Army & Navy – OPERATIONS: Airborne Army

Allied paratroopers and glidermen had given the greatest demonstration of the power of airborne attack in the invasion of France; never before had such masses been dropped into heavily defended enemy territory to fight with such effect. Last week the Allies moved a step further in the development of a tactical weapon that had been long neglected.

Announced by General Eisenhower was a new kind of command: an airborne army of close to 250,000 men. Presumably it would be used in the knockout blow against the Germans—who had first proved the devastating effects of air assault.

To command the new army “Ike” Eisenhower chose an airman; bright-eyed, 54-year-old, rakish Lieut. General Lewis Hyde Brereton, who had bossed the Ninth U.S. (Tactical) Air Force in its scourging campaign in France in support of Allied ground troops. Annapolis-trained Lewis Brereton had seen more of World War II than most U.S. generals. In the attack on the Philippines he had lost all but a fragment of his air force, had moved on to Java, then to India, where he organized the Tenth Air Force, then to the Middle East where he commanded the Ninth which made the first great raids on the Ploesti oilfields.

As an airborne commander, “Looey, dot dope,” as unorthodox, red-tape-hating General Brereton is called by old Army friends, was going to have more chance to try new tricks than an air force command had ever given him.

For his deputy, Eisenhower gave him one of airborne’s best: suave Lieut. General Frederick A. M. Browning, Britain’s topmost airborne man, small-arms expert and husband of Novelist Daphne (Rebecca) du Maurier. What the airborne army’s assignment would be was still something the Germans would like to know.

To succeed Brereton in command of the Ninth Air Force, Eisenhower released a top-flight air officer from his own staff. Close-mouthed Major General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, 45, veteran attack pilot.