The Airborne Mafia
The Paratroopers
Who Shaped America’s
Cold War Army
Robert F. Williams, Cornell University Press, 2025, 288 pages
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Daniel Burland
The most efficient way to know what this book is about is to skip to its crystal-clear final sentence: “Airborne culture has become Army culture.”1 Robert F. Williams writes 190 pages of lucid, engaging prose to prove this thesis. The narrative he relates is underpinned by a solid grasp of relevant social science theory, a well-conceived and executed structure, and a masterful knowledge of airborne history, lore, and customs. Forty-two pages of notes and a twenty-one-page bibliography further reinforce this story, and the result is a tour de force. It is possible to read this book in a day or two, since Williams’s vivid and accessible writing style combined with his obvious passion for his subject matter make this a page-turner. Yet readers will also benefit from careful, repeated study of this work. Those interested in military history, in the outsized influence of elite subcultures, and in airborne culture in particular will certainly finish by reading this book in both ways.
In the introduction, Williams describes the group of post-World War II Army leaders that have been called “the airborne mafia” by other military historians because of their cooperation with one another and their outsized influence over the Army as a whole, particularly during the period between the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Williams also lays out his theoretical framework here; drawing on social science theory, he defines and describes airborne artifacts, values, beliefs, and culture. This background is not overly long, is easily understandable, and provides some useful concepts to a nonspecialist reader, but it is not essential to the book. Williams also uses this section to introduce his thesis that the airborne is a powerful subculture that has affected the entire Army.
In chapter 1, Williams documents how the particular subculture of the airborne was forged in the most practical way: by its unique mission and technology. Military parachuting was experimental and was first explored during the 1930s, an era of lean budgets and relatively few aviation assets. The aspirants were all volunteers from the outset, and paratroopers were selected from that already small group of volunteers. This meant that the first paratroopers were few in number and immediately set apart within the larger Army. These were men who were training to jump out of airplanes into combat in an era when the vast majority of Americans had never flown in an airplane. They were volunteers, they had passed a selection process, and their specialized training and special purpose made them further distinct.
In chapter 2, he discusses how the airborne forces of the U.S. Army made history and earned legendary status during World War II. Williams wisely disciplines himself not to detail every act of heroism, every sacrifice, and every triumph from this era. He acknowledges that this story has been told many times before, often exceptionally well. Instead, he emphasizes two steps in the development of airborne subculture during this period. In so doing, he shows again how the mission continued to shape the culture. For example, when paratroopers were scattered (rather than precisely placed) deep in enemy territory, they had to find each other, form ad hoc units, and continue the mission as “little groups of paratroopers” or “LGOPs.”2 Decentralized control, grit, and initiative thereby became a permanent part of airborne culture. In this same chapter, Williams introduces the three leaders he describes as “the airborne triumvirate”: James Gavin, Matthew Ridgway, and Maxwell Taylor.3 These are the three leaders who captured the essential elements of the subculture at its peak, distilled it, and eventually worked to put it to use in the larger army. While Williams does not use this term, what he describes is the phenomenon that the sociologist Michael Toth (building on the work of Max Weber) called the “routinization of charisma,” which is taking instances of exceptional, heroic, transformational leadership and making that type of leadership teachable, transferable, and dependable.4 Williams does an excellent job of showing how a heroic story told well can be used to shape doctrine and organizational realities for generations.
In chapter 3, World War II is over, and mass parachute jumps are already a thing of the past. It is well known that military parachuting had a brief lifespan as an effective technique of mass warfare. While the concept existed in the thirties, the technology did not exist yet to bring it to life. That technological base (reliable transports that had good cargo capacity and range, and that were simple enough to build on a massive scale) allowed the airborne military to exist and function as such. At first very effective (for the Germans especially), jumping into a combat zone had become suicidal by the end of the war because of the widespread adoption of radar and modern antiaircraft guns. This is a pivotal chapter in the book. Williams does not say this, but in the first two chapters, he is discussing primarily how the mission shaped the subculture (paratroopers were a certain way because they needed to be); from this chapter on, Williams discusses how the subculture shaped the mission (paratroopers chose to be the confident, brave, self-reliant soldiers that their World War II predecessors had had to be). After the war, in the face of budget cuts, the different branches had an autobiographical moment where they had to give an account for themselves. Army airborne units, already obsolete as such, offered war-winning, self-sacrificial warrior character as their self-justifying narrative.
In chapter 4, Williams writes about the Atomic Age peacetime reorganization of the Army. Williams shows how a subculture can cause “massive changes in its parent organization by harnessing peacetime nostalgia for wartime exploits.”5 The U.S. Army was forced to prove its continued relevance in a nuclear age. Maxwell Taylor proposed that the fighting portion of the Army be reorganized to become more decentralized, more air transportable, and, as a result, more lightly armed. A division would become a group of five reinforced battalions with very little artillery and no tanks. This “pentomic” (from “penta” meaning five, and “atomic”) organization would essentially convert the fighting power of the Army into something akin to the semiautonomous, ill-equipped, but motivated LGOPs that had fought in World War II. The Pentomic division was an effort to capture the essence of what paratroopers did right during World War II. A pentomic division is already divided into little groups, and it is not encumbered by heavy equipment. It is one logical answer to the question: How will U.S. ground forces fight on after a devastating nuclear attack? That answer was to reorganize the soldiers into small, survivable, decentralized groups and to make them air-transportable to facilitate reinforcement. It was a logical answer, and one clearly grounded in the legendary successes of paratroopers in World War II, but history shows that it was not the right answer, and the pentomic reorganization lasted only a few short years, from 1957 to 1963. Paratroopers in World War II were fragmented, decentralized, and underequipped because they had to be. Institutionalizing these deficits and imposing them on all infantry units does not turn soldiers automatically into paratroopers; it just denies artillery support and antitank capability to small, lightly equipped infantry battalions facing a potential invasion by Soviet armored forces still committed to the idea of blitzkrieg and still equipped for it. Sometimes logical answers do not work.
