Introduction

An Airborne Culture

At 6:47 p.m. on September 19, 1994, the first of 113 American C-130 Hercules and C-141 Starlifter aircraft lifted off from the runway at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina. These airplanes were loaded with combat-equipped members of the 82nd Airborne Division en route to Haiti for Operation Uphold Democracy. The drop was to be the largest parachute drop since World War II. Except it never happened. The planes left with paratroopers ready to make a combat jump that night but were recalled seventy-three minutes into their flight—halfway to their drop zones. Former president Jimmy Carter and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell’s peace talks succeeded after Haitian general Raoul Cedras learned that the American paratroop invasion force was headed to the island. Carter later credited Haitian knowledge that the 82nd Airborne Division was on its way as critical to reaching a settlement. Cedras would not begin serious negotiations until he confirmed that the 82nd was in the air. The mere thought of thousands of parachutists descending from the clouds upon Haiti was enough for cooler heads to prevail, and the American ability to project overwhelming force helped prevent a bloody invasion.¹

Twenty-seven years later, 82nd Airborne Division commander Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue was the last American service member to step off Afghan soil. He was completing the latest quick-response mission asked of his division and embodied the expeditionary culture that evolved within airborne units in the United States since 1940. The division’s Immediate Response Force, including its division headquarters, was sent to Kabul to help assume control of airfield security as the situation deteriorated at Hamid Karzai International Airport during the largest noncombatant evacuation operation in American history. Nevertheless, when the green-hued night-vision image of Donahue stepping onto the last C-17 Globemaster III aircraft on August 31, 2021, went viral, he was reinforcing the culture of his division and the airborne: a culture of readiness and decentralization that evolved over more than eighty years to inspire ingenuity and initiative, where privates and major generals share hardship, and “leaders jump first and eat last.”²

This culture originated in the development of airborne units during the early stages of World War II, was reinforced by wartime experiences, and had an enormous impact on the Cold War US Army. Key leaders from airborne units controlled the army’s direction in the 1950s. Their ties to one another and the press brought rapid promotions and prominence as the service grasped for relevance in the air-atomic age. They dominated the strategic and tactical thinking of the army and made recommendations and changes based on their experiences with airborne warfare in World War II. The airborne mafia, as they would come to be called, then ushered in organizational changes centered on decentralization and mobility, helicopter-borne airmobile tactics, and a strategic response force that provided the army with a rapidly deployable force projection capability from within the United States. These key leaders did not always agree, yet their ideas—often divergent from one another—were the product of their shared understanding of military operations filtered through their wartime experience leading airborne units. This is the story of how one group of leaders created a subculture that permeated the entire army. Their rise to prominence allowed these officers and their subordinates to enact institutional changes that reflected their ideas about how to fight. The airborne mafia imbued the army with an air-minded expeditionary mindset that has impacted how the army has organized itself and fought into the twenty-first century.

The “airborne mafia” refers to the cadre of World War II airborne officers who took control of the US Army in the postwar years. These officers have been referred to by several nicknames, including “the parachute club,” “the airborne club,” but, most memorably, the airborne mafia. While the term “mafia” connotes an organized crime syndicate, in this case it refers to a group of like-minded people with a shared background who helped and protected one another, sometimes to the disadvantage of other groups. This group controlled the institutional direction of the US Army from the aftermath of Korea into the Vietnam War. This book centers on three leading officers: the airborne triumvirate of Matthew B. Ridgway, Maxwell D. Taylor, and James M. Gavin. It details their efforts in crafting a new way of fighting, leading airborne units in World War II, and their subsequent postwar careers diffusing their learned cultural behavior around the army. Operational behaviors and ideas that originated in the Second World War about the efficacy of small-unit tactics fueled the development of tactical mobility and contingency forces tailor-made to fight low-intensity Cold War conflicts. While these officers did not always agree, their postwar thinking was deeply influenced by their shared experiences leading airborne units in combat during the war.³ Soldiers from all army branches came together to form the airborne. This mixing of different specialties led the airborne units to develop a shared mindset and subculture. The airborne was unique in that all parachute units traced their origin back to the original test platoon formed in 1940. As the airborne expanded, the test platoon veterans became the core cadre of the first parachute battalion. Then, members of that battalion trained successive battalions, regiments, and divisions, thus passing on the airborne culture. This cadre system meant new airborne units emerged with the same norms, values, and attitudes as the test platoon where it all started.

