oral History, 52; Hamilton H. Howze, “The Army’s Stake in the Helicopter,” address at the 12th Annual National Forum of the American Helicopter Society, May 4, 1956, 29–31, Howze-Hawkins Family Papers, box 8, folder 2, USAHEC; presentation by Maj. Gen. Hamilton Howze, Director of Army Aviation, ODCSOPS, August 29, 1957, folder 171, box 63, Baldwin Papers; “Air Cavalry,” presentation by Director of Army Aviation, December 11, 1957, box 1, Howze Papers; Hamilton H. Howze, A Cavalryman’s Story: Memoirs of a Twentieth-Century Army General (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1996), 233–36.

12. Howze, Cavalryman’s Story, 184, 230; Frederic A. Bergerson, The Army Gets an Air Force: Tactics of Insurgent Bureaucratic Politics (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 51.

13. John J. Tolson, Airmobility 1961–1971 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1973); John J. Tolson, “The Future of Army Aviation,” Army War College student paper (April 1, 1953), 15, 28–30, USAHEC; HQ, Infantry School, Memorandum No. 1, “Reorganization of the Airborne Department,” February 11, 1955, Fort Benning, GA, folder 181, box 63, Baldwin Papers; John Norton Oral History Interview, John Norton Collection (AFC/2001/001/31599), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, LOC.

14. Stewart L. McKenney, “SKYCAV Operations during Exercise Sagebrush,” Military Review 36, no. 3 (June 1956): 12–18; Observer Report on SAGEBRUSH, Col. John Tolson, Director of Airborne-Army Aviation Department (December 9, 1955), p. 2, entry 109 (A1), box 5, folder 3, RG 546, NARA; “Army Looks to Sage Brush’s SkyCav Operation as Basis of Permanent Unit,” Army–Navy–Air Force Journal and Register, December 10, 1955, 1, 3; Maj. Robert Slepian, Observer Report, Exercise Sagebrush, December 1, 1955, p. 4, entry 109 (A1), box 5, folder 3, RG 546, NARA; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 112.

15. Linn, Echo of Battle, 174; Paul D. Adams, “Final Report, Exercise Sage Brush,” January 1956, 3–5, Reference Material box 5, Training Exercises, WMM82.

16. F. H. Carten to Brig. Gen. Ghormley, April 2, 1972, box 4, Vanderpool Papers; Jay Vanderpool, “We Armed the Helicopter,” Army Aviation Digest 17, no. 6 (June 1971): 29; Jay D. Vanderpool Oral History, interview by Lt. Col. John R. McQuestion, 1983, p. 158, box 1, Vanderpool Papers; Tolson, Airmobility, 5; multiple trip reports from Army Aviation School personnel going to the Infantry School at Fort Benning between 1956 and 1967, see box 10, entry UD 7, Aviation School, Fort Rucker, AL, 1953–63, RG 546, NARA; Lt. Col. Bennett to CG, United States Continental Army Command, memorandum, “Establishment of an Experimental Aerial Battalion (Infantry), June 24 1958, DCSOPS Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1958 records, entry P 218 Central Decimal Files, RG 319, NARA.

17. Jay D. Vanderpool, “Initial Concepts, Approaches, and Reasons for Arming the Helicopter,” paper given at Army Scientific Advisory Panel meeting, May 14, 1969, Fort Rucker, AL, box 4, Vanderpool Papers; Vanderpool, “We Armed the Helicopter,” 5–6; Department of the Army, Army Transport Aviation Combat Operations, Field Manual 57–35 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1958); Vanderpool Oral History, 166–67; Shelby Stanton, Anatomy of a Division: 1st Cav in Vietnam (Novato, CA: Presidio, 198, 13.

18. Joseph O. Wintersteen Jr., “Helicopterborne Operations,” Infantry Journal 47, no. 2 (April 1957): 22–33; Robert McMahon, “Airmobile Operations,” Military Review 33, no. 3 (June 1959): 32; Department of the Army, Airmobile Operations, Field Manual 57–35 (Washington, DC, 1960).

19. J. D. Coleman, Pleiku: The Dawn of Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 4; Enclosure I to Section VII, “The Requirements for Air Fighting Unit,” Army Aircraft Requirements Review Board, reprinted in Howze, Cavalryman’s Story, 235; Tolson, Airmobility, 8; letter to Army Chief of Staff, Subj: Army Aircraft Requirements Review Board, March 10, 1960, in Stanton, Anatomy of a Division, 13; Mark D. Sherry, “Airmobility,” in A History of Innovation, ed. Jon T. Hoffman (Washington, DC: CMH, 2009), 118.

20. Memorandum for Mr. Stahr, April 19, 1962, reprinted in Report of US Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board, Fort Bragg, NC, August 20, 1962, p. 15, USAHEC; Gregory A. Daddis, No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 75.

21. Robert R. Williams Oral History Interview, May 8, 1984, Robert R. Williams papers, USAHEC.

22. Expanded Outline—1st Air Cav in Vietnam, p.1, box 5, folder 10, J. D. Coleman Collection, TTU Vietnam Archive (hereafter Coleman Collection); Secretary of the Army to Chief of Staff, message, Subj: “Terms of Ref for Air Force Liaison Officer with the Howze Board,” reel 391, image 846, Decimal Sheets, January 1961–December 1962, 334 Boards, Commissions, Committees, Councils, and Missions, Copies of Cross Reference Sheets to General Correspondence, 1947–1964, RG 335, NARA.

23. Maj. Gen. Creighton Abrams to Lt. Gen. Hamilton Howze, June 20, 1962; James M. Gavin to Hamilton Howze, June 18, 1962; William C. Westmoreland to Hamilton Howze, July 11, 1962, all in box 1, George W. Putnam Papers, USAHEC. See same box for further responses to Howze’s requests for information.

24. 82nd Airborne Division Training Memorandum No. 10, “Army Training Test for Airborne Division Battle Group,” March 22, 1962, folder 9, box 1, Howze Board, Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Field Tests, Edward L. Rowny Papers, USAHEC (hereafter Rowny Papers); General Orders No. 103, June 11, 1962, box 62, WMM82; Eugene M. Zuckert, Secretary of the Air Force, to Secretary of the Army, message, Subj: “Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board,” June 15, 1962, reel 391, image 848, Decimal Sheets, January 1961–December 1962, RG 335, NARA; Howze, Cavalryman’s Story, 239; Finn J. Larsen, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Development, multiple messages to industry leaders, June 1–12, 1962, reel 391, image 852–55; Decimal Sheets, January 1961–December 1962, RG 335, NARA.

