Learning Strategy in the Truman Era

Following World War II, the US Army experienced one of the most rapid drawdowns in its history. The army had 8,270,000 soldiers in uniform at the close of the war but only 590,000 in 1950 before the Korean War. This force was scattered worldwide yet at least nominally responsible for defending US allies against Soviet armed forces and other perceived threats. The army was also in shambles, with morale at an all-time low. It had trouble bringing in fresh recruits, leading to a reinstitution of a draft in 1948. The decline of the army became apparent when Communist forces invaded the southern half of the Korean Peninsula in June 1950. Meanwhile, atomic weapons brought a new and uncertain dynamic to future warfare.³

In the aftermath of Hiroshima, strategist Bernard Brodie wrote that until that point, “the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars”; from then on, however, “its chief purpose must be to prevent them.” President Harry S. Truman and his administration played a pivotal role in defining how the United States would contain the Soviet Union in the early years of the Cold War. In 1947, Truman signed the National Security Act into law, creating the Central Intelligence Agency and the US Air Force. In 1948, the world witnessed major events that heightened tensions between the superpowers—a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade imposed by the Soviets, and the passage of the Marshall Plan for European recovery. In 1949, the United States joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a counter to Soviet power, while the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb ahead of schedule, escalating the nuclear arms race.⁴

By the middle of 1950, the United States settled on a strategy of containment and deterrence that highlighted the gravity of the Communist threat while setting forth American objectives: stop the spread of communism, deter nuclear war, implant American capitalism on a global scale, and transplant American culture worldwide, all in accordance with the top-secret National Security Memorandum 68, better known as NSC 68. These goals, however, were an expensive undertaking that required the first large peacetime military force in American history. NSC 68 had a significant impact on the army and its role in the Cold War. The document helped the army advance its own goals to expand and modernize its forces. Specifically, it warned that the Soviets would threaten American interests using localized military actions worldwide. NSC 68 also outlined why an overreliance on strategic air power would weaken American diplomatic power and that only a larger ground force could deter Soviet threats. Jolted by the war on the Korean Peninsula to contain the Communist incursion south, the US military budget exceeded $48 billion by May 1951, a more than $33 billion increase from the pre–Korean War budget. During this period of immense contraction and uncertainty, the airborne mafia learned, grew, and experimented with new ideas before assuming positions of higher responsibility.⁵

The airborne mafia gained influence in the army’s upper echelons during the postwar years. In late 1945, General Eisenhower appointed Matthew Ridgway to represent the US Army on the Military Committee of the United Nations in London. In this role, Ridgway advised the UN Security Council on military matters and served with Bernard Baruch on the Atomic Energy Committee. He became frustrated with debates among the “Big Five” UN members (US, UK, France, China, USSR) over military contributions and atomic weapons regulations. Ridgway saw Soviet disarmament proposals as a ploy to disarm the US and make the USSR the dominant global military power. During this time, Ridgway also chaired the Inter-American Defense Board, leading to the 1947 Rio Pact of mutual defense among Latin American states, which later modeled the North Atlantic Treaty.⁶

Taylor reported as superintendent of West Point on September 4, 1945, to rescue its slumping reputation. He was given a mandate from Eisenhower to reform the Academy. At West Point, he had an enormous role in shaping the school’s curriculum, increasing humanities coursework to a full third of the cadets’ curriculum. Leaning on his experience, on March 18, 1947, Taylor formed an airborne detachment that provided eighteen hours of instruction on “Airborne History, Airborne Equipment, Air Transportability, and the possible use of Airborne Troops in future wars.” Taylor’s airborne detachment grew into a requirement for all cadets to select airborne or ranger training upon graduation, and the detachment itself remained into the post–Cold War era. Even after airborne training was no longer required, it remained the most attended training school for West Point cadets. Taylor brought so many airborne officers into the faculty at West Point that it was referred to as the “101st Military Academy.” In his next assignment, in Berlin, Taylor assumed command of all Allied troops in that Cold War outpost city. There he learned to think about more than just the military aspects of his command as he worked for both the Departments of State and Defense, in a proper politico-military position. He learned the value of combining all elements of national power under a single authority and toward a common goal. Moreover, Taylor learned that the value of deterrence and alliance, at least in Berlin, lay in the credibility of American forces.⁷

Gavin, meanwhile, commanded the 82nd Airborne Division until March 1948—three and a half years in command and six years with the division in total. Between 1946 and 1948, Gavin and his division were at the forefront of testing helicopter and atomic warfare techniques. In 1946, his division was assigned thirteen Bell helicopters, the first maneuver division granted that opportunity, and he found them “an air vehicle of great versatility.” He viewed the mass parachute assaults in World War II as immediately outdated and began contemplating what the next war—one that might include battlefield atomic weapons— might look like. Gavin’s first book, Airborne Warfare, argued that mobility, dispersion, speed, and stealth were instrumental to survivability on a future atomic battlefield. “The use, or threatened use, of atomic weapons has had one immediate effect on our nation’s strategic and tactical thinking,” he wrote, “the realization that dispersion must govern all operations of the future.” Dispersion and decentralized leadership became necessary for the entire army—not just paratroops. He also believed that future roles for the army were predicated on the projection of military power through the air.⁸

After a brief assignment as Lt. Gen. Walton Walker’s Fifth Army chief of staff, Gavin served as the senior army representative on the Weapon Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG) from 1949 to July 1951. The WSEG was a new organization, headed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist Philip M. Morse and Lt. Gen. John Hull, to “provide rigorous, unprejudiced and independent analysis and evaluation of present and future weapons systems,” according to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. It launched in 1948 and comprised civilian scientists alongside officers from each service to ensure robust analysis of the “military payoff on weapons.” During this period, Gavin attended the Nuclear Weapons School at Sandia Air Force Base outside Albuquerque, New Mexico, to learn the principles of nuclear fission and atomic bombs. His chief tasks involved leading a study of future airborne operations, developing tactical nuclear weapons, and devising bigger and faster air mobility systems, which spurred his conceptualization of “sky cavalry.” Gavin’s interest in tactical nuclear weapons was intensified after he participated in Project VISTA, a 1951–1952 study of atomic warfare against the Soviet Union in Europe. Among other conclusions, VISTA determined that tactical atomic weapons were ideal for offsetting Soviet numerical advantages.⁹