Airborne units operated under several critical cultural tenets. First, an attitude of exceptionalism and unit pride facilitated self- and collective confidence vital for a group that experienced isolation as a normal battlefield condition. Second, flexibility, innovative thinking, and adaptability combined with a streamlined unit structure to create an expeditionary mindset and ability to respond to fluid battlefield scenarios at the tactical level. Innovative and adaptable minds were also required to solve complex problems, sometimes only discovered after committing airborne forces to combat. Third, an air-minded expeditionary approach fueled notions of vertical envelopment in all its conceptions—parachute, glider, assault transport, and helicopter. An expeditionary ethos, like that which emerged within the airborne, is an innovative and adaptable mindset that allows units to respond with minimal preparation time to a broad array of missions. It also involves streamlining unit structures and equipment for maximum air transportability.⁴ Finally, decentralization and individuality were crucial for a unit that must fight dispersed and maintain the initiative, often without high-command supervision. Trust in junior leaders was essential to overcoming the dispersion inherent in parachute operations in its burgeoning stage. These ideas were unique insofar as airborne soldiers saw the rest of the army as rule-bound and conventional. Taken together, these ideas formed the shared experiences that cemented relationships and established the unit cohesion that paid dividends in combat and beyond.

These cultural tenets arose from basic underlying assumptions about the nature of airborne warfare. Early airborne divisions contained significantly less organic—permanently assigned—ground transportation capability than other army divisions. They were explicitly designed to be more lightly equipped than standard infantry units. As units grew to regiment and division size, the assumption remained that they would operate without support assets enjoyed by regular infantry divisions—especially armor and other heavy weapons. Paratroopers also realized that massive dispersal would be expected and that they would find themselves fighting in small, ad hoc units with a minimum of formal leaders present. In the postwar environment, this culture manifested itself in the army’s confidence in operational reach and flexibility, battlefield decentralization, and overall air-mindedness. Paratroopers became a critical component of American strategic culture during the Cold War, as airborne leaders and the mystique surrounding their exploits during World War II helped change ideas and patterns of behavior within the national strategic community. But there was not a uniformity of thought; the airborne mafia consisted of strong personalities who often disagreed with one another. Yet the combination of their ideas, their prewar experiences, and the shared experience of airborne combat in World War II shaped how they saw the use of land warfare during the early Cold War.

As ostensibly elite units during World War II, the airborne collected the best personnel—volunteers who scored higher on entrance and physical examinations upon entering the army and who received extra pay for assuming the risk inherent in parachute operations. The airborne also benefited from higher-quality leaders, as dangerous parachute duty attracted some of the army’s best officers and offered them quicker promotions thanks to their elite status. This also included officers who might have ascended to the highest general officer ranks regardless of airborne service. Still, the glamour and postwar prestige that came with jump wings on their uniform helped propel them forward at an accelerated rate. This talent uptake led to many former paratroopers ascending to prominence in the postwar army. It is conceivable that these officers would have reached similar career heights even without their service in airborne units; nevertheless, airborne units became famous for their exploits throughout the war, and the postwar army had proportionally more airborne divisions than it had during the war. This propelled the airborne mindset to prominence in the army during the Cold War, and some leaders considered applying airborne ideas to the rest of the army.⁵

Maj. Gen. William C. Lee pioneered early airborne units, earning the title “father of the airborne,” but Ridgway emerged as the patriarch of the airborne mafia. Ridgway’s two key subordinates, Maxwell Taylor and James Gavin, served under him in the 82nd Airborne Division early on. Gavin later commanded the 82nd, while Taylor led the 101st Airborne in the war. Though these three men had differing personalities and leadership styles, all had formative shared experiences in the 82nd, forging bonds as the first airborne generals. The airborne mafia consisted of many beyond these top leaders. It included a broader network of officers they mentored, who embraced their vision for the army’s future based on airborne innovations and culture. One significant addition during the post-Korea years was Hamilton Howze, who brought the spirit of the old horse cavalry to fledgling air mobility projects in the mid-1950s.

That the airborne mafia came to run the army was far from preordained. Yet, as they ascended to the highest ranks of the army, they transmitted their culture in four significant ways. First, their comfort with ushering in progressive ideas about warfare and fighting behind enemy lines manifested itself in the changing notions of strategy and civil-military relations in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Second, an emphasis on decentralization and command of multiple units on a nebulous, noncontiguous battlefield influenced what would become the “pentomic” doctrine and unit design of the army for maneuvering on the hypothetical nuclear battlefield. The term “pentomic” referred to its five-sided design and atomic capability. Third, the development of the airmobile division borrowed heavily from airborne tactics and air-mindedness to provide the tactical battlefield mobility that airborne units lacked during World War II. Fourth, the advent of strategic response forces was the result of similar quick-response-force missions executed during the invasion of Italy and the reinforcement of Allied forces during the Ardennes counteroffensive of December 1944 and a simultaneous emphasis on the aerial delivery of combat power as experienced during World War II. The book explores how this distinct culture developed before the war, was forged in combat, and then influenced the Cold War army as airborne generals rose in rank. It is the story of how an innovative subculture changed the broader institution.⁶

