The Spirit Of

He launched his crusade for airpower almost eighty years ago. His ideas live on in the armed forces of today. The Spirit of Billy Mitchell By Walter J. Boyne N TODAY'S cynical world, the very At the height of his fame, when he Billy Mitchell, act of remembering a hero poses was tilting with the War Department the spiritual many problems. Invoking Billy Mitch- and the Navy Department with equal father of the Air Force, led the ell ' s name raises questions of rel- enthusiasm, the term "Mitchellism" evance, accuracy, and purpose. Can was coined by the press to symbol- fight for airpower after a man who began his crusade for ize the concept that airpower was World War I and airpower nearly eighty years ago, now the dominant military factor and was court- whose finest hour came seventy years that sea and land forces were becom- martialed for his ago, and who died in relative obscu- ing subordinate. In the intervening aggressive advocacy of the rity sixty years ago, have more than years, the correctness of his think- cause. symbolic meaning for us today? Is ing, the accuracy of his predictions, the symbol really accurate? Did the risks he took, the sacrifices he so Mitchell actually predict the future? willingly made of his health and his And, most fundamental, given the career, and, by far the most impor- passage of time and events and con- tant, the influence he had on his sidering the technological, economic, successors have conferred a new, social, and political revolutions that higher, and entirely contemporary have transpired since his heyday, meaning on "Mitchellism." can anything Mitchell did or said be Billy Mitchell's name conjures up useful for today's United States Air different and mostly stereotyped Force? images. For those with an interest in The answer to all of these ques- airpower, it brings to mind the vi- tions is a resounding "yes," for he sionary who sank battleships and paid molded what would become the US the price for defying the War De- Air Force in a thousand ways that partment. Unfortunately, for far too have been increasingly overlooked many, the name Billy Mitchell is and need to be remembered. Today, associated only with a grainy black- USAF is riding the fourth section of and-white movie showing Gary Coo- a multistage rocket that Billy Mitchell per fighting a court-martial. launched by the sheer force of his Brig. Gen. William L. Mitchell personality and the breadth of his deserves better than this. So great vision. was his impact on the Army Air Ser- 66 AIR FORCE Magazine / June 1996 .. ..;.,....,:40'. .4.-,....*''' AIR FORCE Magazine / June 1996 67 General Mitchell (center, with walking stick) poses with his staff in Koblenz, Germany, on January 15, 1919. His experi- ences during World War I crystallized his belief in airpower. Below, he walks through a Langley Field, Va., hangar with Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby. vice and its successor organizations John L. Mitchell, became a US sena- Washington, he felt the first attrac- that the effect is still being felt. Dur- tor and would quietly smooth the tion to aviation, seeing in it the fu- ing Mitchell' s meteoric military ca- way for his impetuous son's early ture for his country and, not inciden- reer, he charted new paths, set new military career. Commissioned as a tally, for himself. Paying for his own standards, and influenced key lead- second lieutenant at age eighteen, flying lessons, he learned to fly in ers for decades to come. Mitchell Billy Mitchell immediately got on four Sunday sessions at the Curtiss was twenty years ahead of his time the fast track by demonstrating his Flying School, Newport News, Va., when he put forth his detailed vision leadership and organizational skills in 1915. of a hazardous future. More impor- in the Philippines and Alaska. With- There have been disputes over his tant, he knew that airpower was the out a contracting officer' s warrant, ability as a flyer—for example, Maj. answer to overcoming the danger. he managed to spend $50,000 of US Gen. Benjamin D. Foulois always His impassioned campaign to tell government money to build a tele- contended that Mitchell was not a his story had a quadruple-barreled graph line across Alaska—on an au- "regular" Army flyer because he had impact on the modern Air Force, thorized budget of $5,000. The over- not been through an Army flying past, present, and future. run must not have hurt Mitchell; he school. (This was a somewhat ironic came back a captain at age twenty- point for Foulois to make, given that Mitchell and the Past three, the youngest in the Army. he had taught himself to fly by corre- Billy Mitchell was born into privi- At