In September 1949, Ridgway became the deputy chief of staff for operations and administration at the Pentagon when Omar Bradley was elevated to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ridgway’s role in the Pentagon would provide him with the necessary experience for his later role as army chief of staff. In his new position in the Washington bureaucracy, Ridgway was responsible for the day-to-day administration of a downsizing army. It was here that he first sensed “a growing feeling that in the armies of the future, the foot soldier would play only a very minor role” as he saw his colleagues enamored with “the erroneous belief that in the atomic missile, delivered by air, we had found the ultimate weapon.” He watched as the secretary of defense, Louis A. Johnson, economized the army by reducing infantry regiments from three to two battalions, artillery battalions from three to two batteries, and by removing most medium tanks from infantry units. Johnson was trying to demonstrate his leadership abilities and favored the air force’s way of war: he famously canceled the USS United States aircraft carrier in 1949—five days after its keel was laid—without consulting the secretary of the navy. His bold decision kicked off the “revolt of the admirals” and questions about which service should deliver a nuclear payload.¹⁰

When North Korean forces attacked across the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950, Ridgway was aghast at the lack of preparation. “The state of our Army in Japan at the outbreak of the Korean War was inexcusable,” he wrote. As battle reports crossed his desk, he understood the situation better than most, and the bitter lessons of unpreparedness for Korea remained high in Ridgway’s mind for the rest of his career. Following Walton Walker’s death in a jeep accident, Ridgway was given command of the Eighth Army and an opportunity to shore up its performance. Back in his element while leading troops in Korea, Ridgway was always near the fighting and endeavored to raise morale through leading by example, as he learned by commanding in World War II. Ridgway’s leadership salvaged the war in Korea, as within six weeks he turned a disintegrating, hollowed shell of a force into a victorious one. Maxwell Taylor described the turnaround in Korea as “the finest example of military leadership in this century.” Ridgway was a soldier’s soldier who dressed like a regular infantryman, replete with two hand grenades on his load-bearing equipment that earned him the nickname “Old Iron Tits.” As he had done in the airborne, he preferred aggressive subordinate leaders who displayed personal leadership. In taking over a demoralized force, he believed that getting the men moving forward again was the only way to restore confidence and morale. He pushed commanders out of their command posts and relieved or rotated inefficient officers, fully understanding that soldiers needed leadership that shared hardship and led by example. Ridgway then succeeded MacArthur as commander in chief for the Far East, where he oversaw the broader war effort, began negotiations with the Communist forces, and worked to keep the war from expanding. For Ridgway, the biggest lesson from the Korea War lay in acknowledging the limits of American power, particularly air power, in achieving objectives, as the air campaign of “unrelenting pressure” to strike “devastating blows” designed to force North Korean concessions toward an armistice largely failed.¹¹

Gavin went to Korea in October 1950 as part of the WSEG to evaluate weapons and tactics. There he witnessed how heavy fighting across arduous terrain presented multiple problems for the infantry— particularly in the two weeks it took forces that landed at Inchon to link up with forces pushing north from the Pusan perimeter. Like most army leaders, Gavin was appalled by the lack of preparedness, planning, and mobility exhibited by the units in Korea. In the rugged Korean Peninsula, Gavin began conceptualizing a helicopter-mounted force’s vast possibilities in such terrain—something the United States Marine Corps had already started experimenting with in late 1951. In Korea, he realized that not only could a sky cavalry have been decisive, but so too could tactical atomic weapons if used on massing North Korean or Chinese forces. It was not in attacking population centers where Gavin saw the best use of the new weapon but as an extension of tactical firepower.¹²

After his tour in East Asia, Ridgway succeeded Eisenhower as supreme Allied commander for Allied forces in Europe in May 1952. Truman nominated Ridgway over Eisenhower’s choice—General Alfred M. Gruenther—in part because of Ridgway’s field command experience. According to Newsweek, Ridgway’s reputation as a fighting leader “was surpassed, among Army men on active duty, only by Eisenhower and General Omar N. Bradley.” One of Ridgway’s primary tasks in Europe was persuading the French to accept a rearmed West Germany within NATO. He also succeeded in reorganizing the command structure in Europe by simplifying the American portion, in order to provide unity of command over the three-pronged multinational force that stretched in a four-thousand-mile arc from Norway to Turkey. Despite remaining skeptical of European capabilities, Ridgway also developed in-depth contingency plans so that every subordinate commander knew what to do in the case of Soviet aggression.¹³

Gavin joined his mentor Ridgway in Europe, taking charge of VII Corps in December 1952. There Gavin honed many of the ideas he later used in developing concepts for fighting atomic war and air mobility. Leaning on his lessons leading the 82nd and responding to readiness issues he witnessed in Korea, he instituted practice alerts and other drills to ensure his subordinates were ready to meet a Soviet incursion at a moment’s notice. Gavin became such an expert on nuclear weapons and warfare that he effectively served as the resident atomic warfare expert for the deputy supreme Allied commander, Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery. Throughout his command of VII Corps, Gavin had his subordinate divisions thinking about fighting on atomic battlefields and testing concepts for dispersion. In October 1953, the army gave Lt. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, Taylor’s assistant during World War II, command of the Seventh Army. Like Gavin, McAuliffe expected decentralized leadership, encouraging subordinates to “think on their feet.”¹⁴

After Berlin, Taylor returned to Washington in February 1951 for a brief tour of duty in the Pentagon. Taylor described his Pentagon work as “in effect preparation for participation in the Korean War as commander of the Eighth Army,” though he could not have known that then. He served first as the assistant chief of staff, G-3 (operations and training). He was then promoted to deputy chief of staff for operations and administration. He later assumed command of the Eighth Army in Korea in 1953. Taylor’s period in command, like that of his immediate predecessor, Gen. James Van Fleet, was marked by active defensive measures to preserve lives during ongoing peace negotiations. His tour of duty as commander in Korea included the unenviable tasks of implementing the terms of the June 1953 armistice, phasing out American forces and equipment, expanding the army of the Republic of Korea (ROK), and fostering American relationships with South Korean leaders to rebuild the county’s economy, as he had done in Berlin.¹⁵