The outlook and priorities of the airborne subculture significantly shaped military strategy and policy. While the airborne leaders each had his own views, these were grounded in the shared values forged fighting together in World War II. Many factors drove institutional change in the 1950s and ’60s—the Soviet threat, Allied forces, budget woes, and new technology. However, the airborne mafia imparted their values and beliefs widely across the army, giving national leaders new perspectives. They advocated ideas to fight so-called limited wars, like rapid-response intervention forces and units ready for limited nuclear combat. These ideas reflected their understanding of war on a spectrum. They bolstered the army’s case for increased funding amid debates about whether airpower or ground troops were more useful in future combat. The airborne mafia’s imprint on the army remains today. This subculture created lasting changes by stressing flexibility, decentralization, and delivering combat power by air. Its wartime experiences diffused widely, shaping the institution.

The United States is, of course, not the only great power to maintain airborne forces after World War II, and likewise not the only one to experience the dominating influence of elite paratroop officers. In the French army, the paratroop and Foreign Legion units that fought in Indochina and Algeria significantly impacted the French army and French civil-military relations. French paratroopers enjoyed near cultlike status, threatened a parachute drop on Paris, and are credited with orchestrating the coup that helped return Charles de Gaulle to office. French paratroopers pioneered the widespread use of helicopters and air mobility in Algeria. The Soviet airborne forces featured prominently in postwar planning, became a veritable separate service after World War II, and served as imperial storm troopers for the Soviet Union. Paratroopers enjoyed less institutional pull in the United Kingdom but remained prominent for force projection into former colonial holdings. While large-scale parachute assaults against determined enemy forces had reached their nadir in 1945, the romanticism of tough, well-trained, elite units prepared to jump behind enemy lines remained prominent in these four countries.⁷

Culture is the central organizing principle of this book. Culture is both the bedrock of military effectiveness and a critical concept for understanding change in military organizations. Organizational culture is shared assumptions, values, and beliefs that influence how people behave in the military, a service branch, a unit, and so on. Its impact on operations and, by proxy, effectiveness is inherent. It is a learned way of thinking about work and operating collectively to pursue group objectives. To analyze culture, one must examine its three components: artifacts, espoused values, and beliefs, as well as basic underlying assumptions.⁸

Artifacts are the most visible parts of a culture to evaluate—the visible and tangible phenomena. These include routines and rituals, celebrations, unique clothing, manners of address, doctrine, and the myths and stories an organization tells about itself. In the airborne, these included wearing jump wings and jump boots and using special cadences for marching and jogging. Values are the expressed, profound, normative convictions that determine which types of behavior the group desires. In World War II airborne units, values such as flexibility, initiative, and leadership were expressly sought within parachute units. Beliefs represent a group’s convictions about the world and its role in that world. In the airborne, beliefs include the conviction that well-trained, well-armed troopers can fight out of any situation, for example. Beliefs and norms arise from the basic underlying assumptions an organization develops and maintains—unconscious and taken-for-granted ideas generated and refined through shared learning. These can be uncovered and deciphered by analyzing patterns in organizational practices. This book deciphers those values, beliefs, and norms from airborne units that manifested themselves throughout the larger army organizational structure during the early Cold War.⁹

Cultures are formed through the influence of organizational founders, the learning experiences of group members as the organization grows, and the introduction of values, beliefs, and assumptions by new members and leaders. Personality plays as much a role as anything. In the airborne, the actions of leaders in the early stages of unit formation contributed immeasurably to forming ideas about group behavior. What a leader prioritizes sends clear signals about what is essential within an organization. How leaders formalize ceremonies, awards, and rituals also indicates what a leader seeks to encourage an organization to value. Leader influence is evident in the airborne, as values developed by early officers—especially in doctrine—eventually permeated the entire airborne community. Once a culture takes root, it often defines for future generations what sort of leadership should be deemed acceptable by group members. Nevertheless, the actions of leaders in every generation represent key artifacts of organizational culture and continue to be powerful tools for communicating values to members.¹⁰

Building a new culture also involves a group’s ability to “develop a shared concept of its ultimate survival problem” from its primary mission—its raison d’être. Culture often helps keep an organization together as it faces challenging situations. It represents a learned way of coping with stressors because the group learns a common framework of reference and interpretation for dealing with future challenges. Integrating new members into an organization is another challenge. Socialization through training, interaction, and observation is vital for communicating values, beliefs, and norms to new members. Messages transmitted to newcomers are essential to conveying the organization’s basic assumptions and values.¹¹

