Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

3

See my book Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing (1995, Berkley Books) for a full description of the KC-135. 4 Howard Hughes’s eight-engined one-of-a-kind HK-1 Flying Boat, nicknamed the “Spruce Goose,” was larger, but it only flew one short test hop in Long Beach Harbor before being placed in storage.

4

See my Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (1996, Berkley Books) for a full description of the Navy’s amphibious lift and sealift forces.

5

See my Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (1996, Berkley Books) for a full description of the Navy’s amphibious lift and sealift forces.

6

The very first American jeep that arrived in England in 1942 was assigned to the British Army’s airborne training unit, to test the possibility of air-transporting it.

7

As this book is going to press, the last airborne armored unit in the U.S. Army, the 3/73rd Armored, assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, is scheduled to be disestablished on July 1st, 1997.

8

This actually happened to several Soviet airborne operations behind German lines on the Eastern Front during World War II.

9

This was the notorious Date of Return Stateside (DEROS) system, which only allowed one-year tours of duty in Vietnam.

10

The 10th Mountain is mainly a light infantry formation, though it does have some special mountain training for operations in high altitude and arctic environments.

11

See Marine. A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (Berkley Books, 1996) for a description of this exercise. 4 Admiral Johnson was assigned the job of Chief of Naval Operations following the suicide death of his predecessor, Admiral Mike Boorda, USN.

12

See my Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (1996, Berkley Books) for a full description of the Navy’s amphibious lift and sealift forces.

13

For more on the ethos of elite fighting, see my book Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (Berkley Books, 1996).

14

A former professor and Brigadier General in the North Carolina militia, J. J. Pettigrew lead his troops during Picket’s Charge at Gettysburg on July 3rd, 1863.

15

The Airborne troopers are famous for their running cadences, with tapes and CDs of their favorite chants being popular sellers at post exchanges around the world.

16

Known in civilian life as cream-chipped beef on toast, the military acronym translates loosely to “slop on a