thirty-two, Mitchell became the sponding with the Wright brothers.) leged circumstances in Nice, France, youngest officer ever appointed to On the other hand, one of the great on December 29, 1879. His father, the Army General Staff. While in pioneer test pilots, the record-setting 68 AIR FORCE Magazine/ June 1996 Challenge to the Navy In the convulsive downsizing that followed World War I, Mitchell, who had achieved the grade of temporary brigadier general (a grade he would retain for all but ten months until April 1925), was one of the few of- ficers not reduced in rank, much to the distress of longtime rival Foulois, who reverted to being a major. Yet the War Department regarded Mitch- ell as a loose cannon and placed him under the supervision of a nonflyer, Maj. Gen. Charles T. Menoher, the new Director of the Air Service. It was at this point that Billy Mitchell set out on the path that would lead him to his greatest heights— and ultimately to his court-martial. Knowing he would never prevail over MB-2 bombers fly in formation over Atlantic coastal waters in exercises intended the stolid, conservative Army lead- to demonstrate the prowess of airplanes against battleships. Though fragile ers of the time, Mitchell went pub- by today's standards, the MB-2s could carry more than a ton of ordnance. lic. He soon became a national fig- ure as a witness at Congressional hearings. He expanded his audience Lt. Lester J. Maitland, stated un- the Saint-Mihiel offensive of Sep- with speeches and articles on his equivocally that Mitchell "could fly tember 1918 was chief of the Air new ideas about airpower. Already anything with wings and fly it well." Service, 1st Army, American Expe- in hot water with the Army, he next Mitchell's flying catapulted him to ditionary Forces. collided with the deep-water Navy prominence, and he became deputy Mitchell commanded 1,476 air- by saying that airplanes could sink chief of the Signal Corps Aviation craft and twenty balloons, assembled battleships. Section in 1916, with the rank of ma- from 101 American, British, French, The Navy's leadership ignored, jor. This was his ticket to the top. He and Italian squadrons, in the great- ridiculed, or attacked Mitchell, de- wangled his way to France as a mili- est air offensive of the war. The pending on the issue, but he finally tary observer in March 1917. When battle of Saint-Mihiel was itself a bit backed them into a corner with an the US declared war on Imperial Ger- of an anticlimax, as the Germans open challenge while testifying be- many the next month, he soon estab- were in the process of evacuating fore the House subcommittee on avia- lished himself as the premier US avia- the salient, but the air battle went as tion. Mitchell announced that "1,000 tion officer in France. He was promoted Mitchell had planned. bombardment airplanes can be built to lieutenant colonel in May and to colonel in August 1917 and received a rating as a Junior Military Aviator without the normal testing process. Fluent in French, unlike most of his colleagues, Billy Mitchell became what today would be called a master networker—cementing ties, obtaining resources, making friends, and pledging help that he could only hope to deliver. Hugh "Boom" Tren- chard, commander of the Royal Fly- ing Corps (later, first Marshal of the Royal Air Force), became his mentor. He could not have chosen better. Mitchell drew many ideas from Trenchard, especially the fundamental conclusion that airpower was pri- marily an instrument for offensive, not defensive, employment. Mitchell embraced Trenchard' s concepts on supremacy in the air and demon- Mitchell (arm raised) speaks with Gen. of the Armies John J. Pershing during strated them as chief of the Air Ser- an inspection of an MB-2. Mitchell's initial challenges to the Navy were met vice, 1st Brigade, and by the time of with ridicule, but he eventually got the chance to prove the might of airpower. AIR FORCE Magazine/ June 1996 69 German battleship, and she went down, to the horror of the assembled Navy brass. To add insult to injury, the seventh ship of Mitchell' s formation, a Handley Page, dropped its 2,000 pounder into the foam and bubbles rising from the sunken ship. Mitchell was vindicated, but it was the Navy itself that would benefit most from the tests, as they turned immediately to embrace the concept of aircraft carriers, which would dominate the naval war in the Pa- cific only twenty years later. Oddly enough, Mitchell's greatest contri- butions to the Air Service and its successor organizations, contribu- tions that echo today, were made in a far less spectacular fashion.

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