One of the natural evolutions of military history is to peel back the layers of broad military cultures to explore other cultures that lie beneath. Many historians have begun examining organizational culture, particularly how culture affects operations, including on the battlefield. Deciphering and understanding military cultures are paramount to understanding how and why battles turn the way they do, how wars are won or lost, the crafting of national strategy based on military capabilities, and resulting peacetime decisions military leaders make about institutional priorities and organizational change. Furthermore, examining the concept of a broad military culture represents an opportunity to study the amalgamation of subcultures within a large organizational structure. This begs for a more in-depth analysis of subcultures. It is unlikely for any sizable military organization to share a single set of norms and values. Services, branches, and even individual small units develop their ways of doing things based on their raison d’être that represent variations on the larger cultures in which they exist. These subcultures influence the larger culture as much as the larger military culture influences them in return.¹²

The airborne mafia do not represent the only large, selective organization in the military. The US Marine Corps offers an essential comparison for airborne organizations in the US Army. Culture is central to that service’s narrative—especially beyond battlefield performance and into peacetime. As with the airborne, a nostalgic view of World War II was pivotal in how the US Marine Corps viewed itself and maintained relevancy in the Cold War. Like the role of airborne school in training paratroopers regardless of branch, every marine completes an identical boot camp focused on infantry skills. Like the marines, the airborne mafia used their shared experiences in World War II to shape their service’s postwar organizational planning.¹³

The US Air Force’s competing bomber and fighter factions provide further comparison. Malcolm Gladwell has thrust the concept of military mafias to the fore in his popular history, The Bomber Mafia. Like the strategic bombing advocates of Gladwell’s story, the airborne mafia started as a small cadre of radical thinkers. Rather than believing in winning a war without ground forces, the airborne mafia insisted that the fusion of air and land power was critical to future warfare. Most works of military culture link cultural characteristics to wartime operational performance rather than look at how culture influences peacetime organizational changes. The Strategic Air Command (SAC) also offers an apt comparison, in which adherents to strategic bombardment doctrine grew to encompass a large subculture within the fledgling US Air Force and had an enormous role in that service’s development during its first decade and a half of existence. Throughout its existence, the bomber mafia has competed with a fighter mafia; this fighter subculture developed alongside the bomber subculture, steeped in nostalgia and mythologies from World War I. The fighter mafia had an essential impact on developing and procuring equipment in peacetime service during the late Cold War. This volume demonstrates the ability of a subculture, like the fighter mafia, to affect massive changes in its parent service by harnessing peacetime nostalgia for wartime exploits.¹⁴

The adventures of paratroopers in World War II are well known, and this book does not try to re-create every detail of every employment of airborne forces during the war. Instead, it connects wartime experience to postwar organizational changes. In that postwar peacetime army, as its leaders began to look ahead to the next war, the impact of the airborne mafia is truly evident. As armor and airborne advocates wrestled for control of the service’s identity and direction, both “claimed the mantle of the cavalry branch as the new warrior elite,” according to historian Brian Linn. This phenomenon was best exemplified in the development of airmobile doctrine. Armor and air cavalry factions emphasized shock, protection, and firepower, while air cavalry could boast the ability to achieve surprise and mass on the enemy through vertical envelopment. Armor officers tended to dismiss airborne and light infantry forces as support for mechanized forces, while airborne officers did the reverse. Neither the armor nor airborne visions of future war was sufficient, as lightly armed paratroopers need protection in high-intensity conflict.¹⁵

In addition to describing the cultural origins of the airborne and how this group effected massive changes in the Cold War army, including the direction of national strategic decision-making, this book has important lessons for today’s US Army. Thanks to the airborne mafia’s influence on creating airmobile units, every modern infantry battalion is supposed to be capable of using helicopters. This study also demonstrates the capability of subcultures to dominate a larger institutional culture. While the airborne dominated the first half of the Cold War into the early years of the Vietnam War, the changing of the guard from Gen. William C. Westmoreland to Gen. Creighton Abrams as US Army chief of staff in 1972 (Bruce Palmer’s one hundred days as service chief notwithstanding) represented a shift from an airborne- and infantry-dominated service to an armor-dominated service. Changes implemented in the post-Vietnam era to refocus army efforts on large-scale mechanized warfare in Europe represent that reality. Deterrence and planning to fight the Soviet army have constituted a significant portion of the army’s intellectual effort since 1945. The renewed focus in the 1970s placed a premium on armored forces at the expense of lighter formations. To a lesser degree, the influence of airborne officers helps explain why the army maintained lighter forces throughout the Cold War while its primary potential adversary was mechanizing its forces.