While developing the ROK Army, Taylor experimented with an organizational structure he would later implement in the US Army. “I was convinced that our American triangular divisions, based on three large infantry regiments, was outmoded and regretted that it was being perpetuated in the new ROK Army,” he wrote. In a study of the issue, X Corps commander Maj. Gen. Rueben Jenkins noted that infantry regiments had become too overburdened with administrative tasks and assets and proposed pooling resources at the division level while increasing firepower at the battalion level. Taylor proposed testing this within an ROK army division that included a headquarters with five subordinate maneuver elements rather than three. These streamlined battle groups were designed to operate dispersed yet assemble swiftly—as Taylor learned his airborne division could do in World War II. Ultimately, the South Koreans dismissed his experiment and opted to maintain a triangular structure. Taylor nonetheless remained a steadfast proponent of organizational change to best protect the force on the atomic battlefield. At posts around the world during the Truman administration, the three primary officers of the airborne mafia served in critical assignments in which they learned the value of allies but, most importantly, tinkered with tactical concepts that would come to undergird their strategic way of thinking as three- and four-star generals in Washington.¹⁶

“New Look” Insurgency in the Eisenhower Era

By 1954, each member of the airborne mafia had ascended to critical positions within the army. Ridgway was chief of staff, Taylor was in command of the Eighth Army in Korea, and Gavin was deputy chief of staff for plans and research. When Dwight D. Eisenhower assumed office in January 1953, he promised to take a “new look” at American national security strategy and find ways to reduce spending while continuing to contain the Soviet Union. By 1955, the air force budget was almost twice that of the army and remained so throughout the 1950s. Despite shepherding funds into the air force, the Eisenhower administration reduced defense expenditures by $6.1 billion from 1954 to 1956 while the air force grew by sixteen wings. Air force–delivered nuclear payloads were critical to Eisenhower’s defense plans. Therefore, his administration viewed anything short of massive nuclear war—particularly limited local wars—as the responsibility of local actors and allies. Mutual security, alliances, and covert operations were thus paramount to American retrenchment behind atomic weapons, leaving little role for the army’s large conventional formations. The air force and, to a lesser extent, the navy emphasized technology at the expense of large numbers of personnel. The army struggled to ensure its institutional survival amid a shifting international security environment and a fluctuating political environment. The creation of atomic weapons and strategic air power raised questions about whether ground forces were still essential and, if so, what their role should be.¹⁷

Eisenhower held a much broader view of war and military force than is often recognized. Branding him as a single-minded purveyor of atomic weapons is an oversimplification. The so-called New Look attempted to reduce spending through collective security, covert action, and broad propaganda efforts to showcase American supremacy as an economic and democratic system. This psychological warfare was accomplished through consistent messaging by the US Information Agency, the Atoms for Peace program, and the Open Skies Treaty. The latter two demonstrated America’s willingness to cooperate, while the Atoms for Peace program sold the world on the peaceful application of nuclear technology. The army and the airborne mafia, however, articulated the Eisenhower administration’s strategy in oversimplified terms explicitly to advocate its ideas for strategy and to argue for its institutional survival. They did so by suggesting that Eisenhower’s grand strategy left the world vulnerable and that the army needed to fill a vital role through a more flexible approach.¹⁸

Meanwhile, the airborne mafia and armor officers developed competing conceptions of war. Tank commanders envisioned mechanized columns smashing through enemy armor, while the airborne viewed entire field armies flown deep into enemy rear areas and flanks. Neither would exist in total isolation, but the airborne view prevailed in the 1950s, primarily owing to lower costs for the army and because of the airborne mafia’s leadership roles. Ridgway’s experience in leading forces in two wars reinforced his belief in land power efficacy. He believed the army should maintain rapidly deployable, well-trained, and well-equipped units. The Korean War also showed him the limits of American power and the importance of ground forces. “In Korea,” he later wrote, “we learned that air and naval power cannot win a war.” He did not oppose airpower per se but rather the overemphasis on atomic bombing. As the New Look gutted army combat units, morale plunged, and leaders questioned their role. To Ridgway, the New Look’s willingness to annihilate civilians in atomic warfare was morally bankrupt. He openly challenged policies leaning in that direction.¹⁹

Despite close ties during World War II, Eisenhower and Ridgway clashed over national security strategy during Ridgway’s Pentagon tenure. Eisenhower entered office seeking to end the Korean War and curb spending. Through the New Look, the administration emphasized strategic bombing and continental air defense while deemphasizing ground forces, which had many leaders questioning the need for an army in a future war. To contain the Soviet Union without large, expensive conventional forces, the Eisenhower administration hoped to deter by the threat of nuclear weapons, supplemented by psychological operations, allies, and covert action. This approach emerged from Project Solarium, an exercise yielding proposals to contain communism without sparking general nuclear war—which Eisenhower saw as deterrable, given the immense risks. By threatening massive retaliation against aggression, the New Look compensated for military budget and manpower cuts with technology and nuclear primacy. These ideas clashed with Ridgway’s views on sustaining versatile, resilient forces ready for atomic and nonatomic warfare alike, setting the stage for persistent conflict between the two men despite warm past relations.²⁰

In his 1954 State of the Union address, Eisenhower denigrated the use of land forces in future war. He reiterated his position on nuclear weapons, stating that “the usefulness of these new weapons creates new relationships between men and materials. These new relationships permit economies in the use of men as we build forces suited to our situation in the world today… . The airpower of our Navy and air force is receiving heavy emphasis.” Eisenhower also thought that the role of the army in a general nuclear war would be to restore order in American cities. He did not believe sending forces overseas was feasible or worthwhile and questioned Ridgway’s intellect in implying that the general could not grasp the president’s thinking. The president’s message that the army would be relegated to inferior status infuriated Ridgway, who believed that the prospect of nuclear conflict meant that warfare would continue to require ground forces struggling to seize and defend terrain.²¹

Eisenhower had a much more holistic view of national defense. He presided over a robust system of allies and military aid, covert and psychological operations around the world, and understood that atomic weapons were not a panacea. Counterinsurgency was a focus during this time, particularly preventing Communist-inspired revolution. Much of the efforts during the Eisenhower administration were aimed at boosting internal security within friendly governments by providing money, arms, training, and advice. These military assistance programs also included funding for police forces and intelligence services in the 1954 Overseas Internal Security Program, which sent police officers to advise various friendly countries.²²

