Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters

Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters is the intermediate command level that, in theory, determines the number of combat missions a crewman must fly to complete a tour of duty. In practice, its authority is repeatedly overridden by Colonel Cathcart, who raises the mission count on his own initiative, and its communications are filtered by ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, the mail clerk who decides which documents actually reach the generals. The headquarters thus becomes a remote and largely impotent bureaucracy, a source of official rules that are honored mainly in the breach.

Official Authority and Actual Impotence

Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters officially mandates forty missions as a completed tour. When Yossarian learns this from Doc Daneeka, he flies to visit ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen to confirm it. Wintergreen admits, "Forty missions is all you have to fly as far as Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters is concerned." Yet this official ceiling is meaningless, because Catch-22 requires Yossarian to obey Colonel Cathcart's order to fly fifty-five missions, even if that order contradicts the higher headquarters. As Doc Daneeka explains, "Even if the colonel were disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more missions, you'd still have to fly them, or you'd be guilty of disobeying an order of his. And then Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you." The headquarters thus provides no protection; its own regulation is turned into a trap.

The Mail Clerk as Gatekeeper

The real power at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters resides not with any general but with ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, the mail clerk. Wintergreen determines the outcome of the jurisdictional dispute between General Dreedle and General Peckem by throwing all communications from Peckem into the wastebasket, finding them "too prolix." Dreedle's less pretentious prose pleases Wintergreen and is sped along. When Colonel Cathcart impulsively recommends Major Major for promotion, Wintergreen scribbles a brusque, unsigned reminder that the Army has only one Major Major Major Major and will not lose him by promotion. The rejection stings Cathcart, who blames Major Major for this "black eye." Wintergreen also intercepts correspondence that might do Cathcart credit, distorting, destroying, or misdirecting it. The headquarters, in effect, is run by a disgruntled private first class who has been busted down repeatedly for insubordination.

The Generals' War

The headquarters is also the arena for the bureaucratic war between General Dreedle and General Peckem. Peckem, who has moved his headquarters to Rome, schemes to replace Dreedle by arguing that all combat units should be placed under the Special Service Corps. Dreedle, who runs a fighting outfit, regards Peckem's directives—such as requiring all tents to be pitched along parallel lines facing the Washington Monument—as "a lot of crap." The conflict is decided not by merit but by Wintergreen's wastebasket. When Peckem finally does replace Dreedle, his victory is immediately undercut by the promotion of Colonel Scheisskopf to lieutenant general, placing the parades-obsessed Scheisskopf in charge of all combat operations. The headquarters thus becomes a revolving door of incompetent commanders, each more absurd than the last.

Significance

Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters represents the novel's critique of institutional authority: it is a distant, inconsistent, and easily manipulated bureaucracy that provides no real oversight or protection. Its official rules are contradicted by local commanders, its communications are filtered by a mail clerk, and its generals are more concerned with internecine warfare than with the actual war. The headquarters is less a coherent command than a symbol of the absurdity of military hierarchy, where power is exercised not by those with formal rank but by those who control the flow of paper.