Colonel Cathcart's bomb group

Colonel Cathcart's bomb group is the suffocating institutional container of Catch-22, a B-25 bomber group on the island of Pianosa whose operational purpose is subordinated entirely to the careerist ambitions of its commanding officer. It is the arena in which the novel's central conflict unfolds: the struggle of the individual, embodied by Yossarian, against a system that demands his life as the price of its own advancement.

Command and Structure

The group is commanded by Colonel Cathcart, a slick, insecure, and ambitious officer of thirty-six who "wanted to be a general" [E02026]. His second-in-command is Lieutenant Colonel Korn, a cynical and intelligent manipulator who devises the schemes Cathcart lacks the nerve to execute alone. The group's headquarters is an "enormous, windy, antiquated structure built of powdery red stone and banging plumbing" [E00359], behind which stands a skeet-shooting range built for the exclusive recreation of headquarters officers—a range General Dreedle later throws open to all combat personnel, a humiliation Cathcart never forgets. The group comprises four squadrons, each with its own commander, though the squadron leaders—Major Major Major Major, a reclusive and ineffectual figure, and Major -- de Coverley, a mysterious and awe-inspiring executive officer who spends his time pitching horseshoes and renting apartments in captured cities—exercise little real authority over the group's direction. The real power flows from Cathcart and Korn, who make all significant decisions, including the crucial one of how many missions the men must fly.

The Escalation of Missions

The defining feature of Colonel Cathcart's group is the relentless, arbitrary increase in the number of combat missions required to complete a tour of duty. This escalation is the engine of the plot and the source of Yossarian's desperation. The process begins when Cathcart assumes command: he immediately raises the requirement from twenty-five to thirty [E00550]. Each time Yossarian or another man approaches the current quota, Cathcart raises it again—to forty, forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, seventy, and finally eighty missions [E00586][E00600][E01761][E01766][E03439][E03808]. The increases are not driven by military necessity but by Cathcart's need to distinguish himself. As Colonel Korn explains, "the war was crawling with group commanders who were merely doing their duty, and it required just some sort of dramatic gesture like making his group fly more combat missions than any other bomber group to spotlight his unique qualities of leadership" [E02661]. The men are trapped: they cannot refuse to fly without being court-martialed, and they cannot complete their tours because the goalposts are constantly moved. This is the practical operation of Catch-22 within the group.

The Men and Their Fate

The group is populated by a cast of men whose fates are determined by Cathcart's ambition. Yossarian, the central protagonist, flies seventy-one missions before refusing to fly any more, a decision that triggers a crisis for Cathcart and Korn. Others are less fortunate. Clevinger disappears into a cloud on a routine mission, never to be seen again [E01149]. Nately is killed in a mid-air collision over Spezia [E03819]. Kid Sampson is sliced in half by a propeller while McWatt buzzes the beach [E03423]; McWatt, in his guilt, flies his plane into a mountain [E03438]. Hungry Joe, who has finished multiple tours only to have the quota raised each time, dies in his sleep with a cat on his face [E04511]. Dobbs, desperate and unstable, is killed in the same collision that takes Nately [E03819]. The group is a machine for producing casualties, and Cathcart's response to each death is to raise the missions again, as when he increases them to sixty-five after the deaths of Kid Sampson and McWatt [E03439], and to seventy after learning that Doc Daneeka has been killed (though Doc Daneeka is, in fact, still alive) [E03441]. The men who survive are hollowed out by fear and resentment, their morale deteriorating as they realize they are being sacrificed for their commander's glory.

Thematic Significance

Colonel Cathcart's bomb group is the novel's primary embodiment of institutional absurdity and the betrayal of the individual by the system. It is a microcosm of the larger war, which itself is a microcosm of a world in which power is exercised by the ambitious and unscrupulous over the powerless and the doomed. The group's logic is the logic of Catch-22: the men must fly because they are ordered to, and they are ordered to because Cathcart wants to be a general. The group's official record—its high number of missions—is a source of pride for its commanders and a death sentence for its men. As Yossarian tells Major Danby, "The country's not in danger any more, but I am" [E04626]. The group has become an end in itself, a self-perpetuating bureaucracy whose survival depends on the continued sacrifice of its members. It is this system, not the enemy, that Yossarian must ultimately escape.