`Jumping General' Of Ww Ii James M. Gavin Dies At 82

WASHINGTON - Retired Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin, the ``jumping general'' of airborne troops in World War II and an early critic of the Vietnam War, died yesterday, the Pentagon announced.

Spokesman Maj. Bill O'Connell said Gavin, 82, died at a nursing home in the Baltimore area. O'Connell had no details.

Gavin commanded the 82nd Airborne Division and jumped with the troops in several of its assaults. He held the two stars of a major general when he was 37.

Gavin served as ambassador to France under President John F. Kennedy and later was chairman of Arthur D. Little Co., the Cambridge, Mass., management consulting firm.

Gavin was head of research and development for the Army in 1958 when he retired at a relatively young 51, and he criticized the Eisenhower administration's ``more bang for the buck'' defense policy, which he believed placed dangerously excessive reliance on nuclear weapons and slighted conventional forces.

``I won't compromise my principles and I won't go along with the Pentagon system,'' Gavin said upon his retirement.

He was credited with being a major force behind the Pentagon decision to let the Army develop long-range missiles, a mission the Army later lost to the Air Force and Navy.

His criticism of current strategy was sympathetically received by the incoming Kennedy administration, and President Kennedy tapped him for service as ambassador to France in 1961-1962 and again in

1962-1963.

Returning from a 10-day trip to Vietnam in 1967, he told a lecture audience at Brandies University, ``We are in a tragedy.''

Gavin advocated a policy of seeking negotiations ``by every means available,'' arguing that concentration of attention on Vietnam distracted from the need to counter Soviet advances in the Middle East that could outflank the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The spectacle of such a distinguished general attacking the Lyndon Johnson administration's war policy stirred brief talk of a dark-horse candidacy for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination - talk that Gavin squelched with a message to a group of would-be supporters that their ``activities should cease'' on his behalf.

Gavin wrote several books, including ``Airborne Warfare,'' ``War and Peace in the Space Age'' and his memoirs, ``On to Berlin,'' published in 1978.

He is survived by his wife, the former Jean Emert; five daughters, Barbara Fauntleroy of New Canaan, Conn., Caroline Gavin of Weston, Conn., Patricia Gavin of Towson, Aileen Lewis of Baltimore and Chloe Beatty of Riverside, Conn.; nine grandchildren; and a great-grandson.