Chapter 5 describes a different idea born of the World War II airborne experience that worked right away and has lasted to the present day: the “airmobile” concept, now known as air assault. If the Pentomic division institutionalized the inherent weaknesses of World War II airborne forces and spread those weaknesses needlessly to “leg” infantry, the airmobile concept more successfully took the strengths of leg infantry (firepower, concentration of force, centralized command with decentralized execution, and tactical mobility) and added them to airborne forces. Helicopters can place units of soldiers in precise locations, provide immediate fire support, deliver 105 mm or 155 mm howitzers to the battlefield, enable medical evacuation, and accomplish resupply. They can also provide tactical mobility to soldiers after they have been delivered to the battlefield. In short, when used properly, they offer to a fighting force all the things that World War II paratroopers had lacked. Gavin argued for what he called “Sky Cavalry” in a 1954 article in Harper’s.6 Williams documents how Gavin and like-minded leaders successfully garnered support for this concept until it was turned into a reality. He further discusses the use of airmobile soldiers in Vietnam. This chapter is an example of an idea that took root and influenced the Army in a lasting way, an idea that was born out of airborne culture.
In chapter 6, Williams answers the question, Is the main purpose of paratroopers to jump out of airplanes or to be ready? With the endorsement and active support of the airborne mafia, the U.S. Army has decided on the latter. If the role of the mechanized and armored Army is to be unbreakable and unstoppable (tactical mobility), the role of the paratrooper is to be immediately deployable (strategic mobility). Williams discusses the evolution and institutionalization of airborne forces as a strategic reserve and a quick reaction force.
This book is well structured, well-researched, informative, and fair. If it has a main limitation, it is that the author is fully invested in airborne culture. The total focus on airborne history in chapter 5 does result in some neglect of other influential trends emerging during the same period. The airborne mafia is a powerful force for change in certain areas and also for an almost nostalgic resistance to change in other areas, but the Army is a complex organization made of many organizational parts; these myriad components draw on their own respective histories and evolve in their own directions. Williams does not give these competing (and complementary) narratives their due. For example, in the “Atomic Age” of the 1950s and early 1960s (post-Korea and pre-Vietnam), the military did indeed become lighter and more decentralized (“Pentomic” organization). That was one approach to a battlefield that included tactical nuclear weapons on both sides: convert the whole Army into small, flexible units modeled after LGOPs. Yet a portion of the Army also became heavier at this time. Artillerists know that the normal U.S. artillery piece evolved in this time into an armored, self-propelled, fully enclosed, self-contained weapon with an effective nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) system. An M114A1 towed artillery piece weighs 12,900 pounds; the atomic age M109 self-propelled 155 mm howitzer weighed 48,000 pounds in Vietnam (later versions weighed even more as the vehicle was upgraded).7 As we competed with our Soviet rivals, tanks were also equipped with their own NBC systems, and they had bigger guns and more armor. Some parts of the military were getting lighter, more flexible, and more decentralized, but the heavy part of the Army was getting heavier. Heavy and light are synergistic in the modern U.S. Army; they are light and heavy relative to each other, specialized and complementary. Williams’s depiction of the continuing influence of the airborne on the structure of the entire Army is incomplete without taking this synergistic balance into account.
Williams’s enthusiasm for airborne culture may have prevented him from giving the other important Army subcultures their due, but that flaw is also the strength of the book: Williams’s intense and exclusive focus on the “airborne mafia” allows him to go into great depth in just 190 pages. This book is worthy of reading and careful study. “Airborne culture has become Army culture” is a compelling and credible thesis. There have been many excellent books written on the airborne mystique, but most focus on the process of socialization, the heroic exploits, or the dangers and disadvantages of having a military unit set apart as elite. Williams’s unique contribution is to explain how the airborne mafia leveraged the legendary exploits of paratroopers during the Good War to shape the military of today. If we wonder why a career armor officer seeks airborne training and wings, we have a good answer in this book.
Notes 
- Robert F. Williams, The Airborne Mafia: The Paratroopers Who Shaped America’s Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2025), 190.
- Williams, The Airborne Mafia, xi.
- Williams, The Airborne Mafia, 3.
- Michael A. Toth, “Toward a Theory of the Routinization of Charisma,” Rocky Mountain Social Science Journal 9, no. 2 (April 1972): 93–98.
- Williams, The Airborne Mafia, 9.
- James M. Gavin, “Cavalry, and I Don’t Mean Horses,” Harper’s, April 1954, cited in Williams, The Airborne Mafia, 121.
- U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), Handbook for U.S. Forces in Vietnam (MACV, April 1967), 190.
Daniel Burland is an editor in the Department of Command and Leadership at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
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