To the army, however, the New Look was about institutional survival. In his confirmation hearing, Ridgway reiterated his belief in civilian control over the military. Officers, however—including himself—were duty-bound to present honest views without regard to partisan strife. Despite his professional outlook, he feuded with the secretary of defense (and former General Motors CEO) Charles E. Wilson throughout his two years as army chief of staff. Ridgway felt that Wilson came in with “absolute ignorance of the situation” in the Defense Department. Wilson asserted that “for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa” and always tried to get the most “bang for the buck.” Ridgway felt that Wilson treated the senior service chiefs like “a bunch of recalcitrant labor workers” and worse than he himself had ever been treated. Ridgway and Wilson’s disagreements were evident to everyone in the Pentagon. Gen. Barksdale Hamlett said, “Wilson was out to get Ridgway; there is no doubt about it, and we knew it down on the staff.” Budget and manpower totals continued dropping, something Ridgway believed “would [so] weaken the army that it could no longer carry out its missions.” Ridgway further criticized the New Look’s overreliance on machinery. “Because of the increasing complexity of land warfare and the resultant greater battlefield demands,” he testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee in 1955, “the individual soldier, far from receding in importance, is emerging ever more clearly as the ultimate key to victory.” The army needed to be larger to fight and survive on the atomic battlefield.²³

Ridgway believed that undue reliance on massive retaliation would handicap the nation’s ability to defend itself or its allies against conventional and unconventional threats. His beliefs were validated during the encirclement of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. When the French government appealed to the United States for assistance, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, recommended a nuclear strike or massive conventional airstrikes. The proposed plan was known as Operation Vulture and called for large B-29 bomber raids, dropping fourteen hundred tons of ordnance and upward of three nuclear weapons on Viet Minh positions. Ridgway disagreed, seeing even conventional strikes as an escalatory step toward World War III. And that war would escalate to general nuclear war and become a conflict without a discernable political end state, something unacceptable to the astute Ridgway. The United States did not intervene, and the French garrison fell on May 7, 1954.²⁴

After the French surrender at Dien Bien Phu and the creation of two Vietnams, American thought turned to supplanting the French in the containment of communism in the region. To that end, the administration considered an invasion of Hanoi through Haiphong harbor. That movement would have included the seizure of Hainan Island—a Chinese-held territory that the navy determined critical to placing its ships into the Gulf of Tonkin. Ridgway ordered his chief of plans for the army staff, Gavin, to develop potential courses of action. Gavin and his team concluded that American involvement in a rugged country lacking critical infrastructure would be costly. Their report proposed invading North Vietnam with seven American divisions organized in two corps, alongside a coalition of allies from France, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and other “associated states” (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos). Gavin also surmised that any invasion would greatly benefit the Soviet bloc, weaken the United States’ abilities to defend Europe, and risk starting World War III. Such a war might cost the United States upward of $3.5 billion a year; and conflict in a roadless wilderness would entail a formidable engineering effort. The survey concluded that American intervention, besides its exorbitant cost, would allow “the Soviet Bloc to have succeeded in further dissipating US military power.”²⁵

Ridgway testified at a Senate hearing in May 1955 that downsizing US forces would alarm NATO allies. Yet as the army’s commitments grew, its manpower shrank to “economize” the force. In a precursor to the Kennedy administration’s “flexible response,” Ridgway advanced four main points: (1) reliance on the capacity for “instant, massive atomic retaliation” leaves the free world unprepared to resist local aggression—as in Korea and Indochina; (2) if the United States did not possess an army capable of countering local aggression, it would invite local aggression and guarantee its success; (3) a strong, mobile, atomic-equipped army was just as essential as strategic bombing to deter and, if necessary, defeat aggression; and finally, (4) that an atomic army needed more, not fewer, men. Despite his deep concern over the adequacy of his force, Ridgway remained steadfast in his conviction that the army would make do with what it had, telling the House Armed Services Committee in 1955, “You may have complete confidence, gentlemen, that to the limit of its resources, the Army will continue to carry out its tasks and perform its assigned missions with unswerving fidelity, skill, and determination.”²⁶

In June 1955, Ridgway retired after only two years as chief of staff because, as he maintained, he had reached mandatory retirement age. But his scathing testimony at the 1955 Senate hearings did him no favors. Eisenhower declined to nominate him for a second two-year stint— despite the desire of the secretary of the army, Robert T. Stevens, to keep him in that position. He was essentially forced out, as a president could no longer maintain an army chief with whom he argued so often. In one particularly heated argument, Eisenhower accused Ridgway of “talking through his hat” for not realizing the reality of restoring order after an all-out atomic attack. On his way out, Ridgway sent Secretary Wilson and the president a letter voicing his concerns. He wrote that as then constructed, American military forces were “inadequate in strength and improperly proportioned” to meet large and small threats. Ridgway further argued that the United States’ lead in nuclear capability failed to provide adequate bargaining power for the country’s myriad crises during the mid-1950s. He also pointed out a significant fallacy in massive retaliation: as the Soviet Union gained atomic parity, Russian conventional force superiority again became a more dangerous threat.²⁷

Gavin summed up Ridgway’s service as chief of staff well. “Somehow, despite Secretary Wilson and the Chairman of the JCS [Radford],” Gavin wrote, “he managed to hold together our Army and to continue to ready it for the nuclear-missile space age despite a shrinking budget.” Gavin noted that the budget was less of a problem than the “deception and duplicity of those with whom he had to work in the Department of Defense” during that era. Throughout a serial memoir published in the Saturday Evening Post that elicited comments from newspapers around the country, Ridgway continued to advocate for the army while explaining to a lay audience the fallacy of an overemphasis on air power and nuclear weapons. Ridgway’s principal concerns were keeping the army relevant and out of politically ambiguous wars, a mission he accomplished through the careful application of dissent.²⁸

Following command in Korea, Maxwell Taylor was nominated to succeed his former mentor, Ridgway, as the next army chief of staff. When President Eisenhower and Secretary of Defense Wilson interviewed him on February 24, 1955, they seemed more concerned with Taylor’s “willingness to accept and carry out the orders of civilian superiors” than with his strategic vision, reflecting their frustration with Ridgway’s resistance to their policies. Taylor did not believe that nuclear weapons were a credible deterrent alone, but he agreed with Eisenhower on the importance of alliances over unilateral actions, favored arming allied military forces, desired a more centralized Department of Defense, and understood the importance of NATO. His understanding of NATO helped make the case that Taylor was the right choice to succeed Ridgway in 1955. Secretary of the Army Stevens had initially wanted Gruenther. Still, Eisenhower thought Gruenther could not be spared from Europe amid German rearmament and the alliance’s various political, strategic, and diplomatic concerns.²⁹