25. Testing Schedule, box 1, Howze Board, Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Field Tests, Rowny Papers; US Army Combat Developments Command, The Origins, Deliberations, and Recommendations of the U.S. Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board (Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1969), 50–51; Howze, Cavalryman’s Story, 243–50; Correspondence from Cyrus Vance regarding testing, July 6, 1962, folder 6, box 1A, Howze-Hawkins Family Papers, USAHEC.

26. Report of US Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board, Fort Bragg, NC, August 20, 1962, p. 95, USAHEC.

27. Expanded Outline—1st Air Cav in Vietnam, p. 2, box 5, folder 10, Coleman Collection; Summary Sheet, Test Plan 2–2, “Basic Air Mobility Force,” folder 8, box 1, Rowny Papers, USAHEC.

28. Report of US Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board, Fort Bragg, NC, August 20, 1962, USAHEC; Expanded Outline—1st Air Cav in Vietnam, p. 2, box 5, folder 10, Coleman Collection; Tolson, Airmobility, 22.

29. Report of US Army Tactical Mobility Requirements Board, Fort Bragg, NC, August 20, 1962, USAHEC; Stanton, Anatomy of a Division, 20; Howze, Cavalryman’s Story, 253.

30. Defense budget FY 64, vol. 1: Recommended General Purpose Forces, December 4, 1962, pp. 29–32, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Department of Defense, Papers of John F. Kennedy, JFKL.

31. Defense budget FY 64, vol. 1: Recommended General Purpose Forces, December 4, 1962, p. 32, JFKL; Chief of Staff of the Army from Secretary Vance, memorandum, Subj: “Appreciation,” February 8, 1963, folder 6, box 1A, Howze-Hawkins Papers; Howze, Cavalryman’s Story, 254–56; Vanderpool Oral History, 181.

32. Stanton, Anatomy of Division, 24–27; Hamilton Howze, “Tactical Employment of the Air Assault Division,” Army 14, no. 2 (September 1963): 35; Christopher C. S. Cheng, Air Mobility: The Development of a Doctrine (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 82.

33. Department of the Army, Army Mobility Concept (Washington, DC: GPO, December 1963), II-23, III-D-5; Harold Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once … and Young: Ia Drang—the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), 11; Stanton, Anatomy of a Division, 27.

34. Kinnard Oral History, 44–49, 62–65; Wellman, Battleground!; Lt. Col. George F. Charlton, memorandum to DCOS–Training and Readiness, CONARC, “Report of Staff Visit to 2d Infantry Division, 21 May 1964,” May 27, 1964, box 23, entry UD WW-125, General Records, CONARC HQ 1957–66 Unclassified, RG 546, NARA; Moore and Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once, 11; Stanton, Anatomy of a Division, 22–24; J. D. Coleman, Pleiku: The Dawn of Helicopter Warfare in Vietnam (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 12.

35. Kinnard quoted in Coleman, Pleiku, 22.

36. Coleman, Pleiku, 21; Moore and Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once, 17.

37. Coleman, Pleiku, 22; Moore and Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once, 20.

38. Coleman, Pleiku, 21; Stanton, Anatomy of a Division, 34; “Qualification Badges, Air Assault Badge,” U.S. Army Institute of Heraldry, dated January 18, 1978, https://tioh.army.mil/Catalog/Heraldry.aspx?HeraldryId=15435&CategoryId=9361&grp=2&menu=Uniformed%20Services&ps=24&p=0.

39. Stanton, Anatomy of a Division, 29–30; Tolson, Airmobility, 52; Cyrus R. Vance, Secretary of the Army, address before the Army Tactical Mobility Symposium, November 19, 1963, Fort Benning, GA, folder 49, box 5, Cyrus R. and Grace Sloane Vance Papers (MS 1664), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library (hereafter Vance Papers).

40. Gavin Oral History, 29–30; Stanton, Anatomy of a Division, 32–33.

41. Quoted in Tolson, Airmobility, 58; Itinerary for Chief of Staff Visit, November 4–5, 1964, Fort Jackson, SC, folder 20, box 138, Harold K. Johnson papers, USAHEC.

42. Harry W. O. Kinnard, “Airmobility Revisited, Part 2,” Army Aviation Digest 26, no. 7 (July 1980): 8; Daddis, No Sure Victory, 76; Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, testimony to Congress, in “The Prospects for Army Air Mobility,” Army, March 1963, 20; Cheng, Air Mobility, 185–87; Brig. Gen. John Tolson to Hanson Baldwin, December 3, 1964, folder 860, box 17, Baldwin Papers; Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, “Army Moves toward Mobility,” Army Information Digest, February 1964, 34–35.

43. Tolson, Airmobility, 52–54; Moore and Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once, 15–16.

44. Hanson Baldwin, “Strategy in Vietnam,” New York Times, September 21, 1963; Bernard B. Fall, Street without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina (Guilford, CT: Stackpole Books, 2018), 360–61.

45. Kinnard Oral History, 148; Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), press release no. 404–54, June 16, 1965, folder 181, box 63, Baldwin Papers; Richard Goldstein, “Gen. H. H. Howze, 89, Dies; Proposed Copters as Cavalry,” New York Times, December 18, 1998.

46. Lewis B. Sorley, Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson and the Ethics of Command (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 91–111.

47. Memorandum of Agreement between Gen. Harold K. Johnson, chief of staff, US Army, and Gen. John P. McConnell, chief of staff, US Air Force, April 6, 1966, in Roy L. Bowers, Tactical Airlift, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia (Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1983), appendix 6, 673–74.

48. Kinnard Oral History, 14; Maj. Gen. Harry W. O. Kinnard, “Activation to Combat—in 90 Days,” Army Information Digest 21, no. 4 (April 1966): 27; Stanton, Anatomy of a Division, 36; Coleman, Pleiku, 39.

49. Robert S. McNamara, secretary of defense, report, “Deployment of Major US Forces to Vietnam, July 1965, Vol. 7,” July 23, 1965, National Security Files, LBJL; Lyndon B. Johnson, “Why We Are in Viet-Nam,” July 28, 1965, President’s News Conference, American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/the-presidents-news-conference-1038; Abrams quoted in Tolson, Airmobility, 61; Rusk to Taylor, cable, July 28, 1965, folder, “Deployment of Major U.S. Forces to Vietnam, July 1965, Volume 7, Tabs 421–438,” National Security Council Histories, NSF, box 43, LBJL; Kinnard, “Activation to Combat,” 30–31.

