Customer Reviews

Airborne: A Combat History of American Airborne Forces

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The author has done a great job of writing a definitive history of the U.S. military's airborne forces. A little slow in parts, the book is nonetheless a great book, detailing not just the tactical aspects of many of the drops but also discussing the personalities and the heroism of the paratroopers who served in WWII, Korea, Vietnam and beyond. The only thing I would have liked to have seen would have been a better division into the Asiatic and European theaters during WWII and perhaps more photos and illustrations. Nevertheless, a great book.

Airborne: A Combat History of American Airborne Forces by LTG (Retired) E. M. Flanagan Jr. Allow me to state my prejudices up front. I am a former United States Army office commissioned through the reserve officer training program (ROTC). I have my jump wings. For those who attended jump school at Fort Benning, I was A36 in class 37 - 76. I proudly wore my jump wings.

Airborne: A Combat History of American Airborne Forces by LTG Flanagan reminds me in some ways of a military after action report. It mentions people, equipment, backgrounds, TO & E and the never ending officer name, his West Point class year, his class standing if high or low, and if he currently had and in the future will have a historically significant assignment. Rarely is an ROTC and never a battlefield or OCS commissioned officer mentioned.

The use of Medal of Honor citations throughout the book is good, though it significantly declined after the chapter on the Korean War. The book covers the period of pre World War Two to the end of World War Two in painful detail. At some points the level of detail bogs down and even gets as boring as reading a TO & E.

The best written part of the book was the coverage of Operation Just Cause in Panama. It reads almost like a newspaper account of the operation. Unfortunately, the coverage given to this operation was not duplicated in other post World War Two events. The brevity of coverage from the period 1946 to the end of the 1990s is shocking.

I would be interested in knowing when the airborne troops were integrated. Who was the first African American to get his jump wings? Who was the first African American to make a combat jump? While LTG Flanagan did mention the XVIII Airborne Corps does have a limited number of women in it in non combatant positions, I would like to know when women first earned their jump wings and who was first. I know I had three females in my class at airborne school. Only token coverage was given to other branches of the service and Airborne qualified trooper.

The book needs updated to include the current Afghanistan and Iraq war. All in all, the book is a must read for those interested in US military history.

Airborne is an interesting book for those who served in the military and anyone else who has an interest or affinity for paratrooper operations. It reads fairly easily for a book that might also be classified as a "reference" work. However, it is spiced up with memoirs and first person accounts of veterans who lived the experiences. It is written with astonishing detail and at times reads like an action novel.

E.M. Flanagan has "street cred". He retired after 36 years in the Army with the rank of Lieutenant General. He is a proven and proficient writer with four other books in print that deal with specific airborne operations in the Pacific during World War II, where he commanded paratrooper formations. Airborne successfully assimilates the Pacific missions with the large-scale actions in Europe into a broad tapestry of interesting and compelling revelations of those elite units.

The book is well-sourced, fully indexed with helpful maps and even some photographs of airborne units in action within in its 452 pages. I relied heavily on this book for background research for my own World War II historical novel and was not disappointed. This book is truly a must read for anyone interested in the "nuts and bolts" of airborne training and operations and a description of all the major actions in World War II (all theatres), the occupation of Japan, the airborne actions in Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War.

John E. Nevola
Author of The Last Jump - A Novel of World War II