Taylor was sworn in as chief of staff on June 30, 1955. His deputy was his personal choice, Williston Palmer, who worked closely with Taylor as the VII Corps artillery commander in Normandy and briefly as commander of the 82nd Airborne Division in 1950, despite never completing airborne school. Palmer had earlier commanded the Army Public Information School, and his expertise in public relations during an era when the army needed all the help it could get made him an intriguing choice. A 1955 memorandum summarized a meeting with the secretary of the army Wilbur Brucker, where Palmer admitted that the army was generally “rated last in comparison with the more glamorous Services” and that public opinion “forces them [Congress] to give priority to the Services which have a better grip on the public imagination. The Army needs to fight for its proper public opinion rating.” Palmer was an able vice chief whom Taylor trusted with “complete authority to make the decisions on what you could call routine matters” to free Taylor to focus on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and big-picture items.³⁰

Taylor was more critical of the Eisenhower administration’s New Look policies than Ridgway had been. In 1956, he issued a memorandum to every command in the army outlining official positions on big-ticket issues to ensure his talking points reverberated throughout the service. Taylor believed in the likelihood of US involvement in limited war and that the Department of Defense’s insistence on preparing for only general nuclear war was ill-suited to the realities of the modern world. He also understood that the army was in a minority position but endeavored to do what he could to fight for budget share. In a later statement to the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Taylor argued that the least likely type of war was “general war initiated by a Soviet surprise attack.” To Taylor, the Korean War represented “another cogent argument against the emerging doctrine of massive retaliation” because nuclear weapons would prove useless against an entrenched enemy with a minimal industrial base, and the United States should instead focus on building capabilities to fight across a full spectrum of possibilities. In Taylor’s estimation, a larger force structure was critical to deter and fight “local wars” around the globe.³¹

By 1956, the US Army’s intellectual center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, devoted around half of its officer education curriculum, about six hundred hours, to scenarios involving atomic warfare. Yet despite insistence from leaders like Generals Taylor and Gavin about the likelihood of unconventional conflicts, the army made little progress in reorienting toward counterguerrilla operations. The army rejected proposals in 1954 to create dedicated counterguerrilla units, believing conventional forces could handle such threats. With an army consumed by atomic reorganization, it seemed better to arm and train allies to themselves fight insurgents under America’s nuclear umbrella than commit US ground troops. However, in 1957, Taylor prodded the Command and General Staff College to draft plans to combat Communist insurgencies. Those plans called for providing threatened nations economic, financial, and technical aid to foster stability while building infrastructure to enable rapid US intervention. They also envisioned a force trained for counterguerrilla warfare and handling civil disturbances—the genesis of the Strategic Army Corps. This work recognized that defeating insurgencies required more than just military action, advocating an integrated approach to improve social and economic conditions.³²

After Taylor assumed the role of army chief of staff, Gavin continued serving in the Pentagon as chief of research and development, overseeing the split of those responsibilities from the G-3 (operations) office. In this capacity, Gavin believed the army needed new capabilities in four key areas: a modernized cavalry for battlefield mobility, tactical nuclear weapons, enhanced strategic mobility, and pushing forcefully into missiles and space to match Soviet advances. Gavin argued that America required flexible military options to address “cold wars, limited wars, covert or overt aggression, general wars without nuclear weapons, or total wars with every weapon imaginable.” He challenged the sufficiency of the threat of massive retaliation, noting that if the nation could not afford to fight limited wars, it could not afford to survive. Drawing on airborne units’ adaptability in World War II, the “airborne mafia” offered an alternative vision of national security centered on flexible, adaptable options available to presidents and commanders rather than reliance solely on nuclear weapons.³³

Taylor, for his part, understood that his job as chief of staff was to “make the best possible army out of the limited resources available to it, resources which I knew were dwindling.” He believed that the army, if it was to obtain its share of the defense budget, needed to demonstrate an ability to deter war and fight an atomic one. “Like all other elements of our national defense programs,” he said in an October 1955 speech, “the Army justified its existence primarily as a deterrent force to prevent wars.” Later, in January 1956, when assessing the army’s accomplishments during the previous year, he reiterated that its primary mission was to deter war, and its secondary mission was to win wars. To continue to do so required greater combat readiness “to deter the big war, but also the small war which may occur at any place about the world.” Preparing an army for deterrence and war along a spectrum, with the dwindling resources of the New Look, required a creative mind, which Taylor, with his background as a paratrooper leader and onetime West Point superintendent, definitely possessed.³⁴

A peculiar phenomenon occurred during Gavin’s tenure in the Pentagon. He often spent long days at the office, trying to work longer and harder while arguing more persistently than anyone else. His routine included Saturday “catch-up” sessions that grew into eighty to a hundred officers discussing policy and strategy in one of the Pentagon’s auditoriums. These officers—referred to as the “Coordination Group,” and unofficially sanctioned by Taylor—leaked information to the press and published dissenting opinions on national security. They were senior officers from around the Pentagon, usually colonels, frustrated with the Eisenhower administration’s policies on massive retaliation. This group served as an unofficial political-intellectual planning staff. They fought an internal policy war to promote an agenda that sought to revitalize the army’s roles and missions, using memorandums, articles, and leaks to other staff officers and sympathetic journalists.³⁵

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Radford, insisted on total support for his views and shunned the sort of healthy debate and dissenting ideas that make for a better strategy. This also was an era of deep paranoia about Communist influence in the halls of government, thanks to Senator Joseph McCarthy. In such an atmosphere, the activities of the Coordination Group incensed Radford and other officials. One particularly pointed article that angered the chairman appeared in the New York Times on July 13, 1956, exposing a Radford plan for a reduction of nearly one-third in service personnel. “To some,” Gavin said, “being against [the strategic primacy of] massive retaliation was seen as an attack against the Strategic Air Command and a possible sympathy for Communism.” Ridgway, before he retired, had also, like Taylor, tacitly approved what the Coordination Group was doing. In instances when the actions of a particular individual displeased the administration, and officials asked Taylor to do something about it, he would “fire” the offender. This usually happened through his secretary of the General Staff, William C. Westmoreland, and the offender would often be sent to cushy assignment somewhere else around the army. But Taylor never took the blame.³⁶