50. Lt. Gen. Harry W. O. Kinnard, interview, September 19, 1990, folder 6, box 48, Harold G. Moore Papers, USAHEC (hereafter Moore Papers); Tolson, Airmobility, 254; Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 93; Stanton, Anatomy of a Division, 34–35.

51. Maj. Gen. Harry W. O. Kinnard, First Cavalry Division (Airmobile), “Combat Operations After Action Report: Plei Mei Campaign, October 23–November 26, 1965,” March 4, 1966, CMH, p. 28; Rosen, Winning the Next War, 94; Daddis, No Sure Victory, 79.

52. 3rd Brigade, 1st Air Cav Div, FRAGO 65–12 to OPORD 7–65, 13 Nov 65, folder 6A, box 46, Moore Papers; Gregory A. Daddis, Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 97; After Action Report, 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry—IA DRANG Valley Operation, November 14–16, 1965, December 9, 1965, box 01, folder 01, Operation Masher / Operation White Wing Collection, TTU Vietnam Archive, 1st Cavalry Division Tactical Operations Center Duty Log, November 14, 1965, folder 16, box 48, Moore Papers (hereafter 1st Cav Div TOC Duty Log); see also John M. Carland, Combat Operations: Stemming the Tide, May 1965 to October 1966 (Washington, DC: CMH, 2000), 113.

53. 1st Cav Div TOC Duty Log, November 16, 1965; Capt. Henry B. Thorpe, After Action Report—Operation Silver Bayonet, November 12–20, 1965, Company D, 2–7 Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), folder 6A, box 46, Moore Papers.

54. Report, 1st Air Cavalry Division—Lessons Learned from Operations, December 29, 1965, box 4, folder 3, Coleman Collection; Harry W. O. Kinnard, “A Victory in the Ia Drang: The Triumph of a Concept,” Army 17, no. 9 (September 1967): 89. For a description of the Pleiku campaign and the battles at X-Ray and Albany see Carland, Combat Operations, 113–50 (casualty statistics on 145), Tolson, Airmobility, 73–83, and Moore and Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once; Interview with Lt. Gen. Harry W. O. Kinnard, September 19, 1990, folder 6, box 48, Moore Papers.

55. Kinnard quote in Newsweek, December 13, 1965, 28; CIA Weekly Report, “The Situation in South Vietnam,” November 24, 1965, folder 6A, box 46, Moore Papers.

56. William C. Westmoreland to Harold Moore, May 15, 1983, folder 6, box 48, Moore Papers; Westmoreland quoted in “Westmoreland Surveys Action,” New York Times, November 20, 1965; Daddis, No Sure Victory, 81; see also Daddis, Westmoreland’s War, 98; Carland, Combat Operations, 150; Tolson, Airmobility, 83; Kretchik, U.S. Army Doctrine, 188; adviser quoted in Malcom W. Browne, The New Face of War, rev. ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), 79.

57. Daddis, No Sure Victory, 82–85; Johnson in William Conrad Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part IV: July 1965–January 1968 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 101–2; Rosen, Winning the Next War, 94; Daddis, Westmoreland’s War, 98–99; Hayley Michael Hasik, “The Helicopter War: Unraveling the Myth and Memory of a Vietnam War Icon” (PhD diss., University of Southern Mississippi, 2023).

58. David Lamb, “Copter Proves Itself as Vietnam Weapon,” Nashville Tennessean, July 6, 1969; William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 348; Matthew Allen, Military Helicopter Doctrines of the Major Powers 1945–1992: Making Decisions about Air-Land Warfare (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993), 11; Krepinevich, Army and Vietnam, 122.

59. Oral history transcript, Stanley R. Resor, interview 1 (I), November 16, 1968, by Dorothy Pierce, p. 8, LBJ Library Oral Histories, LBJL; Gen. Melvin Zais to Maj. Gen. Sidney Berry, February 25, 1974, Zais to Berry, February 25, 1974, and Berry to Zais, February 4, 1974, all in box 3, Melvin Zais Papers, USAHEC. Zais and Berry communicated about the loss of parachute slots and the meaning of “airborne.” Zais was careful to note that “airborne” was a generic term, denoting glider, parachute, air-land, and helicopter methods of arrival.

60. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower, 359, 368, table 35.

6. The Strategic Army Corps and the Emergence of Strike Command

1. Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 170.

2. James M. Gavin, “The Future of Airborne Operations,” Military Review 27, no. 9 (December 1947): 4–5, 8 (Devers quote on 8); Matthew B. Ridgway, “An Army on Its Toes,” Army Combat Forces Journal, December 1954, 10; Bacevich, Pentomic Era, 106; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 214.

3. Robert K. Wright, “Airborne Forces and the American Way of War,” Army History 72 (Summer 2009): 47.

4. Linn, Elvis’s Army, 304; Wright, “Airborne Forces,” 41–42.

5. T. F. Walkowicz, Future Airborne Armies: A Report Prepared for the Army Air Forces Scientific Advisory Group (Wright Field, OH: Air Material Command, September 1945), 1–2, 60–63; Lt. Gen. L. H. Brereton, HQ 3rd Air Force, memorandum to HQ Army Air Forces, August 7, 1945, Airborne Operations folder, box 8, Floyd Parks Papers, DDEL; for more on the First Allied Airborne Army see James A. Huston, Out of the Blue: U.S. Army Airborne Operations in World War II (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1972), 77–79; Gen. Omar N. Bradley, address to the graduates of the Command and General Staff College, July 1, 1949, Fort Leavenworth, KS, in W. A. Kuhn, “How Far Along Are We in Developing an Airborne Army?,” Military Review, April 1950, 41; “Approximate ‘Air Lift’ Required to Transport One Division,” n.d. (circa 1949), folder 180, box 63, Baldwin Papers; “First Rate Fighting Unit,” from Donald T. Kellett and William Friedman, “Airborne on Paper Wings,” Infantry Journal 62, no. 5 (May 1948): 9.

6. John B. Spore, “An Army with Wings,” Reporter, January 8, 1952, 31–34; Maxwell D. Taylor interview with Richard A. Manion, section 2, p. 29, November 10, 1972, Senior Officers Debriefing Program, Maxwell Taylor Papers, USAHEC (hereafter Taylor Oral History; CG, AGF to Army Chief of Staff, November 2, 1945, box 37, Gavin Papers; Gavin to Gen. E. C. Meyer, Chief of Staff of the Army, July 1, 1981, box 27, Gavin Papers; Joseph Rockis, “Reorganization of Army Ground Forces during the Demobilization Period,” AGF Demobilization Study #3 (Fort Monroe, VA, 1948), 47; Jack Draper Oral History (AFC/2001/001/09556), Veterans History Project, LOC; David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Random House, 1993), 70–71; Kellett and Friedman, “Airborne on Paper Wings,” 13.

7. Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower, 226; Ernest F. Fisher, “Evolution of U.S. Airborne Doctrine,” Military Review, May 1966, 72–74.

8. Omar N. Bradley, “Creating a Sound Military Force,” Military Review 24, no. 2 (May 1949): 3–6; Ridgway, “Trends in Modern Warfare,” 6; Melvin Zais to William Miley, “Employment of Airborne Troops,” February 1, 1950, Airborne Historical Studies, box 1, Zais Papers; “Organization, Equipment, and Tactical Employment of the Airborne Division,” Study No. 16, Reports of the General Board, US Forces, European Theater, CARL.

9. Report to the President, “NATO Force Goals,” April 25, 1952, box 13, National Security File, Harry S. Truman Papers, HSTL; Ridgway letter, April 22, 1954, box 4, NATO Series, Alfred M. Gruenther Papers, DDEL.

10. Daniel F. Harrington, Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012), 232; Kuhn, “How Far Along Are We?,” 44; Owen, Air Mobility, 84–85; Jacob L. Devers, “Air Transportability of the Infantry Division,” Military Review 24, no. 1 (April 1949): 14–18; Lt. Col. Zais to Col. Berquist, “Employment of Airborne Troops,” January 24, 1950, Airborne Historical Studies, box 1, Zais Papers.

11. Austin Stevens, “Planes Fall Short of Airlift Needs,” New York Times, May 2, 1950; Ridgway to Vice Chief of Staff, “Movement of 2-Division Corps to Europe,” May 26, 1950, box 76, Ridgway Papers; Mathewson to Ridgway, August 29, 1950, box 31, Ridgway Papers; Ridgway and Martin, Soldier, 312; Kellett and Friedman, “Airborne on Paper Wings,” 9.

12. “Final Report, Exercise Swarmer,” Training Operations Files for Maneuver Exercise “Swarmer,” 1/1950–5/1950, box 800, entry UD-UP 1, RG 337, NARA; 11th Airborne Division Exercise Swarmer Final Report, 1950, entry UD 37042, Unit Histories, Division Section, 1943–67, RG 338, NARA; Albert Pierson, “Airborne Operations,” Army Information Digest 9, no. 7 (July 1954): 20–30; Command Report, Exercise Swarmer, 82nd Airborne Division, box 4388, entry NM3 429, US Army Command Reports, 1948–1954, 429, RG 407, Records of the Adjutant General, NARA; Final Report, Exercise Swarmer, 1950, 82nd Airborne Division, entry UD 37042, Unit Histories, Division Section, 1940–67, RG 338, NARA; Hunter M. Brumfield, “Swarmer—a Pattern for Airborne Assault,” Army Information Digest 5, no. 7 (July 1950): 13–22; see also “Airpower Becomes Supply Power,” Life, May 15, 1950, 42–43.

13. After Action Report, CG, 187th RCT, October 29, 1950, 11th Airborne Division, box 3413, entry NM3 429, US Army Command Reports, 1948–1954, 429, RG 407, NARA; Owen, Air Mobility, 95–96; J. Lawton Collins to US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Department of the Army Appropriations, 82nd Congress, 2nd session, February 5, 1952.

14. Bolte to Ridgway, January 19, 1950, box 6, Ridgway Papers; CS 2045/8, April 26, 1951, Records of the Air Force Representative on the Joint Airborne Troop Board, RG 340, NARA; Galvin, Air Assault, 264.

15. See Joint Airborne Troop Board Administrative and Project Files, 1950–1954, RG 337, NARA; Report of the Army Airborne Conference, 1951, 1953 Airborne Conference Report, Joint Airborne Troop Board, Fort Bragg, and Report of the 1957 Army Airborne Conference, Fort Bragg, all in USAHEC. See also Spore, “Army with Wings,” 31–34; 1953 Airborne Conference Report, p. 5, November 17–20, 1953, Joint Airborne Troop Board, Fort Bragg, USAHEC. For more on the development of joint doctrine see Robert Frank Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine, vol. 1, Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force, 1907–1960 (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 2004), 378–79.

16. Address by the Under Secretary of the Army Earl D. Johnson before the Air Power Preparedness Symposium of the 7th Annual National Convention of the Air Force Association, Washington, DC, August 21, 1953, and Address by Under Secretary of the Army Earl D. Johnson before Dallas Council on World Affairs Symposium on Air Power, Dallas, TX, November 20, 1953, box 7, Earl D. Johnson Papers, HSTL.

17. Appendix A1–2, Report of the Army Airborne Conference, February 19–23, 1951, Army Airborne Center, Fort Bragg, USAHEC; Taylor Oral History, section 2, pp. 29–30; Maxwell D. Taylor, “The Changing Army,” Army Forces Combat Journal, October 1955, 10.

18. Secretary Wilbur M. Brucker, Address at Lincoln Dinner, Carlisle, PA, February 11, 1956, box 27, Brucker Papers; Ridgway to Secretary of Army, June 27, 1955, Official Correspondence (Army Chief of Staff), box 18, Ridgway Papers.

19. Earle Wheeler, “Strategic Mobility,” Army Information Digest 12, no. 1 (January 1957): 2–12; 82nd Airborne Division, “Report of Students Jumping from C-124 Aircraft,” memorandum, May 29, 1957, box 7, entry P 50470 Third Army, G-3 Records Relating to Training 1957–1960, RG 338, NARA; Department of Defense, Semiannual Report of the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, January 1 to June 30, 1956 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1956), 268; E. R. Johnson and Lloyd S. Jones, American Military Transport Aircraft since 1925 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013), 209–17.

20. Maxwell D. Taylor, Address at Tenth Annual Convention, National Defense Transportation Association, Sheraton Plaza Hotel, Boston, “The Army and Mobility,” October 13, 1955, Taylor Papers, NDU; Charles E. Wilson, speech to Republican Party of Massachusetts, June 5, 1957, box 35, Wilson Papers.

21. “Renaming the Strategic Reserve,” March 8, 1957, box 234, entry P 218, Records of the DCoS for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1957 records, RG 319, NARA; Department of Defense, Semiannual Report of the Secretary of the Army, October 13, 1958, p. 103, box 784, Office of the Secretary of the Army, General Correspondence January 1957–December 1960, RG 335, NARA; James Gavin, “We Can Solve Our Technical Difficulties,” Army Combat Forces Journal, November 1955, 64; “Organizing and Deploying Our Forces,” Army Information Digest 13, no. 6 (June 1958): 28–29; DCSOPS to DCSLOG, memorandum, “Strategic Army Forces,” February 19, 1957, and memorandum for DCSOPA, “STRAF and STRAC Divisions under August 17, 1957 Structure,” box 234, entry P 218, Records of the DCoS for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1957 records, RG 319, NARA.