Later, Gavin’s multiple congressional testimonies drew the ire of many in the Eisenhower administration, including Admiral Radford, to the point that Gavin found himself virtually ostracized. Exposing the realities of atomic warfare was a matter of national security to Gavin, so when asked, he told the truth. He believed in providing tough, realistic advice to his superiors. In 1956, Senator Stuart M. Symington (D-MO) held a series of closed-door hearings probing Eisenhower’s defense policies. Symington was an ardent supporter of Ridgway and Gavin’s ideas, and provided a platform to air their dismay to Congress. When asked by Senator James H. Duff (R-PA) during the Symington airpower hearings on May 25, 1956, about the effect of nuclear weapons exploding in Russia, Gavin deferred to an air force study but admitted that because of fallout, nuclear war with the Soviet Union would result in “several hundred million deaths,” including allies in Japan or Western Europe, depending on wind direction. Congress had not realized just how devastating massive retaliation might be. When reports of that testimony surfaced in the New York Times, Gavin drew Radford’s wrath for what Gavin felt was telling the truth, and thus became the scapegoat for the army’s dissent.³⁷

Gavin grew frustrated with the political atmosphere in Washington. He considered his boss, Taylor, less than forthright, and when reports publicized Gavin’s testimony on nuclear war, Taylor never defended him. The two officers, so often linked, never got along. Gavin grew further disillusioned following a December 1957 hearing before the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee in which he testified that the Soviets beat the Americans in sending a satellite into space because the Joint Chiefs of Staff system did not function properly, with the service chiefs overburdened by serving as both leaders of their service and members of the Joint Chiefs. His testimony put him further at odds with the defense establishment. When Taylor informed Gavin on December 23, 1957, that he wanted to retain him in the Pentagon for another year, Gavin submitted his request for retirement within the hour. Gavin had wanted to go down to Fort Monroe in Virginia, assume leadership of Continental Army Command (CONARC), and do with sky cavalry what he had done with the airborne in the early 1940s, but to remain in the Pentagon at that point would have required him to betray his beliefs.³⁸

Gavin’s retirement played out on the front page of the New York Times in a series of articles from January 5 to April 1, 1958, the bulk coming in the second week of January. Remarking to Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Hanson Baldwin on his attitude toward Pentagon politics, Gavin said, “I was taught as a cadet that a soldier’s duty is to seek out danger. I did that in the war, and I was determined I was going to do it in Washington.” He was urged to reconsider, offered to lead forces in Europe or at CONARC, with a promotion to four stars, and was also asked about running for the US Senate in his home state of Pennsylvania. Ultimately, he remained steadfast in his decision, warning of another Korea-type war with an unprepared army, believing that he “had a choice of resigning, perjuring himself in testimony before Congress or being insubordinate.” His influence on national security policy, however, was only just beginning.³⁹

An Airborne Strategy for the Kennedy Era?

To deter Soviet aggression, the United States needed a flexible approach to national security, something that Ridgway, Taylor, and Gavin all argued while in uniform and in post-retirement books that offered scathing commentary on the New Look. Throughout his tenure as chief of staff, Taylor advocated for a more flexible strategy while loyally defending New Look budgets. Despite criticism, the Eisenhower administration did adjust course to provide more flexibility to meet national crises. American strategy after 1957 had begun to move toward more flexibility, as evidenced in the handling of the Beirut crisis in 1958 and the revised Basic National Security Policy of 1959—a clarification of existing policy. Nevertheless, opponents were convinced that it was not enough. So long as Eisenhower remained in office, his administration could not shake the impression among army officers that nuclear weapons would always take precedence.⁴⁰

Taylor emphasized that the country had to be prepared to fight any type of war, from a general nuclear war to limited conventional war and “brushfire” wars of local aggression. While he defended the adequacy of the 1957 budget, he also used his day in Congress to outline his vision for deterrence at the local and strategic levels and the need to provide adequate means to fight limited wars in what was the first public acknowledgment of his thinking on the future policy of what would be called flexible response. Doing so required a robust mobile strategic reserve capable of rapidly reinforcing deployed forces or acting as an expeditionary force moving to trouble spots to deter and defeat local aggression. Mobility was the crucial component of his ideas but was not something the army could provide. It would have to be a borrowed mobility that necessitated more air force cooperation. During his four-year tenure as chief of staff, Taylor instituted two reorganization programs to best use the army’s dwindling manpower while reasserting its importance in the New Look. He attempted to give the army atomic survivability and a new purpose in a dynamic international threat environment through his reforms.⁴¹

When John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, he did so in part by using the same rhetoric that Ridgway, Taylor, and Gavin had used throughout the 1950s. Kennedy asserted that the New Look had caused damage to US military preparedness, reducing America’s ability to influence the world. He campaigned hard on the purported “missile gap” as an attack on Eisenhower’s policies. In an August 14, 1958, speech in the Senate, he quoted directly from Gavin’s book that US “offensive and defensive capabilities will lag so far behind those of the Soviets as to place us in a position of great peril.” Later, in June 1960, he argued for flexible capabilities when he declared that “we must regain the ability to intervene effectively and swiftly in any limited war anywhere in the world—augmenting, modernizing, and providing increased mobility and versatility for the conventional forces and weapons of the Army and Marine Corps.” He likewise believed that nuclear retaliatory power alone was not enough. “In practice,” Kennedy wrote, “our nuclear retaliatory power … cannot deter Communist aggression which is too limited to justify atomic war.” Almost as soon as he entered office, his administration increased the defense budget by 15 percent and doubled the army’s strategic reserve.⁴²

After having waged insurgent resistance against Eisenhower, coping with the New Look, and facing massive retaliation in Washington, the airborne mafia believed the Kennedy administration’s flexible response strategy was the alternative policy they had in mind. Carrying out a strategy of flexible response required building capacity for all levels of conflict. The airborne mafia played a critical role in developing the theories of flexible response adopted by the Kennedy administration as its national strategy. Taylor was recruited by the Kennedy administration in 1961, first to investigate the Bay of Pigs debacle and later to study counterinsurgency and activities that “fall short of outright war.” He was brought back to active duty as “military representative of the president” upon completion of the Bay of Pigs investigation and was appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in October 1962, just in time for the Cuban Missile Crisis. He later served as the US ambassador to South Vietnam.⁴³