22. “Improved Readiness of the STRAC,” memorandum, June 20, 1957, entry P 218, box 234, Records of the DCoS for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1957 records, RG 319, NARA; “Military Objectives of the Army, 1960 to 1962,” address by Maxwell D. Taylor at the Secretaries’ Conference, Quantico, VA, June 21, 1958, Taylor Papers, NDU; “STRAC—Mobile Striking Force in Readiness,” Army Information Digest 13, no. 6 (August 1958): 16–17; Galvin, Fighting the Cold War, 102–3.

23. Linn, Elvis’s Army, 225–26; Howze Oral History, section 5, p. 5, Howze Papers; Robert Haldane Oral History, 38–39, box 1, Robert Haldane Papers, USAHEC; Third Army G3 Training Division, memorandum, “Readiness of STRAC Forces,” July 21, 1960, and memorandum, “Deployment Readiness of STRAC Units,” July 27, 1960, box 23, entry P 50470 Third Army, G-3 Records Relating to Training 1957–1960, RG 338, NARA; Hanson W. Baldwin, “The New Army Corps,” New York Times, May 24, 1958.

24. Norman H. Schwarzkopf with Peter Petre, It Doesn’t Take a Hero (New York: Bantam Books, 1992), 73–84, quote on 73; DCSOPS to DCSLOG, memorandum, “Strategic Army Forces,” February 19, 1957, box 233, entry P 218, Records of DCoS for Military Operations, Central Decimal Files, 1956–1964, 1957 records, RG 319, NARA.

25. Telephone calls log, September 25, 1957, box 27, DDE Diary Series, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers as President (Ann Whitman file), DDEL; George M. Seignious, memorandum for record, Subj: “Use of Federal Troops in Little Rock, Arkansas,” October 28, 1957, box 17, Brucker Papers, BHL; information received from Gen. Wheeler, 24 2045 Sep 1957, box 1, Command Report, Operation ARKANSAS, box 2, entry UD 116, Records of the Office of the DCoS for Military Operations, Domestic Disturbance Files, Records of Operation Arkansas, 1957–1958, RG 319, NARA; Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945–1992 (Washington, DC: CMH, 2005), 40, 44.

26. Brig. Gen. Goodpaster, memorandum for record, May 15, 1958, Department of Defense vol. 2, May 1958, box 1, White House Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series: DoD Subseries, DDEL; Tad Szulc, “US Flies Troops to Caribbean as Mobs Attack Nixon in Caracas,” New York Times, May 14, 1958; William I. Hitchcock, The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019), 418.

27. Department of Defense, Semiannual Report of the Secretary of the Army (Washington, DC: GPO, 1958), 104; dispatch from DA, Washington, DC, to CG, USCONARC, CCS 381, Combined Plans for the Defense of the Western Hemisphere, Sec. 38, Geographic Files, 1958, RG 218, NARA; Robert Sink, “STRAC Plans for the Future,” Army Information Digest 14, no. 11 (November 1959): 2; dispatch from DA, Washington, DC, to CG, 101st Abn Div Task Force, CCS 381, Combined Plans for the Defense of the Western Hemisphere, Sec. 38, Geographic Files, 1958, RG 218, NARA.

28. Memorandum for Gen. Goodpaster, May 17, 1958, Department of Defense vol. 2, May 1958, box 1, White House Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series: DoD Subseries, DDEL; Department of the Army, “1957 Airborne Conference,” appendix B3, p. 252, USAHEC.

29. Chairman’s Staff Group, memorandum, “Service Airlift Emergency Plans,” May 20, 1958, Department of Defense vol. 2, May 1958, box 1, White House Office of the Staff Secretary, Subject Series: DoD Subseries, DDEL.

30. Jonathan M. House, A Military History of the Cold War, 1944–1962 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 353–54; Gary H. Wade, Rapid Deployment Logistics: Lebanon, 1958 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CSI Press, 1984), 8–9; Lebanon Situation, CCS 381 Lebanon Sec. 1, Geographic Files, 1958, box 10, RG 218, NARA; Randall Fowler, More Than a Doctrine: The Eisenhower Era in the Middle East (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2018), 139–42.

31. Department of Defense, Semiannual Report of the Secretary of the Army (Washington, DC: GPO, 1958), 104–5; Roger J. Spiller, “Not War but Like War”: The American Intervention in Lebanon (Fort Leavenworth, KS: CSI Press, 1981), 9–10, 26; dispatch from CINCSPECOMME to CNO, “For Admiral Burke. Sitrep 12. Blue Bat,” Lebanon Situation, CCS 381 Lebanon Sec. 4, Geographic Files, 1958, box 10, RG 218, NARA; Neil McElroy oral history interview with Philip A. Crowl, May 6, 1964, John Foster Dulles Oral History Project, MC017, Public Policy Papers, Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; Gordon Rottman, US Army Airborne, 1940–1990 (New York: Osprey, 1990), 29; Birtle, US Army Counterinsurgency, 190.

32. Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, “The Army & National Security,” September 24, 1959, at the Sixth Annual Conference of Civilian Aides to the Secretary of the Army, September 23–25, 1959, folder: Papers, 1959, box 17, Brucker Papers, BHL; Lt. Gen. Robert F. Sink, “The Strategic Army Corps,” September 24, 1959, at the Sixth Annual Conference of Civilian Aides to the Secretary of the Army, September 23–25, 1959, folder: Papers, 1959, box 17, Brucker Papers, BHL.

33. See Final Report, Exercise Eagle Wing, May 13, 1958, box 27, Exercise White Cloud, December 8, 1958, box 12, and Final Report, Exercise Dark Cloud / Pine Cone II, February 16, 1959, box 39, all in entry P 50470, Third Army, G-3 Records Relating to Training 1957–1960, RG 338, NARA. Final Report, Exercise Test Drop, Exercise Snow Storm, Camp Drum, NY, January–March 1953; General Plan, Exercise Flash Burn, April–May 1954; and Final Report, Exercise Arctic Knight, May 11, 1956, all in box 57, entry UD 35176: General Records [XVIII (Airborne) Corps, 1951–1963], RG 338; Jack Raymond, “Paratroop Tests in ‘Combat’ Hailed,” New York Times, February 23, 1959; Hamilton H. Howze, “STRAC Flexes Its Muscles,” Army Information Digest 14, no. 7 (July 1959): 14–23.