While some believed Taylor had campaign ties with Kennedy, only Gavin was known to have spent time with Kennedy before the election. Gavin provided the future president with a copy of Taylor’s book, recommended Taylor as an adviser, and pledged public and private support to the campaign and administration. Gavin maintained a cordial relationship with candidate Kennedy, talking at parties and even dining together. The general sent the candidate a steady stream of letters and suggestions relaying his ideas about the army, missiles, new weapons, defense, and foreign policy. Gavin responded quickly to Kennedy’s questions and was rewarded with the position of grand marshal for the new president’s inauguration, a position traditionally reserved for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Leading the parade in front of the Capitol was the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the regiment Gavin had led into Sicily and which planted the first American flag on French soil in 1944. Kennedy also had Bill Walton, a journalist who jumped from the same airplane as Gavin over Normandy, as deputy grand marshal. Gavin was subsequently rewarded for his service to the Kennedy campaign with the ambassadorship to France during the tumultuous presidency of Charles de Gaulle.⁴⁴

Kennedy and the airborne mafia understood the concept of what became known as “mutually assured destruction”: that two (in this case) “rational” superpowers possessing scores of nuclear weapons would not use them and condemn their societies and the world to destruction. For Kennedy, Gavin, and Taylor, missile power would instead provide a shield under which limited war would reign supreme. While the Kennedy administration continued to fund and emphasize the American nuclear arsenal, the president and his secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara, tried to place equal emphasis across the Department of Defense. Flexible response meant preparing to “react across the entire spectrum of possible challenge, for coping with anything from general atomic war to infiltrations and aggressions,” in order to maintain an environment for the United States and its allies to prosper. It meant maintaining a flexible posture—something airborne leaders were used to in World War II—but on a strategic scale. Nuclear weapons remained an option, only to be used “as late as possible but as early as necessary.” This represented a symmetrical approach to containing the Soviet Union, matching or countering the adversary’s strengths in an attempt to maintain an international balance of power.⁴⁵

The so-called missile gap continued to provide political ammunition to the Kennedy administration. Despite intelligence reports that the US enjoyed a missile advantage, Kennedy continued to increase and upgrade American strategic nuclear capabilities alongside his conventional force buildup. By mid-1964, the United States had doubled the number of Minuteman missiles the previous administration had ordered and added ten additional Polaris missile submarines. This constituted a 150 percent increase in nuclear weapons at that time. However, the administration also prioritized non-nuclear forces, and its policies tended toward decreasing the overall reliance on nuclear weapons to solve national problems. To this end it increased funding to the army, leaning heavily on many of Taylor and Gavin’s ideas—transmitted through personal relationships between Kennedy and the two generals— that the world had reached a nuclear stalemate and the country needed a variety of forces available for all levels of conflict.⁴⁶

Secretary of Defense McNamara concluded that the US defense structure—particularly in the army—left the United States vulnerable. The Berlin Crisis of 1961 only exacerbated these fears, pushing the administration to increase the number of conventional troops. As Taylor wrote, in extolling the inherently flexible nature of his service, “A B-52 bomber, an ICBM missile, or a Polaris submarine are good for use in general war and for little else. An Army division or a tactical air squadron has a use in any kind of war.” After the Berlin Crisis, McNamara increased the number of active divisions from eleven to sixteen while pushing modernization efforts in all corners of the army. This force level was what McNamara estimated was required to handle a major war in Europe or Asia and a second, minor crisis elsewhere in the world. Army equipment began to receive priority, and during the Kennedy administration the army saw the development and modernization of the UH-1 and CH-47 helicopters, the M-60 tank, the M-113 armored personnel carrier, as well as the M-14 rifle, M-60 machine gun, and M-79 grenade launcher for the individual soldier. But, as the president stated in 1962, “these forces must be equipped and provisioned so they are ready to fight a limited war for a protracted period of time anywhere in the world,” rather than just a general nuclear war.⁴⁷

For Kennedy, a flexible response made sense because, as Gavin and Taylor had predicted, Soviet subversion in the Third World increased. Small, limited brushfire wars of local aggression would become the norm, and according to Taylor, the country needed a “balance of effort without undue reliance on an immediate resort to nuclear weapons to arrest the initial phases of aggression.” Kennedy agreed. “Non-nuclear wars, and sub-limited or guerrilla warfare, have since 1945 constituted the most active and constant threat to Free World security… . Such conflicts do not justify and must not lead to a general attack,” Kennedy told Congress in his first message regarding the defense budget, in March 1961. “Subversion and guerrilla warfare must rest on local populations and forces.” He continued, “But given the great likelihood and seriousness of this threat, we must be prepared to make a substantial contribution in the form of strong, highly mobile forces trained in this type of warfare.” This speech suggested an emphasis on supporting allies with counterinsurgent forces throughout the world.⁴⁸

Crucial to carrying out the president’s vision of a well-rounded military strategy was the capability for counterinsurgency warfare. Kennedy came into office wanting to prioritize efforts to combat Communist insurgent influence worldwide but did not have many specific ideas. His administration sought to understand the rationale of Eisenhower administration programs and to reinvent them to better serve revised priorities. One of the ways it did so was to elevate counterinsurgency as a higher priority within the Cold War and to associate it intellectually with modernization theory. This proved important following Khrushchev’s promise in January 1961, just two weeks before Kennedy’s inauguration, to support “wars of national liberation.” On January 18, 1962, Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 124, establishing the Special Group (Counterinsurgency) and brought in Taylor to lead it.⁴⁹

The administration encouraged the Department of Defense to pour resources into Special Forces trained to understand irregular warfare’s political, social, and economic aspects. Mandatory courses on counterinsurgency at the various war colleges and within the State Department, coupled with discussions of Mao Zedong’s, Vo Nguyen Giap’s, and Che Guevara’s writings on guerrilla warfare, demonstrated the seriousness of administration efforts to focus on this sort of warfare. At Fort Leavenworth, instructional hours per student concerning the nuclear battlefield dropped from a high of 600 in the late 1950s to 53 in 1961 and 16 by 1966. Counterinsurgency-instruction hours there, meanwhile, ballooned from 35 to 222 between 1961 and 1969. Kennedy showed a personal interest in Special Forces training and equipment, including keeping a green beret—the symbol of the Special Forces—on his desk. During his administration, the number of Special Forces personnel at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, increased from fewer than a thousand to more than twelve thousand, and their training school now bears Kennedy’s name.⁵⁰