34. Report, Subj: “Strategic Mobility Exercises,” February 4, 1960, box 1, entry A1 55-E, Records of the Office of the Chief of Information, Security Correspondence, 1960, 62–64, RG 319, NARA.

35. Sink, “STRAC Plans for the Future,” 2–10.

36. Lt. Gen. T. J. H. Trapnell to Gen. Herbert B. Powell, January 12, 1961, box 1, Paul D. Adams Papers, USAHEC; for more on Trapnell’s career see his obituary: “Thomas Trapnell, 99; Bataan Hero, Military Advisor,” Los Angeles Times, February 16, 2002.

37. Douglas C. Lovelace and Thomas-Durrell Young, “Defining US Atlantic Command’s Role in the Power Projection Strategy,” US Army Strategic Studies Institute, August 1998, 3; Ronald H. Cole et al., “The History of the Unified Command Plan 1946–1993,” Washington, DC: Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint History Office, February 1995, 32–35; Organization and Planning Files, USCONARC/ARSTIKE Ops, box 8, entry UD WW-125, General Records, CONARC HQ 1957–66 Unclassified, RG 546, NARA; Scheips, Role of Federal Military Forces, 8; Departments of Defense report, “Appraisal of Capabilities of Conventional Forces,” May 12, 1961, Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, President’s Office Files, JFKL; Rottman, US Army Airborne, 36.

38. Galvin, Fighting the Cold War, 86, 90; Judson J. Conner, “DRF—Dynamic Deterrent,” Army Information Digest, March 1965, 38–41; Raymond Weaver Oral History (AFC/2001/001/20967), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, LOC.

39. House, Military History of the Cold War, 419–21; Howze, Cavalryman’s Story, 261; Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Vintage Books, 2008), 104–5, 176.

40. Department of State Circular 549, September 21, 1963; Telegram 193, from Munich to Secretary of State, October 31, 1963, both in Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Department of Defense (B): Subjects: Military exercises, Big Lift, JFKNSF-279–001, JFKL.

41. Bruce Palmer Jr., Intervention in the Caribbean: The Dominican Crisis of 1965 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 3, 30–35; Dominican Republic, Operation “Power Pack,” n.d., Research Material, ROAD, box 5, WMM82; Lawrence M. Greenberg, United States Army Unilateral and Coalition Operations in the 1965 Dominican Republic Intervention (Washington, DC: CMH, 1987), 37.

42. Drew Brooks, “Obscure Fight in Dominican Republic Taught 82nd Airborne Urban Warfare Lessons,” Fayetteville (NC) Observer, April 25, 2015; “Authority of the United States to Take Action in the Dominican Republic,” memorandum, folder, “McGeorge Bundy, Vol. 10, April 15–May 31, 1965 [2 of 2],” Memos to the President, NSF, box 3, LBJL.

43. Raymond Weaver Oral History, Raymond Weaver Collection (AFC/2001/001/20967), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, LOC; Brooks, “Obscure Fight”; Nadia Schadlow, War and the Art of Governance: Consolidating Combat Success into Political Victory (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), 191–92, 194; Joint Information Office, HQ US Forces Dominican Republic, Crisis in the Dominican Republic, n.d., Dominican Republic box 1, WMM82; Brooks, “Obscure Fight”; Palmer, Intervention in the Caribbean, 137; 82nd Airborne Division, Summary of Activities, 1965, Research Materials, Division AHS, box 54, WMM82.

44. Weaver Oral History, LOC; Hanson W. Baldwin, “Airborne Troops Filling Ranks Depleted by War,” New York Times, August 2, 1966; Airborne Alert Project, Commanding General’s Guidance, ROAD Reference Materials box 5, WMM82; Rottman, US Army Airborne, 33–34, 49.

45. 3rd Brigade Annual History, Vietnam, Vietnam box 1, WMM82; Wright, “Airborne Forces,” 44. For a detailed account of the Golden Brigade in Vietnam see Robert J. Dvorchak, Golden Brigade: The Untold Story of the 82nd Airborne in Vietnam and Beyond (Indianapolis: IBJ, 2020).

46. Final Rpt, Seventh Army Operations on Coal Emergency, 10 Dec 46 (P&O, 004.07, Case 13), RG 319, NARA; Beaumont, “Airborne: Life Cycle of a Military Subculture,” 55.

47. “Some suggested questions for Mr. Vance relating to General Abrams’ role in civil disturbances,” n.d., folder 81, box 20, Vance Papers; Scheips, Role of Federal Military Forces, 120; House, Military History of the Cold War, 427–28.

48. AAR, Task Force Detroit, August 2, 1967, Reference Materials, ROAD, box 5, WMM82; Scheips, Role of Federal Military Forces, 185–99.

49. See books 1 through 3, entry A1–1595, DA Office of the Chief of Staff, Records Relating to Civil Disturbances, 1968, RG 319, NARA; Instructions to Task Force Commanders, book 1, box 1, entry A1–1595, DA Office of the Chief of Staff, Records Relating to Civil Disturbances, 1968, RG 319, NARA; Information Office release, April 13, 1968, Vietnam box 14, and AAR, TF Washington, April 1968, Reference Materials, ROAD, box 5, WMM82.

50. Message, JCS 7848 to USCINCEUR, 11 Aug 64, Reference Materials, ROAD, box 5, WMM82; 82nd Airborne Division History, 1917–Present (1995), Reference Materials, Division AHS, box 56, WMM82.

51. Howze Oral History, section 2, p. 2; Gavin, Airborne Warfare, 175.

52. Linn, Elvis’s Army, 213, 225.

Epilogue

1. Christopher Donahue, “We Do Not ‘Heavy Breathe’ In the 82nd Airborne Division,” 18th Airborne Corps Podcast, episode 37, June 7, 2021, prod. Joe Buccino, https://thedoomsdayclock.podbean.com/e/episode-37-we-do-not-heavy-breathe-in-this-division-a-discussion-with-maj-gen-chris-donahue/.

2. Roger Beaumont, “Airborne: Life Cycle of a Military Subculture,” Military Review 51, no. 6 (June 1971): 53–61; Cockerham, “Selective Socialization,” 216; Linn, Elvis’s Army, 304.

3. Taylor to Rusk, for the president, January 6, 1965, section 5 of 5, ProQuest History Vault (PQV), http://congressional.proquest.com/histvault?q=003221-002-0001; “Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force,” United States–Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967 (the Pentagon Papers), Part IV.B.1, Evolution of the War, the Kennedy Program and Commitments: 1961, P 760, RG 330, NARA; Trauschweizer, Maxwell Taylor’s Cold War, 152–55; Shelby Stanton, Vietnam Order of Battle (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003).

4. Rosen, Winning the Next War, 94; Boyne, How the Helicopter Changed Modern Warfare, 132.

5. DA, FM 100–5, Operations, 1976; DA, FM 100–5, Operations, 1982.

6. “A Flotilla of Army Helicopters Joins Attack on Karbala,” Washington Post, March 29, 2003, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/03/29/a-flotilla-of-army-helicopters-joins-attack-on-karbala/3b318b62-7251-406f-b762–2cf0e8822df1/.

7. Michael R. Gordon, “Heading Back to Iraq for Round 2,” New York Times, March 1, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/international/worldspecial3/heading-back-to-iraq-for-round-2.html; Joseph K. Maddry et al., “Impact of Prehospital Medical Evacuation (MEDEVAC) Transport Time on Combat Mortality in Patients with Non-compressible Torso Injury and Traumatic Amputations: A Retrospective Study,” Military Medical Research 5, no. 1 (June 30, 2018): 22, https://doi.org/10.1186/s40779-018-0169-2; John Ryan and Tony Dokoupil, “In Afghanistan’s ‘Valley of Death’ a Medevac Team’s Miracle Rescue,” Newsweek, November 5, 2012, https://www.newsweek.com/afghanistans-valley-death-medevac-teams-miracle-rescue-63779.

8. FM 100–5 was renumbered FM 3–0 in 2001. For more on the US Army’s counterinsurgency focus before and during Vietnam see Daddis, Westmoreland’s War; DA, FM 100–5, Operations, 1976, 2–10.

9. See James Gavin, letter to Michael Cannon, July 20, 1983, box 31, Gavin Papers; DA, FM 100–5, Operations, 1962, and DA, FM 100–5, Operations, 1976. For more on this see David Fitzgerald, Learning to Forget: US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Practice from Vietnam to Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford Security Studies, 2014); John Norton Oral History Interview, John Norton Collection (AFC/2001/001/31599), Veterans History Project, American Folklife Center, LOC.

10. Carter, “Eisenhower versus the Generals,” 1196–99; Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, August 6, 1958, in Cole, Department of Defense, 188–230.

11. HQ, 82nd Airborne Division, Historical Summary, 1968–1975, Research Material box 54, WMM82; Maj. Gen. Roscoe Robinson, “Deployment Alert,” May 23, 1978, ROAD box 5, WMM82; HQ, 82nd Airborne Division, FY1979 Historical Summary, Research Material box 55, WMM82; John E. Valliere, “Disaster at Desert One: Catalyst for Change,” Parameters 22, no. 1 (Autumn 1992): 69–82.

12. David W. Hogan Jr., Raiders or Elite Infantry? The Changing Role of the US Army Rangers from Dieppe to Grenada (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992), 36–51; Department of the Army, Ranger Unit Operations, Field Manual 7–85, 1987.

13. John K. Cooley, “US Rapid Strike Force: How to Get There First with the Most,” Christian Science Monitor, April 11, 1980; US House of Representatives, House Committee on Appropriations, Department of Defense Appropriations for 1983, 97th Congress, 2nd Session, 306; Richard Halloran, “Pentagon Activates Strike Force; Effectiveness Believed Years Off,” New York Times, February 19, 1980.

14. Stansfield Turner, “Towards a New Defense Strategy,” New York Times, May 10, 1981; US House of Representatives, DoD Appropriations Hearing for 1983, 309.

15. Richard Stewart, Operation Urgent Fury: The Invasion of Grenada, October 1983 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2009), 18–22, 26, 37; R. Cody Phillips, Operation Just Cause: The Incursion into Panama, Center for Military History Publication 70–85–1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2004), 32; Executive Summary, XVIII Airborne Corps, June 24, 1991, Gulf War, box 43, WMM82; Scales, Certain Victory, 49–51; John L. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post–Cold War (Washington, DC: CMH, 1997), 90, 101; Steve Krippel and Chris Riccie, “The Stryker Brigade Combat Team: America’s Early Entry Force,” Infantry Journal, July–September 2014, 26–29.

16. R. F. M. Williams, “The Development of Airfield Seizure Operations in the United States Army,” Military Review, November 18, 2021; Richard W. Stewart, The United States Army in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, October 2001–March 2002 (Washington, DC: CMH, 2004), 14; Robert W. Jones Jr., “The Jump at Objective Serpent: 3/75th Rangers in Iraq,” Veritas 1, no. 1 (2005): 52–54; Peter R. Mansoor, Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 70.

17. Jim Garamone, “Carter Calls Bragg Troops ‘Tip of Spear’ for New Strategic Era,” DoD News, July 14, 2015, https://www.army.mil/article/152226/carter_calls_bragg_troops_tip_of_spear_for_new_strategic_era; NDC Conference Report, “The Future of Airborne Forces in NATO,” Research Division, NATO Defense College, Rome, July 2013, 3; Donna Miles, “From Haiti to Afghanistan, 82nd Shows Flexibility,” American Forces Press Service, April 30, 2010, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2010/04/mil-100430-afps02.htm.

18. Matthew Cox, “Emergency Paratrooper Deployment Is First for New Army Response Force,” Military.com, January 3, 2020, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/01/02/emergency-army-deployment-first-new-paratrooper-response-force.html; Jay Price, “82nd Airborne Division Celebrates 100 Years,” NPR, August 24, 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/08/24/545757890/82nd-airborne-division-celebrates-its-100th-anniversary.

19. Ryan Pickrell, “The US Military Moved 1,600 Soldiers into Positions outside the Nation’s Capital and Has Them on Alert to Respond to Protests If Necessary,” Business Insider, June 2, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/pentagon-1600-troops-on-alert-outside-dc-for-protest-response-2020–6?op=1; Jack Murphy, “New Details about the 82nd Military Deployment to D.C.,” Connecting Vets, June 11, 2020, https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/articles/new-details-about-the-82nd-military-deployment-to-dc; Jack Murphy, “82nd Paratroopers Forward Deployed near Washington DC,” Connecting Vets, June 2, 2020, https://www.audacy.com/connectingvets/articles/82nd-paratroopers-forward-deployed-near-washington-dc; Robert Burns, Matthew Lee, and Ellen Knickmeyer, “US Sending 3K Troops for Partial Afghan Embassy Evacuation,” AP, August 12, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-us-troops-embassy-kabul-355c48ec08fb7eb75e1e279e99c3dabf.