Late airborne convert Hamilton Howze chaired a Special Warfare Board in January 1962. That board evaluated and proposed the implementation of new instruction, doctrine, organizational structures, psychological operations, civic action (CA) capabilities, and specially designed individual and unit equipment, from uniforms to vehicles, aircraft, and radios. Howze also recommended assigning counterinsurgency as the focus for three divisions (including the 82nd and 101st). The board recommended a vast expansion of special warfare capabilities to meet the president and defense secretary’s wishes. Likewise, Brig. Gen. William P. Yarborough, the inventor of the jump wings, was instrumental in reimagining and repurposing Special Forces as the archetype instrument for guerrilla warfare. After taking command of the Army Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg in 1961, he immediately set out to “develop a new breed of man that could be sent out into the boondocks without supervision, who would continue to carry his nation’s objectives in his mind.” Like the visionary designers of the earliest parachute units, Special Forces leaders sought to build a new force comfortable in dispersed situations far from friendly support, in this case suitable to counterinsurgency.⁵¹

Likewise critical to Kennedy’s activist foreign policy approach were global programs to cultivate American soft power, including the Alliance for Progress in Latin America, the new Agency for International Development, and the Peace Corps. These followed the “modernization theory” aiming to develop the Global South in America’s image. The Alliance for Progress failed, largely owing to Walt Rostow’s faulty assumptions about economic aid outside Western Europe. The Peace Corps combined ideas from Walter Reuther, Hubert Humphrey, Gavin, and others on harnessing young Americans’ desire to make a difference. Reuther initially proposed the idea in 1950, and Gavin pitched it to candidate Kennedy in October 1960, providing a two-page memo one evening. Three days later, Kennedy used the idea in a speech. The name “Peace Corps,” which Gavin suggested to Kennedy, came from a brainstorming session. More than just an altruistic way to help poor nations and give idealistic Americans foreign cultural experience, the Peace Corps was viewed by Kennedy as another Cold War weapon. In its first twenty-five years, the Corps sent over one hundred thousand Americans to serve in forty-four countries. It counterbalanced foreign policy debacles like the Bay of Pigs, engendering worldwide support for American ideals.⁵²

“Flexible response” is necessarily a vague term; it assumes the necessity to act at all levels across a spectrum of warfare, a full range of available means to do so, and a response carefully calibrated to overall ends. While the Kennedy administration’s defense buildup and increase of armor and mechanized forces might have signaled waning influence for the airborne mafia, it instead reflected an increase of their influence in the strategic and political sphere. The airborne mafia played an instrumental role in resisting Eisenhower-era policies, but their collective vision of strategy took root in the early 1960s. Nevertheless, under flexible response, Kennedy and McNamara prepared the army primarily for ground warfare, ostensibly in Europe, and emphasizing armored and mechanized units.⁵³

The post–World War II moment was an awkward time to be a general officer in the United States Army. Airpower dominated strategy and the budget and left little room for the nation’s ground forces. Atomic weapons threatened to eradicate humanity. War, being a political instrument, must be prosecuted toward some end, and general nuclear war never provided such an end. The airborne mafia never accepted the idea of the wholesale destruction of humankind or even the threat of such a thing and instead remained steadfast in their determination that war existed on a spectrum and required flexible options, not least of which included a prepared ground force. To that end, army leaders, particularly the airborne mafia, focused on making “the best possible army out of the limited resources available,” just as they had done in the halcyon days of the airborne during World War II. Airborne officers began to see everything that flew over the combat zone as “airborne.” One airborne-officer-turned-helicopter-proponent, Col. John “Jack” Tolson, even proposed a new “Airborne Corps with an entirely different connotation attached to the word ‘Airborne’ as to that used in the past. All personnel in this Corps will spend their careers in the aviation, rocket, and guided missile fields”—effectively lumping two of the significant developments of the 1950s under one term: airborne.⁵⁴

The army during this period chose the paratrooper as its symbol of combat excellence, serving to exemplify its emphasis on the individual soldier. Such a choice, of course, was also the product of having the airborne mafia running every major facet of the army. Airborne operations accompanied most major exercises designed to test atomic warfare ideas. Two airborne divisions remained on active duty, and the number increased to three with Taylor’s 1955 reactivation of the 101st Airborne. Its reactivation meant that the proportion of airborne divisions became three out of nineteen total divisions—nearly three times the proportion of airborne forces at the end of World War II. The impact of airborne officers on the army was so profound during this period that earning jump wings was considered a critical step for getting one’s “card punched” on the way to the general officer ranks. This ought to come as no surprise, given that the three most influential army thinkers of this era were World War II airborne commanders.⁵⁵

By the end of the 1950s, the leaders of the airborne mafia—Ridgway, Taylor, and Gavin—had all retired, Taylor’s return notwithstanding. Still, their contributions, ideas, and actions had lasting consequences on army reorganization and civilian-military relations throughout subsequent administrations. The dissent of Ridgway, Taylor, and Gavin during the 1950s played a role in the Eisenhower administration’s adoption of a revised national security policy in 1959 that reflected growing concerns about flexibility in responding to multiple crises. This did not reflect Taylor’s vision, as he believed the current force structure was lacking but emphasized mutual security and a whole-of-government approach to meeting national security objectives. The rift between Eisenhower and army leadership also played a vital role in the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, which removed the service secretaries from the chain of command and further isolated each service chief from the president’s ear. By the time the less-experienced John F. Kennedy reached the Oval Office in 1961, the Department of Defense had virtually eliminated the service chiefs from their advisory roles.⁵⁶

The airborne mafia was influenced by the same reasoning they used to support army employment of modern missiles, rockets, and helicopters—their values, beliefs, and norms from shared experiences commanding airborne divisions in World War II. While they had shared experiences, the triumvirate did not always see eye to eye, especially Taylor and Gavin. David Halberstam describes one White House incident where the young President Kennedy was excited to let Gavin know that Taylor had arrived, and the irascible Gavin gave the president “the coldest look imaginable” when Kennedy mentioned his longtime rival.⁵⁷ Nevertheless, learning to solve problems with organizational change, remaining forward-thinking, and being prepared to innovate while maintaining an expeditionary mindset paid dividends as the three led the army during the 1950s. Outside of their resistance to Eisenhower-era policy, their most lasting impact came in the atomic army, tactical air mobility, and strategic reach.