20. Dan Fastenberg and Bryan Woolston, “U.S. Troops Prepare for Deployment to Eastern Europe from Fort Bragg,” Reuters, February 3, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/us-troops-prepare-deployment-eastern-europe-fort-bragg-2022-02-03/; Rachel Riley, “Fort Bragg Soldiers Deploy to Support NATO in Europe amid Russian Threat to Ukraine,” Fayetteville (NC) Observer, February 3, 2022, https://www.fayobserver.com/story/news/2022/02/03/fort-bragg-soldiers-deploy-europe-russia-presence-ukraine-border-putin-us-military/6646815001/.

21. Bernard Loeffke to John Foss, August 8, 1988, box 2A, John W. Foss Papers, USAHEC; Timothy S. Muchmore, “Redefining Roles and Missions and Restructuring Forces of the Army and Marine Corps” (MA thesis, Naval War College, 1991), 9, Army Roles and Missions Collection, box 2B, USAHEC; George W. Bush, Presidential Proclamation, “National Airborne Day, 2002,” August 14, 2002; S.Res.235–111th Congress (2009–2010): “A Resolution Designating August 16, 2009, as ‘National Airborne Day,’” legislation, August 3, 2009, 1st Session, 111th Congress; “West Point’s Army-Navy Game Uniforms to Honor 82nd Airborne,” Stars and Stripes, December 6, 2016, https://www.stripes.com/sports/west-point-s-army-navy-game-uniforms-to-honor-82nd-airborne-1.442946; J. D. Simkins, “Army to Honor 1st Cavalry Division with New Unis against Rival Navy,” Military Times, December 6, 2019, https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2019/12/06/army-uniforms-honor-1st-cavalry-division-for-navy-rivalry-game/.

22. Steve Beynon, “New Army 11th Airborne Division Gets Stand Up Date, Force Outline,” Military.com, May 18, 2022, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/05/18/new-army-11th-airborne-division-gets-stand-date-force-outline.html. For the origins of “hooah” see Sarah Sicard, “The Mysterious Origins of ‘HOOAH,’ the Army’s Beloved Battle Cry,” Task & Purpose, October 5, 2017, https://taskandpurpose.com/history/mysterious-origins-hooah-armys-beloved-battle-cry/.

23. Meghann Myers, “Earning It: A Complete History of Army Berets and Who’s Allowed to Wear Them,” Army Times, November 19, 2017, https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2017/11/19/earning-it-a-complete-history-of-army-berets-and-whos-allowed-to-wear-them/; Correspondence about Beret, 1979, Reference Material, Training, box 32, WMM82; “Chief of Staff Hints He’d Wear Berets,” Army Times, October 1, 1979.

24. DA, Change 4, Army Regulation 600–70, January 24, 1950; Thomas Hendrix, “The Parachutist Badge—68 Proud Years,” www.army.mil, March 2, 2009, https://www.army.mil/article/17655/the_parachutist_badge_68_proud_years; DA, Army Regulation 600–8–22, Military Awards (2019), 117–19; Beaumont, Military Elites, 2–3. For more on rites of passage see Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. M. B. Visedom and G. L. Caffe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).

25. Price, “82nd Airborne Division Celebrates 100 Years.”

26. Brief history of the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum, Reference Material, Museum Info, box 57, WMM82; John W. Aarsen, “The 82d Airborne Division War Memorial Museum,” Army History, no. 128 (Summer 2023): 20–23; Davis Winkie, “82nd Airborne’s Special Relationship with D-Day Village Endures Virtually amid Pandemic,” Army Times, December 16, 2020, https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2020/12/15/82nd-airbornes-special-relationship-with-d-day-village-endures-virtually-amid-pandemic/.

27. Davis Winkie, “Why the 82nd Airborne Is Directing Airfield Security for Afghanistan Evacuation,” Army Times, August 17, 2021, https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/afghanistan/2021/08/17/why-the-82nd-airborne-is-directing-airfield-security-for-afghanistan-evacuation/; “Last Boots in Afghanistan on Display in the Museum,” Call to Duty: Newsletter of the Army Historical Foundation and the National Museum of the United States Army 17, no. 3 (September 2022): 8; Jeff School, “Why a 2-Star General Was the Last American Service Member to Leave Afghanistan,” Task & Purpose, August 31, 2021, https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-general-last-soldier-leave-afghanistan/.

28. Haley Britzky, “The True Story of How Army Paratroopers Traded Dip for a Toyota Gun Truck Used to Secure the Kabul Airport,” Task & Purpose, October 6, 2021, https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-paratroopers-toyota-technical-kabul-airport/; Alex Horton and Dan Lamothe, “Inside the Afghanistan Airlift: Split-Second Decisions, Relentless Chaos Drove Historic Military Mission,” Washington Post, September 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2021/09/27/afghanistan-airlift-inside-military-mission/.

29. Wyatt Olson, “US Army Alaska to Be Reflagged as Airborne Division amid Surge in Troop Suicides,” Stars and Stripes, May 6, 2022, https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2022-05-05/us-army-alaska-11th-airborne-division-arctic-strategy-5910999.html; R. F. M. Williams, “Bring Back the Sightseeing Sixth: The Case for an Arctic Division,” Modern War Institute, December 14, 2021, https://mwi.usma.edu/bring-back-the-sightseeing-sixth-the-case-for-an-arctic-division/; Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks, producers, Band of Brothers (HBO Entertainment, 2001); Randall Wallace, dir., We Were Soldiers (Paramount Pictures, 2022); Ridley Scott, dir., Black Hawk Down (Sony Pictures, 2001).

30. Devore, “When Failure Thrives,” 58–59.

31. Winski and McCaffery quoted in Kyle Jahner, “Does the Army Even Need Airborne?,” Army Times, February 29, 2016, https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2016/02/29/does-the-army-need-airborne/; Logan Nye, “How the ‘Little Groups of Paratroopers’ Became Airborne Legends,” We Are the Mighty, April 2, 2018, https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/how-the-little-groups-of-paratroopers-became-airborne-legends/.

32. Walter A. Schrepel, “Paras and Centurions: Lessons Learned from the Battle of Algiers,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 11, no. 1 (July 2005): 71–89, https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327949pac1101_9; Beaumont, Military Elites, 111–12; Rod Thornton, “Getting It Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes Made in the Early Stages of the British Army’s Deployment to Northern Ireland (August 1969 to March 1972),” Journal of Strategic Studies 30, no. 1 (February 1, 2007): 73–107, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390701210848; Winslow, Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia.