Roger G. Miller

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Roger G. Miller

Office of Air Force History

Washington, D.C.

2004

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(Above) Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell personally led the attack on the Ostfriesland

from his pennant-marked De Havilland DH–4. (Courtesy U.S. Air Force

Museum)

(Below) The Ostfriesland sinking, July 21, 1921. Escaping air from the hull

seemed to some observers to be the sighs of a great beast dying. 
	






	


petrel \’pe- trel, pê-\ [alternate of earlier pitteral] : any of numerous seabirds; esp. :

one of the smaller long-wing birds that fly far from land — compare

STORM PETREL.

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary.

“He was known as the ‘Stormy Petrel of the Air’—petrel, a bird in flight. He was

that, and he soared with eagles . . . ”

James J. Cooke, Billy Mitchell, p. 287.

On July 21, 1921, Brig. Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell circled high above

the rough surface of the Chesapeake Bay, exultant witness to an event he had

orchestrated and produced. Shortly after noon, the mortally wounded, formerGerman battleship Ostfriesland began to roll, turning completely over while air

escaping from the huge hull gave sounds that some present interpreted as the

sighs of a great beast dying. By one o’clock it was over, and Ostfriesland had

slipped below the surface. It was not the sinking that was unique, however.

Modern battleships had sunk before. They had been lost in storms and split their

hulls on reefs and rocks. They had been hit by torpedoes, crushed by shell fire,

and even sunk by mines and scuttling charges. But no battleship had ever gone

to the bottom as the direct result of aerial bombs dropped from the fragile airplane, a new invention then barely eighteen years old. Disbelieving observers

aboard the nearby U.S.S. Henderson were shocked, appalled, and dismayed as the

Ostfriesland disappeared. Among the naval officers were some with tears in their

eyes. But for the outspoken, flamboyant Billy Mitchell it was fulfillment and

vindication. He had prophesied that aircraft could sink battleships; had fought

for the trials that had just taken place; and had selected, organized, and trained

the airmen who had accomplished their mission. Sinking the Ostfriesland was in

many ways the summit of his military career, and Billy was not about to let anyone ignore his victory. Command pennant streaming from his aircraft, Mitchell

paraded past the Henderson waving his wings, rubbing salt into a deep Navy

wound.

* * *

William Mitchell—he had no middle name—was born on December 29,

1879, into a wealthy and prominent Wisconsin family living at the time in Nice,

France. Prior to the Civil War, his grandfather, Alexander Mitchell, had established the Marine Fire and Insurance Company—a bank despite its name—and

expanded it into a respected Milwaukee business. And during the war, he built

and operated the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad. Alexander

Mitchell’s business acumen had made him and his family wealthy by the time the

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war ended. His son, John Ledlum Mitchell, however, proved more interested in

literature, languages, and travel, and would ultimately lose much of the family

fortune. John enlisted in the 24th Wisconsin infantry during the Civil War and

saw combat during several of the western campaigns. Following the war he traveled extensively, played a significant role in the Grand Army of the Republic, an

organization of Union veterans, and was elected to the U.S. House of

Representatives and later the Senate.

Billy grew up in Milwaukee, but his parents, especially his father, were often

absent. Billy liked the outdoors. He hunted and fished and, especially, loved

horses and horsemanship, an affection he would never lose. He was popular and

charming, and as a youngster assimilated many of the characteristics that had

made his grandfather successful, including self-confidence, drive, ambition,

courage, competitiveness, and a certain ruthlessness common to nineteenth-century captains of industry. Though intelligent, Billy was not particularly studious.

He received private tutoring at home and spent several years at Racine College

of Wisconsin, an Episcopalian preparatory school. Tired of the strict discipline

at Racine, however, he transferred in 1895 to Columbian Preparatory, later

George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., where his parents resided

while his father was in the Senate. 

In April 1898, the United States declared war on Spain. Adventure called

and eighteen-year- old Mitchell promptly abandoned his studies and enlisted as

a private in the 1st Wisconsin infantry. It took Senator Mitchell a few days to

catch up with his son, but within three weeks his influence was felt and the Army

commissioned Mitchell as a second lieutenant in a volunteer signal company.

Such influence would prove important to Billy, who actively cultivated individuals like Senator William Jennings Bryan, then serving with the volunteers, and

Maj. Gen. Adolphus Greely, the Chief Signal Officer. Mitchell demonstrated

considerable flair for soldiering from the first. He displayed energy and initiative

and enjoyed the opportunity to lead small units. He suffered discomfort and

hardship without complaint, and his skill with horses and guns impressed professional soldiers. Unfortunately for Billy, however, Spain sued for peace before

his unit could get out of Florida. Mitchell then used his father’s leverage to join

the occupation force in Cuba, which he reached in December 1898. He spent

much of the next few months stringing miles of telegraph wire throughout

Santiago Province. Mitchell liked the work, enjoyed the life, and began consider

the military as a career. As an accomplished horseman, he preferred the cavalry,

but the Signal Corps offered him the higher rank of first lieutenant. Despite

opposition from his parents—as members of the upper class, they regarded the

military as beneath their son—Mitchell accepted the Signal Corps offer.

It proved a wise choice by Mitchell and a good one for by the U.S. Army;

Mitchell proved himself an excellent officer. His first assignment, to the

Philippines in October 1899, coincided with the beginning of a two-year campaign against Emilio Aguinaldo. Mitchell earned considerable distinction and

warm praise during the campaign, reinforcing his personal belief that he could

succeed in the military. On the other hand, recognition that his element was ser2
vice in the field with troops, not stagnation in a peacetime garrison, made him

cautious about committing to a career. Billy’s next assignments made all the difference. In the summer of 1901, General Greeley ordered him to Alaska to survey routes for a communications system across the territory. Mitchell spent two

years leading small teams that erected over 500 miles of telegraph lines. The

work in heavy snow and arctic conditions was brutal, but Mitchell thrived. This

experience with individual responsibility and his unqualified success was critical. First, he gained tremendous confidence in his ability to accomplish major

projects, a confidence reinforced by his belief in the natural superiority of his

class. Second, and perhaps more important, instead of regimental duty under

close supervision and the necessity of working in harness with other officers of

equal rank—the rough-and-tumble “school of the soldier”—Mitchell’s experience was largely that of an independent commander operating on his own with

little supervision.

In November 1903, General Greely sent newly promoted Captain Mitchell

to the intellectual center of the army, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, where Billy came

into contact with military aviation for the first time. Lighter-than-air craft, balloons and dirigibles, were a new technology with which Signal Corps officers

had to be familiar. In 1906, Mitchell published a paper on “The Signal Corps

with Divisional Cavalry and Notes on Wireless Telegraphy, Searchlights and

Military Ballooning.” Mostly, this was a standard description of Signal Corps

activities and equipment, but the inclusion of ballooning was significant. Young

Signal Corps officers of the time had to study these new technologies, and the

military potential of balloons and dirigibles in reconnaissance, transportation,

and even strategic operations was just emerging. In his paper, Mitchell concluded that “conflicts, no doubt, will be carried on in the future in the air, on the surface of the earth and water, and under the earth and water.” These words were the

first expression of ideas he would later apply to heavier-than-air craft.

Subsequently, Mitchell attended the School of the Line in 1907 and was one

of twenty “distinguished graduates” of the Army Staff College in 1909. He

returned to the Philippines, where he spent two more years and carried out an

undercover reconnaissance of the islands between that territory and the

Japanese-controlled Formosa, to the north. He also toured the battlefields of the

Russo-Japanese War and studied the Chinese, Russian, and Japanese armies,

reporting what he learned to the U.S. Army War College after his return home.

His central message, not unique to him, was that war with Japan was inevitable

and that, consequently, the Philippines were in great danger.

In March 1912, Mitchell was one of twenty-one officers selected to serve on

the General Staff of the U.S. Army. The General Staff was comparatively new;

one of the reforms implemented by Secretary of War Elihu Root following the

Army’s miserable performance during the Spanish-American War. Appointment

to it was a signal honor, especially, for Billy because he was selected for merit,

not through influence. By the time he reported to Washington, D.C., in February

1913, Mitchell had established a reputation as a brilliant, dynamic, articulate,

and charismatic officer. A handsome patrician, he had married into a socially

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prominent family, played expert polo, entertained lavishly, and was equally at

home with soldiers in the field and elites in high society. Along with his engaging personality, came a zeal for distinction, preference for combat service, and

an honest desire to serve his country. The Army had added to these a worldwide

view, trained him to think in terms of mass warfare, hardened him in guerrilla

combat, and taught him an appreciation for rapid technical advances.

* * *

While serving on the General Staff in Washington, D.C., Billy Mitchell

finally became fully aware of the airplane. In 1913, Army aviation came under

the Signal Corps, and as the only Signal Corps officer assigned to the General

Staff it was inevitable that he would brush elbows with the subject. The first

encounter came quickly. In 1913, flyers in the Aeronautical Division convinced

some members of Congress that better progress in military aviation could be

made if aviation was independent of the Signal Corps. In August, Mitchell testified against the proposed legislation before the House Military Affairs

Committee. The offensive ability of the airplane had yet to be proven, he told

committee members. The airplane was effective in its role of observation and

thus must remain as an integral part of the Signal Corps communication system.

Although Mitchell’s comments showed a lack of personal interest in the subject at the time, he did have professional curiosity. He had met one of the Army’s

earliest pilots, Lt. Henry H. Arnold, whom he had pumped for information, and

the two became close friends. But aviation was not for him. As he told Congress,

flying was a young man’s game, and no one married or older than thirty should

be an airman. Mitchell was both. The subject that really fascinated him, and most

officers of the General Staff, was the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914.

Mitchell quickly sought assignment to Europe as an observer. Historians have

written that President Woodrow Wilson’s opposition to American participation in

an European War kept Billy in Washington, but in fact, Signal Corps Maj.

George O. Squier, military attaché in London for the first two years of the war,

showed considerable interest in the progress of aviation, observed developments

in France and Britain as closely as possible, and forwarded frequent reports to

the War Department. No need existed for an additional observer. Mitchell read

Squier’s reports, though he continued to show limited interest in aviation.

During 1915, however, in response to one of President Wilson’s requests for

proposals on preparedness, the War Department produced one of the earliest

comprehensive statements on U.S. military aviation. The unsigned report, an

excellent statement on aviation thought at the time, identified Army support as

the primary role of military aviation under the Signal Corps. Aviation was a “particularly valuable adjunct to the Army” and a second line of defense of the nation

if the first line of defense, the U.S. Navy, failed. Airplanes should be attached to

harbor and coastal defenses for use in observation and to prevent enemy reconnaissance. They could enhance the accuracy of coastal artillery, destroy enemy

aircraft, and attack the enemy’s smaller surface forces. As noted, this was an

unsigned report, but at least one of Mitchell’s biographers has concluded that he

was the author. 

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In 1916, Mitchell took a more direct role in aviation when serious problems

erupted at the Signal Corps Aviation School in San Diego between Army aviators and their non-flying superiors. During the ensuing uproar, on May 5, 1916,

the War Department relieved the head of the Aviation Section in Washington,

Col. Samuel Reber. Newly-promoted Major Mitchell became temporary head of

the Aviation Section pending the arrival of Colonel Squier from England to

replace Reber. Subsequently, in June 1916, Mitchell became Squier’s permanent

assistant in the Aviation Section. Billy responded by becoming a serious student

of military aviation, beginning by learning to fly at his own expense. In the fall

of 1916, he began instruction at the Glenn Curtiss Aviation School in Newport

News, Virginia. The price was hefty. Fifteen hours instruction and thirty-six

flights taught him the rudiments of piloting at a cost of $1,470. Mitchell tended

to be erratic, flying well one day and less competently on others, and civilian

instruction did not entitle him to wear the Junior Military Aviator badge of an

Army pilot. Only in France in September 1917, after considerable informal

instruction from French pilots, did he finally earn the rating. But there was one

immediate reward for his effort to learn to fly. In January 1917, the War

Department decided to send another aviation observer to Europe; Squier nominated Mitchell, whose staff experience and flying training made him a logical

candidate. Billy Mitchell was off to war.

* * *

Mitchell left for France on March 19, 1917, at a time when GermanAmerican relations were deteriorating rapidly under the pressure of a renewed Uboat assault on neutral shipping and publication of the Zimmerman telegram, in

which Germany promised Mexico restoration of much of the American

Southwest if it would fight on Germany’s side. He was on his way to Paris on

April 2, 1917, when President Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war,

and reached that city on April 10. As a scion of wealth and political power,

Mitchell—who spoke fluent French—fit well in French political and social life,

and, as a representative of the General Staff, he was a dynamic symbol of the

New World coming to the aid of the Old. He quickly seized the opportunity,

establishing an American aviation office in Paris, touring the front lines, and

hobnobbing with high-level Allied leaders. And he flooded the War Department

with recommendations, most of which were ignored by a staff overwhelmed by

the demands of a world war it was ill prepared to manage.

The French facilitated Mitchell at every turn, providing him with an airplane

and pilot and unprecedented access to every part of the front. Despite his personal feelings for the French, however, Mitchell quickly found the British

approach to the airplane more to his taste. For one thing, the French Nivelle

offensive in April 1917, witnessed by Mitchell, was a catastrophic disaster that

led to the near collapse of the French army. Prior to the offensive, the French had

concentrated their pursuit and bombers in a unified aviation de combat under

army group command for increased flexibility and enabling it to mass against

targets. In the aftermath of the attack, the aviation de combat was broken up and

the aircraft parceled out to lower echelon units spreading them across the front.

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In contrast, Mitchell visited the British army in May where, despite serious losses, the emphasis was on the spirit of the offensive. In almost every way, he

judged British attitude and methods superior to the French.

Above all, the French had no one of the stature and presence of Maj. Gen.

Hugh Trenchard. It is important to note that Mitchell was not an original thinker.

His talent lay in identifying and publicizing ideas and concepts. “Boom”

Trenchard, likewise a practical leader rather than theorist, had seen that the airplane was inherently an offensive weapon and imbued the Royal Flying Corps

(RFC) with that spirit despite terrible losses. The offensive was his trademark.

Later, in November 1917, he advocated long distance bombing as one of the

RFC’s missions, and he repeated his call for a strategic bombing campaign in

June 1918 after creation of the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an independent force

in April of that year. But Trenchard was also intensely practical. He never lost his

awareness of British industry’s difficulty in keeping up with demands on the

Western Front and refused to deprive combat units of aircraft by concentrating

construction on one type of machine. Further, early in the war he perceived that

ground forces were paramount, and he refused to advocate air operations separate from the British Expeditionary Force. Finally, he recognized the limitations

on bombers in range, payload, and numbers that made a real strategic campaign

impossible at the time. Trenchard and Mitchell hit it off during their first meeting, and it is impossible to underestimate his influence on Billy. 

In July 1917, Gen. John J. “Black Jack” Pershing and the nucleus of which

would become the large, complex headquarters staff of the American

Expeditionary Forces (AEF) reached France. Pershing’s air officer was Maj.

Townsend Dodd, an experienced veteran of the 1st Aero Squadron and Pershing’s

Punitive Expedition in Mexico in 1916. After its arrival in France, AEF headquarters absorbed Mitchell’s small air office, and on June 30 Mitchell, since he

outranked Dodd, became the chief air officer for what would become the Air

Service, AEF. It is also interesting and important to note that during the Punitive

Expedition, Pershing had separated his aviation unit, the 1st Aero Squadron,

from its parent organization, the Signal Corps, and had it report directly to his

headquarters. He now made the decision to do the same within the AEF in

France, a significant change. The Air Service, AEF became a service independent of the Signal Corps in France many months before it achieved the same status in the United States.

During World War I, Pershing was assigned one of the most difficult jobs

attempted by any American military leader during the Twentieth Century; the

creation of a huge U.S. Army in a distant country while short of almost every

resource required and heavily dependent upon the principle Allied nations,

France and England, who had their own plans to “amalgamate” the fresh

American troops into their own armies. Pershing was committed to creating an

independent U.S. Army, and one of his greatest difficulties was establishing a

modern organization and identifying, selecting, and training the thousands of

officers required to lead his force in combat. Pershing was thus immersed in the

complex, almost impossible process of evaluating and passing judgment on lit6
erally every officer arriving in France, winnowing out those who could not perform and trying to find the best position for those who could. It remains unclear

exactly where Mitchell stood in Pershing’s estimation during the summer and fall

of 1917. It appears likely that Pershing saw him as distinctly promising, but that

he was also aware of Billy’s tendency to act independently, outside the AEF staff.

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(Top) Mitchell in France, in the front seat of his French-built Spad XVI. He

often flew over the Front, setting the example for future U.S. air leaders who frequently flew combat missions.

(Above) Mitchell’s protegé and friend, Col. Henry H. Arnold, the highest-ranking flying officer in Washington, D.C., during World War I and future commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II.
Billy’s ability as a combat leader and willingness to work within a combat staff

remained unproven. In the long run, however, Pershing’s observations meant

that, except for the short period in July and August 1917, Mitchell would never

command the Air Service, either in France or in the United States.

The command situation was complicated at the end of June by the arrival of

Lt. Col. Raynal Bolling and a team of air officers sent to Europe by the War

Department to determine what equipment and aircraft the U.S. could purchase

and what it needed to manufacture. Bolling was no professional soldier. In civilian life, he was chief attorney for the U.S. Steel Corporation. He had learned to

fly in 1915 as a member of the New York National Guard and had commanded

its 1st Aero Company in 1916. Following completion of the Bolling

Commission’s mission, Pershing retained most of the men including Bolling. To

make room, Mitchell was placed in command of all aviation activities in the

Zone of Advance and Bolling of all activities in the Zone of the Interior. This

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Lt. Col. Raynal C. Bolling commanded the 1st Reserve Aero Squadron at

Mineola, New York, in 1916. In mid-June 1917, he led the Bolling Mission to

France to examine the state of aviation and make recommendations on the direction the U.S. aviation program should take
arrangement ended unity of command in the Air Service; decisions thus had to

be made and disagreements—and there were many—resolved by the AEF’s chief

of staff. On September 3, Pershing moved to resolve this clumsy, unresponsive

arrangement, by designating Col. William L. Kenly, commander of the 7th Field

Artillery, as the chief aviation officer for the AEF. Kenly had organizational

skills, but was no airman. He had taken a short familiarization course on military aviation for field-grade officers taught at the Signal Corps Aviation School

in San Diego prior to the war, but had little real knowledge of how to lead an air

service.

The more experienced and aggressive Mitchell thus played a dominant role

in the development of the AEF’s aviation program, even after Kenly took charge.

As the second ranking member of the Aviation Board and the U.S. air officer

with the most experience in Europe, he took a major part in selecting locations

for facilities and schools, solving questions of maintenance and supply, designing and laying out a training program, and preparing the plans that would place

tactical air units in combat. Based upon advice from the Board—primarily

meaning Mitchell—Pershing began negotiating for the purchase of combat aircraft in Europe and for construction of aviation facilities in France. Mitchell took

part in the selection of an area at Issoudun, which would become a huge flying

training complex, a site for the major air depot in the Zone of Advance at

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Artilleryman Col. William L. Kenly, was selected to command the Air Service,

AEF in August 1917. He is shown here in 1918 as a major general and commander of the Air Service in Washington, D.C.
Colombey-le-Belles, and a location for an advanced aerodrome at Amanty.

Operationally, the first U.S. aviation unit—fittingly, the venerable 1st Aero

Squadron—reached France in early September, sans aircraft. And Mitchell

began to exploring a doctrine using pursuit and observation squadrons in “mass”

in combat. To this, he would add Hugh Trenchard’s emphasis on the offensive.

Billy also continued to fly in his French-loaned airplane. In June 1917, he was

in the air almost every day; in July he began flying alone; and in September he

received his Junior Military Aviator wings, backdated to July 19. A coterie of

younger officers began to form around Mitchell, impressed by Billy’s energy,

imagination, combativeness, and enthusiasm. They would be “Billy’s boys” and

many would have a major impact on the development of military aviation in

future years.

Despite progress, it rapidly became clear that Colonel Kenly was not up to

the job, and in November 1917 he was replaced. The new commander of the Air

Service, AEF was Brig. Gen. Benjamin D. “Benny” Foulois, and his arrival

would have a permanent and adverse impact on Billy Mitchell. Foulois was the

Army’s most experienced aviator. He had commanded the U.S. Army’s first balloon detachment, learned to fly airplanes from the Wright Brothers, experimented with the Army’s first airplane in 1910, and commanded the 1st Aero

Squadron during the Punitive Expedition. Since the war began, he had been in

the War Department immersed in planning and coordinating the exponential

growth of military aviation in the United States. Foulois was an absolute contrast to Billy Mitchell. A former enlisted man and son of a plumber, he had few

if any pretensions to high society. As an airman, he was as much a mechanic as

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Experienced and energetic, Mitchell exercised considerable responsibility for the

Air Service under Kenly, helping select sites for critical facilities such as this

huge flying training center, the 3d Air Instructional Center at Issoudun.
pilot. He preferred whiskey to cocktails and poker to polo, and paled in presence beside the colorful, immaculately-dressed Mitchell. When it came down to

it, the two men shared only two characteristics. Both had a firm, deeply-held

belief in the future of independent airpower and both were unrelentingly ambitious.

On November 12, 1917, General Foulois and a staff of more than 100

newly-commissioned civilians sprinkled with a few regular officers reached

France, and on the 27th, he took command of the Air Service, AEF.

Unfortunately, there was “history” here. Both he and Mitchell were Signal Corps

officers and as late as 1916, “Major” Mitchell had outranked “Captain” Foulois.

The two had also crossed sabers the year before when Mitchell, in Washington,

had questioned Foulois’s expenditures for the 1st Aero Squadron in Mexico.

Billy also felt that his own, more recent, extensive experience in Europe should

count for more. Further, Mitchell believed that the War Department had sent

Foulois to France to gain control of the AEF’s aviation. Finally, he resented

Benny’s staff of “carpetbaggers,” as he called them, writing that many had never

seen an airplane and all were totally ignorant of the Air Service in France.

Foulois held the position that Mitchell believed should have been his.

Mitchell continued to prove himself a tireless, dedicated worker, but he also

began complaining about Air Service headquarters. Among those irritated by

these actions, were Maj. Gen. Hunter Liggett, commander of I Corps, and staff

officers Cols. Dennis Nolan and. Hugh Drum, favorites of Pershing who were

destined for high position in the AEF during the war and in the U.S. Army afterward.

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In November 1917, Brig. Gen. Benjamin D. “Benny” Foulois, shown here at

Issoudun with Secretary of War Newton Baker, took command of the Air

Service, AEF. Foulois and Mitchell were bitter rivals.
Foulois quickly reorganized Air Service headquarters into eight divisions

and filled most of the new positions from the ranks of those he brought with him.

Mitchell became the chief of the air service for First Army. Cursing Foulois’s

“incompetent lot of air warriors,” but happy to be in command of the front line

combat units, Mitchell busied himself with operational planning. In January

1918, he began gathering the first U.S. squadrons—still without airplanes—at

Amanty, where they would form the I Corps Observation Group. And soon the

94th and 95th Aero Squadrons—half of what would become the famous 1st

Pursuit Group—reached the Zone of Advance.

In March 1918, the Germans launched the first of several major offensives of

the year. This one broke the British Fifth Army and yielded huge advances. Assault

troops, exploiting the shattered lines, killed Colonel Bolling, who was caught in the

maelstrom while touring air units. Pershing had used Bolling to address problems

with the acquisition of aircraft and aviation-related materials. The colonel’s death

thus led to growing confusion in acquisition, training, and coordination with the

allies, a situation complicated by Foulois’s failure to properly staff the Air Service

Line of Communications. By May, Pershing had concluded that Foulois had failed

to measure up to his standards. Foulois worked hard and meant well, and was a

good leader. But he lacked the management and administrative experience to build

the aviation program needed by the AEF on the Western Front. He proved unable

to make the various aviation headquarters spread across Europe work together or

coordinate the numerous activities necessary to building a combat-ready air ser12

Foulois had commanded the 1st Aero Squadron during the Mexican Punitive

Expedition in 1916. His assignment to the AEF reunited him with Gen. John. J.

Pershing who had commanded in Mexico.
vice. The AEF was now paying the price of the U.S. Army’s prewar failure to

expand its air force suitably, or develop air leaders capable of commanding huge

enterprises. Pershing—who characterized his air leaders as “a lot of good men . . .

running around in circles”—turned to another branch of the Army for a solution.

On May 29, 1918, his former West Point classmate, now a distinguished U.S. Army

Engineer, Brig. Gen. Mason M. Patrick, became chief of the Air Service. Patrick,

like Kenly, was no airman, but he had tremendous organizational skills, extensive

experience with large organizations, and the commanding presence that had been

lacking in the Air Service, AEF.

The orders appointing Patrick, assigned Foulois to replace Mitchell as Chief

of Air Service for First Army, while Mitchell stepped down to be chief of Air

Service for I Corps. When Foulois arrived to take over the Air Service headquarters at First Army, Mitchell refused to give up his office furnishings and continued to criticize Air Service policies, procedures, and decisions, which certainly did his reputation no good. Among the scene’s observers was another of

Mitchell’s rivals in the Air Service. Col. Frank P. Lahm—a pioneer airman like

Foulois who was then assigned to operations at I Corps. Benny Foulois found

Mitchell’s actions “extremely childish and entirely unbecoming an officer of his

age, rank and experience.” On June 4, he wrote Pershing, recommending that

Mitchell be relieved of command and returned to the United States.

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In May 1918, Pershing appointed an engineering officer and his former classmate at West Point, Brig. Gen. Mason M. Patrick to command the Air Service,

AEF in place of Foulois. Patrick knew nothing of aviation, but had tremendous

organizational skills, extensive experience with large organizations, and a commanding presence.
Pershing could have removed Mitchell summarily, but he faced a serious

quandary. Aggressive leaders were critical to the AEF, and contentious as he was,

Mitchell had proven himself fearless, audacious, and bold. Pershing was thus in

the position once occupied by Abraham Lincoln, who had said of Ulysses S.

Grant: “I cannot spare this man; he fights.” Pershing summoned Billy to Chaumont for one of those icy personal interviews that often left officers shrunken

and diminished. In the sanitized words of the AEF’s chief of staff, General

Pershing “talked quite plainly to Colonel Mitchell and gave him to understand

that [he] in no wise approved or condoned his apparent insubordination, but that

he would give him the opportunity to set himself right.”

A chastened Billy Mitchell apologized to Foulois, who met him more than

half way. First, Benny assigned him to his staff as operations assistant. Subsequently, as American air units moved into the Château-Thierry sector, he placed

Mitchell in tactical charge of all the pursuit units designated for service in the

area. Mitchell settled down to business. He was too good a fighter to be left

behind and, besides, a good fight was just what he needed to get back into

Pershing’s good graces. But, while his performance in planning and directing Air

Service combat operations in the Château-Thierry proved outstanding, he continued to invite controversy. In July, he made an enemy of Col. Malin Craig—

chief of staff of I Corps and a future chief of staff of the U.S. Army thus adding

to his reputation and fostering resentment among AEF officers, many of whom

were destined to become leaders of the post-war Army. 

On July 25, 1918, based upon Billy’s performance directing Air Service

combat units in the Château-Thierry area, Foulois proposed that Mitchell replace

him as chief of Air Service, First Army, while he (Foulois) became assistant chief

of the Air Service, operations, and later assistant chief of Air Service, Zone of

Advance. Under this division of labor Foulois coordinated the assembly, training, equipping, and preparation of all Air Service units as they entered the Zone

of Advance, while Mitchell gave his full energies to the combat operations of the

units prepared and sent to the front by Foulois.

These changes were made just in time for U.S. First Army’s attack on the St.

Mihiel salient on September 12, 1918. Here, Mitchell made his greatest contribution to the war. The St. Mihiel salient was a huge bulge in the French line south

of Verdun, residue of a successful German offensive in 1914, that complicated

French rail traffic between Paris and the eastern portion of the front. The

German-held city of Metz lay just beyond the base of the bulge as did the iron

mines at Briey, adding to the position’s importance. French efforts to eliminate

the bulge had failed; now it was the AEF’s turn. Pershing opened First U.S. Army

headquarters in the area on August 13, 1918, and began to secretly concentrate

fourteen infantry divisions—nine of them American—for a massive attack

designed to pinch the salient off at the base. The attack was complicated by last

minute French demands that would have ended it completely and divided the

American army between two French armies. After lengthy argument, Pershing

agreed to follow the attack on St. Mihiel with a full-scale assault in conjunction

with the French in some of the most difficult terrain on the Western Front, the

14
15

(Above) The only American-built combat aircraft to see service at the Front during World War I was the British-designed De Havilland DH–4, powered by the

U.S. 400 h.p. “Liberty” engine. The DH–4 served as both an observation aircraft

and a day bomber during the St. Mihiel offensive. This aircraft wears the

insignia of the 12th Aero Squadron, an observation unit.

(Below) Brigadier General Foulois, on the left, talks with officers at the Air

Service assembly plant at Romarinton, France, where the DH-4s shipped from

the U.S. were assembled and tested.
Argonne forest, west of the Meuse River. It was a massive undertaking. In

Pershing’s words, “we had undertaken to launch with practically the same army

within twenty-four days, two great attacks on battlefields 60 miles apart.” The

time element was critical. Normally, the French and British army staffs would

devote months to preparations for a follow-on attack of the scale envisioned;

Pershing’s staff would have barely three weeks. 

Airpower played a major role in the St. Mihiel effort. Under Billy’s direct

command were 1,481 combat airplanes from the U.S., France, Great Britain, and

Italy, enabling him to apply in practice the theories of mass and emphasis on the

offensive that he had been nursing. Mitchell had assembled the largest concentration of Allied aircraft of the war, and he wielded them according to a carefully orchestrated plan. Mitchell allocated units on the basis of where the main

fighting would take place in an effort to deal a knock-out blow to the enemy from

the air. First, his pursuit would sweep the German air force from the sky, thus

denying enemy reconnaissance the ability to see what was taking place and

enabling Allied reconnaissance to observe, photograph, and report. In the meantime, bombardment aircraft would attack airfields, railway stations, bridges,

ammunition dumps, and troop concentrations beginning, before Pershing’s

“Doughboys” attacked and continuing throughout the advance. Once the assault

began, Mitchell’s pursuits would also range far to the German rear, eliminating

enemy aircraft and opening the way for the bombardment squadrons.

At a final staff conference on September 10, Mitchell, according to his own

account, showed his true mettle. Steady rains and the feet of hundreds of thousands of men had churned the roads into rivers of mud threatening preparations

16

Mitchell had little to do with U.S. strategic bombardment during World War I.

Air Service plans for strategic attack focused on 1919 and were embodied in the

Handley-Page Project, which envisioned building components for the Britishdesigned, twin-engine bombers in the U.S., and shipping them to England for

assembly in plants established for that purpose. Ultimately, none of these saw

combat. This Handley-Page 0/400 was built by the Standard Aircraft Corporation of New Jersey.
for the assault, and some on Pershing’s staff were discouraged. Mitchell had to

wait his turn to speak—he was a rather junior officer at the conference—but

when he did, he expressed himself forcibly. There was no time for delay; the

troops were in position and ready to go. Further, he had just flown over the

enemy lines personally and had seen signs that the Germans had already begun

to withdraw. He expected that they would not fight long for the salient. Pershing

probably appreciated Mitchell’s comments, but they were really unneeded.

“Black Jack” had no intention of delaying. 

On September 12, over 500,000 Doughboys and 100,000 French troops

went over the top supported by 3,000 artillery pieces and 267 tanks. Initially, the

attack was hampered by rain that came down in torrents, reducing everything to

slow motion. Further, Mitchell was right. German intelligence had foreknowledge of what was coming, and the American offensive was aided by the German

decision to withdraw the troops from their positions in the salient, thus shortening the lines and freeing reserves to serve elsewhere on the front. The Doughboys

caught the Germans in the process, however, and reduced a planned orderly

withdrawal to a disorganized scramble for survival. After a slow start, the assault

gained speed, and First Army completed its mission on September 16, eliminating the salient and capturing 15,000 enemy troops and 257 guns at a cost of

7,000 casualties.

Air Service losses were also comparatively light at the beginning, and despite

the weather and other difficulties, it made a major contribution to the operation.

17

The St. Mihiel Offensive required the deployment in secret of hundreds of thousands of men and tons of supplies. Here, Military Police direct traffic in the

streets of St. Mihiel.
As one historian later wrote: “All of the plans, all of the preparation, and all of the

daring and courage of the airmen brought about the desired results: air superiority over the main battle area, which was, in Mitchell’s mind, one of the keys to victory . . .” Also, as he did throughout the war, Mitchell continued to fly over the

front lines, sharing his men’s hardship and danger, a trait that won their respect.

Losses increased as the Germans brought in experienced combat units commanded by veteran aces like Ernst Udet and Hermann Goering. Mitchell’s pursuit

squadrons took serious casualties, and two bombardment units—the 11th and

96th Aero Squadrons—were essentially wiped out. The German commander,

however, reported that the AEF maintained “a continuous and powerful antiaircraft defense” that no doubt hid preparations for further attacks toward Metz. He

fully anticipated a large-scale attack on September 15, by which time much of the

AEF had begun to transfer to the North. Pleased with the results of his air commander’s efforts, Pershing recommended Billy Mitchell for promotion to temporary brigadier general; he pinned on his star on October 13.

Despite some urging within AEF headquarters to continue the assault, seize

the city of Metz, and break the German rail connections in the region, Pershing’s

agreement with the French turned First Army north toward the Argonne forest.

It was a staggering task for the AEF. Pershing’s best, most experienced divisions

had been committed at St. Mihiel, and the first of these only began transferring

to the new section of the front on September 13. Thus, the Argonne offensive

would rely on less trained, less experienced divisions, several who would see

action for the first time. Planning for the attack had to be accomplished quickly,

and the big infantry divisions had to be moved into their assault positions in

exceptionally short order. Artillery had to be brought in, positioned, and registered; and a command and communications network for the assaulting force

established. Huge ammunition and supply dumps had to be constructed and

filled, and a supporting logistics network established. 

Mitchell led a much reduced Air Service into the Meuse-Argonne attack.

Most of the Allied air units from the St. Mihiel had returned to support their

armies, leaving Mitchell with a force of about 800 aircraft, 200 of them bombers.

It was a major effort to concentrate the Air Service squadrons, their support

equipment, and their logistical supplies secretly and quickly on new operating

bases. Despite his weaker force, Mitchell used the same tactics as he had in St.

Mihiel, but with fewer aircraft without the Allied units.

The American assault began on October 9, and quickly turned into a brutal,

bloody slugging match, involving some twenty-two American and six French

divisions. Ultimately, Pershing fed more than 1,000,000 troops into the fight.

The enemy had had several years to construct a series of massive, interlocking

defensive positions and, in contrast to St. Mihiel, they stood and fought with a

tenacity that the untried American divisions found costly to overcome. The

French attack on the left flank bogged down immediately, the artillery barrage

was ineffective, and the few available tanks failed. Everything came down to the

infantry. Casualty lists were long, and several of the big U.S. divisions were used

up quickly. The increasing number of divisions necessitated the establishment of

18
the Second and Third Army, and Pershing turned over command of First Army

to Hunter Liggett and took command of the group of armies. Ultimately, after

several weeks of terrible fighting the AEF broke the German lines and as of

November 11, 1918—when an Armistice went into effect—its forward divisions

stood at the outskirts of Sedan, long held by the Germans.

The Air Service also suffered brutal casualties in the sustained fighting. On

the first day of the Meuse-Argonne attack, Mitchell’s force dropped 81 tons of

bombs at the cost of one airplane. After that, losses to German pursuit and ground

fire were heavy. Mitchell remained committed to operating offensively, en masse.

He attempted to use his pursuits in groups of more than 100 aircraft to oppose the

enemy pursuits and to strafe enemy troop concentrations. His most massive single effort took place on October 9, when he sent out over 200 bombers and 100

pursuits The eighteen army and corps observation squadrons probably faced the

most fearful challenge, often flying at low altitudes in an effort to work with the

infantry and artillery. Again, Mitchell was no headquarters operator. He continued to fly observation missions despite stiff German air opposition. In addition to

combat attrition, the abnormal wear and tear on the aircraft and shortage of

spares, reduced Mitchell’s force steadily, a situation caused by the failure of aircraft manufacturing in the U.S. and the French failure to deliver replacements and

spares. It was too much to expect French industry to supply adequately its own air

force and the Air Service, AEF as well. By October 15, Mitchell could field 579

serviceable aircraft, despite the arrival of additional squadrons. His three pursuit

groups were reduced to little more than 150 aircraft out of an authorized strength

19

Respected rather than liked, General Pershing exercised considerable personal

leadership. Here he addresses Air Service personnel at the air field at Tours,

France.
of about 300. At the Armistice, the 45 squadrons could muster only 457 serviceable aircraft. Mitchell also moved up as the AEF reorganized, becoming commander of the Air Service for the group of armies.

The Air Service of the AEF gained much of its success in World War I

thanks to Billy Mitchell’s tactical skill, inspiring leadership, and offensive spirit.

One would be remiss in failing to note, however, that Maj. Gen. Mason Patrick

stabilized the organization of the Air Service, AEF and made it function as a unified service, and Benny Foulois effectively organized and forwarded the units

and equipment Mitchell wielded at the front. Both men were extremely generous

in their praise of Mitchell. General Patrick wrote that “I believe General Mitchell

to be a very efficient officer. . . he possesses exceptional qualifications for leadership and . . . thinks rapidly and acts quickly . . . . He is opinionated but I have

usually found him properly subordinate and ready to obey orders.” His rival,

Foulois, wrote more directly that “General Mitchell had few superiors in Europe,

as regards the tactical use and actual operation of Air Service in action.” More

recently, historian Paul Braim in his excellent history of the Meuse-Argonne

campaign, rated Mitchell highly among all AEF commanders:

20

1st Lt. (later Capt.) Eddie Rickenbacker, the American “ace-of-aces” of World

War I with twenty- six kills, played a major role in the fighting over St. Mihiel.

Rickenbacker became and remained a close friend and ally of Billy Mitchell.
Certainly there were leaders of vision and high intelligence in

the AEF, George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, Charles

Summerall, John Hines, Hunter Liggett, and Hugh Drum

come to mind. They saw the doctrinal and operational errors;

they just did not have the time to make significant changes

during the fighting. Billy Mitchell was something of a visionary, but he was right about the role of airpower in future war.

Though he was a bit of a nuisance to the senior officers, he

came up with a number of plans to restore maneuver to the

modern battlefield.

Mitchell had done well. He had arrived in France as a major and had risen

to the rank of temporary brigadier general and to command of the air service for

a group of armies. He had earned the Distinguished Service Cross for valor,

gained the respect of his men for his willingness to lead from the front, and

placed his indelible stamp on U.S. air combat practice and doctrine with his

emphasis on concentration and the offensive. To the public he was a hero; a dashing, intrepid airman of the Western Front, second to none in glamor, including

aces like Eddie Rickenbacker. But, he had also proven himself opinionated and

controversial, had made major enemies among the U.S. Army’s future commanders, and among Air Service leaders.

21

General Pershing in the center and Marshal Henri-Phillipe Petain, commander of

the French Army, stand with several just-decorated officers. To the left of Petain

is Maj. Gen. Hunter Liggett, commander of First Army. Mitchell stands in the

second row between Petain and Liggett.
Finally, Mitchell had also emerged from the war with a deep commitment

to the belief that the nation needed an “air force,” not an “air service” and the

belief that he was the only one capable of accomplishing that change. Behind

that belief was a commitment to the idea that an air force could do much more

than just fight alongside ground and naval forces. He saw war as three-dimensional, not two, and believed that only experienced airmen understood how to

operate successfully in that third dimension.

* * *

Following the Armistice, Mitchell was selected to head the Air Service for

Maj. Gen. Theodore Dickman’s Third Army, the U.S. occupying force in

Germany. Mitchell proved again to be en excellent leader, but Brig. Gen. Malin

Craig was Dickman’s chief of staff and an undercurrent of “pro-Benny Foulois

feeling” in Third Army Headquarters reached the ears of both Patrick and

Pershing. When the new director of the Air Service in the United States, Maj.

Gen. Charles T. Menoher—an artilleryman, non-flyer, and wartime commander

of the 42d “Rainbow” Division—asked that Billy join him in Washington, neither Pershing nor Patrick raised objections. Mitchell returned to the United

States in March 1919, bringing with him several officers who had worked for

him in Europe and were thoroughly committed to an independent air force.

Ultimately, Mitchell settled in as head of the Operations and Training Group in

Air Service headquarters, and many of “Billy’s boys” took positions under him.

Appropriately, General Menoher allowed the highly experienced Mitchell to

develop plans, orchestrate training, and oversee research and development.

While Menoher firmly supported Pershing’s belief in the infantry as the “Queen

of Battle,” he was also a genial, highly intelligent officer with considerable common sense who might have been of considerable support in the campaign for an

independent air force that Billy was about to initiate. Mitchell, instead, began to

bypass his boss. Within four months, Menoher’s assistant, Lt. Col. Oscar

Westover, was recommending that Mitchell be fired.

Initially, Billy retained his temporary wartime rank of brigadier general until

the National Defense Act of 1920 determined the manpower level and rank structure of the postwar Army and established the Air Service as a permanent branch,

separate from the Signal Corps. The act authorized the Air Service one permanent major general position for its commander and a temporary brigadier position for his deputy. Thus, instead of reverting to colonel, Mitchell retained his

brigadier star. This arrangement was somewhat unfair to both Mitchell and the

Air Service. Pershing and Patrick had recognized that Billy fully merited promotion to permanent brigadier general for his enormous contributions as a combat leader, and Patrick had sought that promotion for him to no avail. After the

war, the final size of the Air Service itself merited more permanent flag officer

positions than authorized, and certainly had one existed it would have gone to

Billy. The system of the day, thus, denied him promotion to permanent flag rank

that he fully merited. It could have been worse, however. Rival Benny Foulois

returned from Europe as a brigadier general only to revert to his permanent rank

of major—and his experience was hardly unique.

22
23

(Above) Artilleryman and distinguished commander of the 42nd (Rainbow)

Infantry Division, Maj. Gen. Charles C. Menoher, Director of the Air Service,

believed firmly in the infantry as the “Queen of Battle.” The genial and intelligent Menoher proved unable to control Mitchell.

(Below) Here, Mitchell, the dashing and flamboyant pilot, is at the controls of an

SE–5 pursuit.
It was readily apparent that military funding would be slashed and the Air

Service was going to have to compete with the rest of the Army and with the

Navy for limited funds. Further, the Air Service needed its own mission possibly

to even survive. Prior to returning to the United States, Mitchell spent some time

with the commander of the Royal Air Force, General Trenchard. The RAF had

been established on April 1, 1918, as an independent air force charged with preventing German aerial incursions while retaliating against the Germans. Under

Trenchard, it had developed a strategic component, but in practice it had

remained committed to direct support of the British army. Following the war, the

RAF needed a mission to justify its continued separate existence, especially one

that could be shown to be less costly than if done by the Army and Navy.

Trenchard would prove to be a magnificent bureaucratic infighter. By 1921, he

had solidified his power, placed the RAF on a strong organizational basis, and

dedicate it to the mission of policing colonial territories, something that could be

accomplished more cheaply and with fewer assets than if done by the traditional services. 

Mitchell returned to the United States committed to the establishment of an

independent air force. Over the next two years, Billy would call for new national defense organization featuring an independent air force co-equal to the Army

and Navy and responsible for all military and civilian aviation in the United

States. Mitchell wrote and spoke freely. His flamboyant, outgoing personality,

and glamorous reputation gave him an appreciative audience in Congress and

with the public. His often irreverent, colorful statements made him popular with

the press, who found him “good copy.” In one example, he wrote that “to entrust

the development of aviation to either the Army or the Navy is just as sensible as

entrusting the development of the electric light a candle factory.” Billy Mitchell

quickly became a thorn in the side of General Menoher, Chief of Staff of the

Army Peyton March, and Secretary of War Newton Baker.

The Training and Operations Group became a hotbed of pro-Mitchell, proindependent air force activity. For the time being, however, this had little to do

with strategic bombing. Mitchell’s long term goal was to unite all aviation—military and civilian—into a single organization under his command, and his immediate target was coastal defense, then the responsibility of the U.S. Navy and the

Army’s Coast Artillery Corps.

The most logical and appealing mission was long-range strategic bombing.

Mitchell had spent most of World War I providing what would later be defined

as battlefield air interdiction in direct support of Pershing’s combat forces, however, he was well aware of the German strategic bombing campaign waged

against England and the Allied interest in developing a similar campaign against

the heart of Germany. Concentrating on the job at hand, Mitchell had left the subject to others, especially pioneer military airmen Cols. Edgar S. Gorrell and

William Sherman. And he played almost no role in the Handley Page Project,

which called for U.S. industry to construct 100 twin-engine British Handley

Page heavy bombers powered by Liberty engines. These were to be shipped to

England in pieces and assembled at plants constructed for that purpose. The goal

24
of the program was an independent, long- range bombing force. Unfortunately,

only a couple of bombers had been completed at the time of the Armistice, but

had the war continued into 1919, as most planners expected, the U.S. would have

fielded a strategic bombing force under existing plans.

Mitchell, however, was too much of a political realist to believe that an independent bombing force and a strategic bombardment doctrine were a practical

primary mission for the Air Service in 1919. First, the purpose of the U.S. military was defense, not offense, and a force devoted to attack was politically and

doctrinally unacceptable. Second, strategic bombardment suggested attacks on

cities and peaceful civilians—as the German attacks on London had shown—

and Secretary of War Newton Baker, a pacifist, made it absolutely clear that such

a policy was totally unacceptable.

Mitchell compared the Army and Navy air services, determined that they

exercised redundant responsibilities for coastal defense, and concluded that the

most efficient approach would be to have the Air Service take over naval air, as

well as responsibility for civilian aviation. “By a combination of these two services, with other aviation agencies,” he wrote, “we eliminate friction and antagonism, promote esprit and efficiency, and avoid duplication of work and needless expenditures.”

Mitchell made good use of the background of one of his subordinates, Lt.

Col. Lewis H. Brereton, a graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis and veteran of the Coast Artillery Corps, in this process. When in the summer of 1919,

secretary of the navy Josephus Daniels enumerated the missions he expected

naval air to carry out, Brereton prepared Mitchell’s response. His assessment

25

Mitchell and his Third Army aviation staff stand overlooking the Rhine River in

Germany following the war. Lt. Col. Lewis H. Brereton, chief of staff, is left of

Mitchell in the photograph.
boiled down to affirming that Army airmen were already accomplishing most of

the responsibilities Daniels had listed, or could do most of them more effectively than could the Navy. And those the Air Service were not doing, were not worth

doing anyway. In October 1919, Mitchell had Brereton prepare a study challenging the views of the General Staff on coastal defense, as well. The General

Staff accepted that three forces provided coastal defense: the Navy’s battle fleet,

the Navy’s coastal defenses, and the army’s coastal defenses. The battle fleet was

the offensive weapon that sought out the enemy and destroyed him. If the fleet

failed, the navy’s defensive forces—including submarines and naval air units—

took over. If these failed, the big guns of the Army’s aging fixed coastal fortifications came into play. as the last resort. In his response, Mitchell argued that airpower now held the preeminent role in coastal defense. The U.S. needed an air

force to find and destroy the enemy’s invasion fleet. By February 1920, Mitchell

had devised a three-phase tactical plan. Phase one was reconnaissance by dirigible which would locate the enemy; phase two was an air attack to gain control of

the air over the fleet; and phase three was an air attack to destroy the fleet itself,

before it approached the American coast. Key to this plan was Mitchell’s claim

that airplanes could sink ships, all ships, even battleships. He began agitating for

26

Mitchell found air meets and contests to be excellent venues for educating the

public on air power. Here he is in his flying suit at the first Pulitzer Race, held at

Mitchel Field, New York, in 1920. Army 1st Lt. Corliss C. Moseley won in a

Verville racer built at McCook Field, Ohio.
the opportunity to conduct bombing trials against an battleship hull. In this, he

faced serious opposition, even though the Navy was conducting its own tests.

In October 1920, Mitchell and three other army officers observed U.S. Navy

tests on the old battleship, Indiana. His observations convinced him that the

Navy was dishonest in its methodology, and was hiding from the public the truth

about the airplane’s real threat to capital ships. The Navy placed explosive

charges in and around the Indiana and set them off, while the bombs dropped

were dummies filled with sand. Navy leaders had also restricted publicity on

these tests, but a British paper published a photograph in December and

American papers then picked up the story. The result was considerable public

debate over whether or not a battleship could be sunk by airplanes, with Billy

Mitchell skillfully fanning the flames of the controversy from behind the scenes.

In February 1921, the Navy finally invited the army to participate in bombing

tests of several captured German ships—under Navy rules and supervision.

Mitchell moved quickly. The Air Service tested bombs, fuses, releases,

flares, and other equipment at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. The

air depot at Fairfield, Ohio, refurbished and outfitted SE–5 pursuits, and Martin,

27

Mitchell with Rear Adm. William A. Moffett, Chief of the U.S. Navy Bureau of

Aeronautics. Despite the apparent civility, the two men disliked each other.

Moffett proved to be an excellent bureaucratic in-fighter and effectively used the

threat posed by Mitchell as a lever to pry from the battleship admirals the funds

needed to build Naval Air.
Handley Page, and Caproni bombers. Flyers at fields across the nation went into

training and in May aircraft, personnel, and equipment began to arrive at

Langley Field, Virginia, as the 1st Provisional Air Brigade formed under one of

Billy’s boys from France, Maj. Thomas DeW. Milling, now commandant of the

Air Service Tactical School. On May 27, 1921. Billy Mitchell arrived from

Washington and took command.

On the following day, Mitchell returned to Bolling Field in his SE–5. Six

other aircraft took off at about the same time. All were caught in what Mitchell

later called the most violent storm he had ever experienced. None of Mitchell’s

alternatives were good. He could try to land, but might crash, or he could try to

return to Langley, but might get lost and blown out to sea. Typically, Mitchell

decided to push ahead. Flying around storms and dodging the worst of the weather he made it safely to Bolling. World War ace Eddie Rickenbacker, also caught

by the storm, told reporters that he had had the narrowest escape of his life. In

contrast to Mitchell, 1st Lt. Stanley M. Ames, attempted to land his Curtiss

Eagle—modified as a flying ambulance—and he and six men died in the crash.

The incident generated considerable publicity. The War Department investigating board blamed the accident on the severe weather, but Mitchell disagreed. He

seized the opportunity to blame the incident on the lack of regular flying routes,

landing facilities, radio service, and weather bulletins.

General Menoher was livid over Mitchell’s public claims and fed up with his

activities. In previous months, Mitchell had gone directly to Congress and the

public with his complaints, quarreled with Army and Navy leaders, and fought

with Rear Adm. William A. Moffett, soon to be chief of the Navy’s Bureau of

Aeronautics. Menoher could neither control Mitchell, nor keep track of what he

was doing. Menoher now asked the new secretary of war, John W. Weeks, to

remove Mitchell. Secretary Weeks was new to the job and found himself unable

to act. Billy was too popular, and the impending tests were too critical, he reasoned. The secretary resorted to an unsatisfactory compromise that merely postponed the problem. Menoher was to withdraw his request that Mitchell be

relieved, and Mitchell was to stop his public attacks on Menoher and remember

his duty as a subordinate officer. As this storm abated for the moment, Mitchell

pressed ahead with intensive training and practice.

Navy plans for the tests off the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay called for the

scientific evaluation of the effects of aerial bombs and naval gun fire on various

sizes and classes of ships. These plans called for a carefully orchestrated series

of attacks separated by frequent inspections by a Board of Observers which

would document and evaluate damage. Mitchell’s goal was vastly different. He

wanted to sink ships—especially a battleship—as quickly and efficiently and

publically as possible. The first test took place on June 21, 1921.

The target of the first test was a former German submarine, U–117. Plans

called for eight divisions of naval aircraft, twenty-six planes, to attack at twentyminute intervals, then the Army planes would be allowed to attack. U–117 did

not survive the naval aircraft. Two days later, the test was to locate and assault a

former U.S. Navy battleship, the Iowa. Controlled by radio, the Iowa was to be

28
29

(Above) The twin-Liberty powered Martin NBS–1, originally designated MB-2,

was the Air Service’s standard bomber during the 1920s. “NBS” stood for “night

bombardment, short distance.” This one was built under contract by Curtiss and

wears the insignia of the 11th Bombardment Squadron.

(Below) Mitchell points out an item of interest to General Pershing during an

inspection of the 1st Provisional Air Brigade on July 18, 1921. Secretary of War

John W. Weeks stands in the center with his back to the camera. The officer on

the far right is Maj. George Patton. (Courtesy Air Combat Command History

Office.)
30

(Above) A Martin NBS–1 (MB–2) laden with a 2,000-pound demolition bomb.

A smaller, probably 100-pound, bomb is attached under the wing outboard of the

engine nacelle. 

(Below) A 2,000-pound demolition bomb attached under a Martin bomber. The

bomb rack was made by the Rock Island Arsenal especially for the 1921 bombing trials.(These three photos courtesy Air Combat Command History Office.)

(Opposite page, top) Loading 100-pound demolition bombs onto a MK.20 bomb

rack on a Martin NBS–1 (MB–2).
31

During the bombing tests on the cruiser, Frankfurt, on July 18, 1921, a 300 lb.

bomb hits next to the hull.
guided toward the shore from about 100 miles at sea. Naval and Army aircraft

would locate the ship and drop dummy bombs. The Iowa, as in the case of the

Indiana a year earlier would be crammed with explosive charges that could be

detonated separately. Mitchell refused to take part in this sort of farce, as he saw

it, thus the Iowa was left to the Navy.

On July 13, Mitchell and the 1st Provisional Air Brigade got their first

opportunity. The target was the ex-German destroyer G–102, and the Army had

first crack. Navy aircraft and ships would stand in reserve in case the Army aviators failed. Mitchell coordinated the effort from the air in “the Osprey,” his personal De Havilland DH–4. As he watched, SE–5 pursuits strafed and bombed

using twenty-five-pound personnel bombs, in theory clearing the ship’s decks. In

four passes, the SE–5s achieved twenty-five hits. Following the pursuits were

sixteen Martin MB–2 bombers. One-by-one, each aircraft dropped two 300-

pound demolition bombs from 1,500 feet. Most of the aircraft hit close, and two

achieved direct hits with both bombs. When the bombers began their second

round of attacks the destroyer was already settling by the stern. Three more

bombs sent her to the bottom. On July 18, the Army and Navy took turns bombing the cruiser Frankfurt, the Navy dropping 250-pound and some 550-pound

bombs, the Army using its 300- and then 600-pounders. The first round of ArmyNavy attacks caused limited damage to the hull. The bigger bombs were another matter, and a series of hits by those dropped from Martin MB-2s sent the

Frankfurt to the bottom.

The denouement took place on July 21. On the previous day, July 20, the

observer ships had positioned themselves near the anchored Ostfriesland. A distrustful Mitchell, so close to his objective, feared a Navy trick and requested

immediate permission to attack. When the attacks did begin, Navy aircraft went

first followed by the Army, but then an approaching storm interrupted the tests.

Inspectors found that little damage had been done to the upper structure of the

vessel, but the hull was another matter. The ship was listing to port and down by

the stern. Now, on July 21, the scene was once again set and the observers in

place. Those aboard the U.S.S. Henderson included Secretary of War John W.

Weeks, Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army

Gen. John J. Pershing, Chief of the Air Service Maj. Gen. Charles Menoher, pioneer airplane manufacturer Glenn Martin; senators, representatives, foreign

observers, reporters, and Mitchell’s friend, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Zachary Landsdowne. On the following morning, Army bombers led off the first attacks with

1,100-pound bombs. The first bomb dropped hit on the forecastle. The Navy

issued a cease bombing order, but eager Army pilots dropped four more bombs

before pausing. Two were hits. Following a leisurely examination, the inspectors

reported damage to the main battery and a hole in the starboard side.

Ostfriesland was taking on water. Toward noon, Mitchell led eight Martin and

three Handley Page bombers carrying 2,000-pound bombs. The rules called for

the Army to drop no more than three bombs with two direct hits. Then the inspectors would go aboard. Mitchell, however, was neither interested in hits nor playing by Navy rules. He ordered his pilots to go for near misses in the belief that

32
the force of the water was more damaging. He was right. The second bomb

exploded next to Ostfriesland and in a few minutes the ship rolled over and disappeared. Mitchell and his men had accomplished what they had set out to do,

and that night they threw a huge party in the Langley Field Officer’s Club. The

Air Service would sink other battleships during later tests—the Virginia and the

North Carolina most notably—but no test would ever provide greater satisfaction or impact than the destruction of the Ostfriesland.

What did the 1921 tests actually accomplish? Mitchell reported that they

proved “that sea craft of all kinds, up to and including the most modern battleships, can be destroyed easily by bombs dropped from aircraft, and further, that

the most effective means of destruction are bombs. [They] demonstrated beyond

a doubt that, given sufficient bombing planes—in short an adequate air force—

aircraft constitute a positive defense of our country against hostile invasion.” The

Navy agreed, but in less cataclysmic terms. The official Board of Observers concluded “that the airplane is a powerful weapon of offense” and that it was a fact

that “the ships so attacked, whether submarine, destroyer, cruiser, or battleship,

were eventually sunk, and by airplanes with bombs alone.” However, the Navy

also noted things that Mitchell, in his enthusiasm, preferred to ignore. The ships

sunk had been at anchor and unable to maneuver. There were no crews or equipment aboard to provide damage control and keep the vessels afloat. And the total

absence of defensive antiaircraft fire gave the attackers a free hand. Finally, the

weather was good and a line of destroyers had guided the bombers to their targets. A hostile fleet was unlikely to provide these advantages.

* * *

A triumphant Mitchell immediately moved to exploit the favorable publicity generated by the successful bombing trials. On July 29, he led the 1st

Provisional Air Brigade in a simulated attack on New York City. Seventeen

33

A bomb lands forward of the Ostfriesland on July 21, 1921.
Martin bombers, one Handley Page, and one Caproni approached the city in V

formation, then changed to line of battle. The formation made a bombing run at

8,000 feet on lower Manhattan, turned over Central Park, and made a return run.

After landing at nearby Mitchel Field, Billy told reporters that Manhattan had

been “demolished” by twenty-one tons of demolition, incendiary, and poison gas

bombs, and its people were either dead or fleeing. He placed his aircraft on public display, while the aircrews toured and celebrated in the city they had just

“destroyed.” The Air Brigade then returned to Langley Field, “bombing”

Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore on the way. Mitchell’s force also “leveled” the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis for good measure.

On August 29, Mitchell submitted his report on the bombing trials. It was a

scathing rebuttal of the official report on the trials that ended with a call for an

independent air force and a department of national defense. In essence, Mitchell

concluded, Americans could no longer look to the oceans for protection.

Airpower had changed the equation, making the nation vulnerable to attack. “An

efficient solution of our defense needs will not exist until a Department of

National Defense is organized,” he wrote. The Army could defend the land; the

Navy the high seas, but an independent air force was required for frontier and

coastal defense. “Aviation,” Mitchell emphasized, “can only be developed under

its own direction and control.”

Menoher noted his disapproval. He also either planned to pigeon hole the

report or, more probably pass it to Secretary Weeks. He never had the opportunity. Secretary Weeks read it in the September 14 issue of the New York Times, to

which it had leaked, causing a public sensation. This event revived the situation

that Weeks had failed to deal with in June and was the final straw for General

Menoher. He demanded that Weeks either support his effort to discipline

Mitchell, or accept his resignation. Weeks accepted Menoher’s resignation.

Mitchell’s future, meanwhile, became a major subject for speculation. His

friends and supporters believed that he would replace Menoher, especially after

the spectacular success of the bombing trials. Other believed that he would leave

the service if not made chief, and he certainly had an offer of an executive position with Eddie Rickenbacker’s automobile company. But someone else was

waiting in the wings.

Pershing, who became chief of staff on July 1, solved the controversy by calling once again on his former West Point classmate. Following the war, Mason

Patrick—reduced from major general to his permanent rank of colonel—had

taken charge of the engineering district in New Orleans, then in 1920 moved to

Washington, D.C., where he did little substantive work for almost a year. In June

1921, he was ordered to nearby Fort Humphrey (now Fort Belvoir) Virginia,

where he commanded the engineering school and began preparing for retirement.

But on August 29, Secretary of War Weeks dropped by ostensibly to tour the post,

in reality to look over Patrick. On September 28, Colonel Patrick received a formal request that he take over the Air Service again. He was not at all thrilled. The

Air Service was at the brink of collapse and was unable to address all of its peacetime duties, much less than wartime responsibilities. Ultimately, however, his

34
35

(Top left) The new Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army on July 1, 1921, was Gen.

John J. “Black Jack” Pershing. Billy Mitchell and the Air Service posed one of

the first problems Pershing had to deal with.

(Top right) Following General Menoher’s resignation and as he had done in

France in 1918, Pershing appointed his former classmate from West Point,

Mason M. Patrick, Chief of the Air Service. This photo is of Patrick as a major

general wearing his pilot’s wings. 

(Above) Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell, Assistant Chief of the Air Service, at the

summit of his career.
sense of duty outweighed his reservations. On October 5, Patrick accepted and

took command the Air Service with the rank of major general.

Patrick thought highly of Mitchell, later writing that Billy was “very likeable

and has ability; his ego is highly developed and he has an undoubted love for the

limelight; a desire to be in the public eye. He is forceful, aggressive, spectacular.

He had a better knowledge of the tactics of air fighting than any man in this

country. . . . I think I understood quite well his characteristics, the good in him—

and there was much of it—and his faults.” But in 1921, Patrick probably expected a confrontation with Mitchell. It took place almost immediately. Billy had

drawn up a new organizational plan for the Air Service that in essence placed

him in charge. Patrick disapproved the plan and made it clear that he, Patrick,

would be in charge. Billy threatened to resign and Patrick called his bluff,

Mitchell reconsidered his position and accepted that Patrick was in command.

Mitchell once again settled down and applied himself to his work. He

remained flamboyant, highly visible, and forthright, but under Patrick’s guidance

ceased courting notoriety. He took a major role in the organization and administration of the Air Service; pushed the technical development of new equipment

and aircraft; and worked to develop Air Service tactics and doctrine. He flew

often, and in 1922 even held the world speed record for a day or so. General

Patrick also kept him busy with inspection trips to Air Service fields and depots

throughout the nation. And he was a common sight at aviation contests, horse

meets, and society events in Washington. 

Mitchell took two international tours of major significance. The first was to

Europe in January 1922 to evaluate developments in aviation. He took with him

aeronautical engineer Alfred Verville and one of his pilots who had hit the

36

Patrick liked Mitchell, but his first job as Chief was to bring him to heel. When

Mitchell learned Patrick meant to be commander in practice as well as name, he

threatened to resign. Patrick called his bluff.
Ostfriesland, 1st Lt. Clayton L. Bissell. They visited England where Mitchell

spent time with General Trenchard. In France he attended a conference on

French military aviation chaired by Marshall Marie Émile Fayolle and renewed

acquaintance with many old friends. In Germany he toured and admired the

Zeppelin company and its products, and met future leaders of the Luftwaffe

including old foes, Herman Goering and Ernst Udet. Of all the stops Mitchell

made, however, those in Italy seem to have been the most important. There, Billy

praised the Italian interest in dirigibles both for coastal defense and offensive

operations. Mitchell also visited the Caproni company in Milan, producer of

some of the finest bombers in the world, and spent time with its owner, Giavonni

Caproni, a friend of the earliest and most noteworthy of the airpower theorists,

Guilio Douhet. Douhet had begun writing before World War I, but his major

work, Il Domino dell ‘Aria (Command of the Air), was only published in 1921.

Mitchell may or may not have met Douhet, during the trip. It is generally agreed

that the Italian’s views of strategic bombardment began entering Mitchell’s thinking through Caproni.

Mitchell produced and distributed his own bombing manual in 1923, “Notes

on the Multi- Motored Bombardment Group,” which was far ahead of his time,

although not the clarion call for strategic bombardment as it would later develop. In it, he separated military from civilian targets and limited the latter to rarely

conducted “reprisal raids” that would have a “moral effect.” And in designating

the former he made it clear that he was not just discussing wars limited to the

immediate defense of U.S. territory. “The attack of objectives on land,” he wrote,

“is the normal mission of bombardment.” And targets ranged from those in direct

support of an enemy force such as aerodromes, transportation centers, ammunition an supply dumps, headquarters, convoys, and columns of troops through

strategic targets such as telegraph and telephone centers, bridges, dams, manufacturing centers, water supplies, and growing grain. This type of warfare, he

opined, might shorten wars. The bombing force, he also pointed out, needed pursuits to clear the air. With control of the air, bombers could reach any target with

impunity. Bombing units were also dependent upon successful supply, and he

advocated construction of specially-designed air transport aircraft. Much of what

Mitchell advocated was unavailable in 1923, but as a blueprint for air warfare

twenty years in the future, his bombing manual was a tour de force.

From December 1922 through July 1923, Mitchell was abroad on his second major tour, which also served as a honeymoon. He and his second wife,

Elizabeth Trumbull Miller, began their lengthy tour of the Pacific in Hawaii,

where Mitchell toured the defenses and reviewed war plans. From Hawaii, he

and his wife went to the Philippines, where he found the air defenses, base facilities, training situation, and living conditions to be deplorable. The Mitchell’s

also toured Singapore, India, China, and Manchuria. He was denied official

entry into the Japanese Empire, but spent a day or two as a “tourist” in Nagasaki. 

Upon his return from the Far East in July 1924, Mitchell submitted an extensive 325-page “Report of Inspection.” In essence, this was a blueprint of the next

war in the Pacific, as Billy envisioned it. Mitchell’s overall views reflected those

37
he had held in 1909-1911. In essence, war with Japan was inevitable. The

Japanese would begin the conflict with a surprise attack on Hawaii, and, since

U.S. military strength was so overwhelming, Japan could only resort to the most

modern methods possible—airpower. Further, the islands in the Pacific were

critical because of their value as bases for aircraft. In this, he reflected his own

belief that land-based air was always superior to seaborne aviation. Thus he

believed that the Japanese would have to seize Midway and Niihau Islands—part

of the Hawaiian chain—first. Once based within range, Japanese forces could

launch air attacks to destroy Hawaii’s defenses. This view reflected Mitchell’s

continued belief that the aircraft carrier was an ineffective weapon. 

Mitchell also assessed U.S. defenses in the Philippines and Hawaii and

found them to be in deplorable condition, especially where aviation was concerned. His assessment caused no problems in the Philippines. Mitchell’s report

was tactful and no surprise to local commanders. Hawaii was another matter. In

command of the Hawaiian Military Department was one of the most distinguished leaders in the U.S. Army, the proud and somewhat touchy Maj. Gen.

Charles P. Summerall. Summerall had extended every courtesy during Mitchell’s

visit, and when Billy departed there was no hint of a problem. Billy’s report,

however, was highly critical of Summerall’s command and the condition of the

Air Service units based there. Worse, he gave General Summerall no advanced

warning of the contents of his report. General Patrick tried to placate Summerall

by noting that the report was a largely conjectural exercise about a possible

future war, but his comments did little to soothe the general.

Mitchell also appears to have returned from his trip with a new stridency,

with renewed impatience. For reasons beyond Patrick’s control, the Air Service

had deteriorated between 1920 and 1923 in the quality of its aircraft and equipment, as well as in personnel strength. Mitchell returned to making pronouncements; often farseeing, imaginative claims that frequently failed to take into

account the real state of air power capability at the time. Such assertions were

especially visible in a speech in October to the National Aeronautical

Association, in which he represented Calvin Coolidge at the President’s request.

Mitchell thus placed himself on Coolidge’s personal black list. Additionally, he

agreed to write several articles on airpower and the future of air war for the

Saturday Evening Post. But, without asking Secretary of War Weeks, he went

directly to President Coolidge for permission. Secretary Weeks was left completely out of the decision-making process.

Other problems piled up. On September 14, 1924, Gen. John L. Hines, a

close friend of Pershing and veteran commander of the 4th Infantry Division

became the new chief of staff, while Maj. Gen. Dennis Nolan became Hines’s

deputy chief of staff. Hines’s assistant chief of staff was Brig. Gen. Hugh Drum.

As already seen, neither Nolan nor Drum had any love for Mitchell. Both would

lobby to have someone else replace him when his four-year-tour as assistant

chief of the Air Service came to an end. 

Then, during the Lampert committee hearings in January 1925, Mitchell

expressed his pent-up frustration. As usual, he demanded creation of an inde38
pendent air force and a department of national defense, but he also accused the

General Staff of suppressing testimony by officers before Congress and

described a cabal of special, vested interests denying proper defense to the

American people. Particularly infuriating to many, he rubbed more salt into

wounds by stating: “It is a very serious question whether airpower is auxiliary to

the Army and the Navy, or whether armies and navies are not actually auxiliary

to airpower.”

An infuriated Weeks demanded that Mitchell prove his charges. Billy submitted a “detailed and patronizing justification for his testimony,” but Weeks’s

patience had run out. While Patrick had recommended that Mitchell be reappointed as assistant chief of the Air Service, the secretary of war refused. Patrick

then selected Lt. Col. James E. Fechet, commander of the Advanced Flying

School in San Antonio, Texas, to replace Mitchell on April 26, 1925. Mitchell

39

Mitchell’s most dedicated opponent on the General Staff was Hugh A. Drum,

here shown as a major general. Drum was brilliant, but he had little use for

either an independent air force or for Billy Mitchell. His testimony at the

Morrow Board just prior to Mitchell’s courts-martial was a comprehensive statement of the traditional Army view of air power.
reverted to his permanent rank of colonel and became air officer of Eighth Corps

Area headquartered at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. His farewell was amicable. Mitchell bore no enmity for Mason Patrick, who had supported him for

three years and advocated his reappointment as assistant chief. And Patrick

remained a supporter. Speaking at Billy’s farewell, he “paid him high tribute,

saying that he believed that General Mitchell had done more for the Air Service

than, perhaps, any other man.”

It is unclear why Mitchell decided to speak out in the way that he did.

However, it seems logical that he was frustrated over what he saw as three years

decline in airpower, a situation that, in fact, continued to get worse. Congress

continued to cut Air Service appropriations, the Air Service continued to lose

personnel and equipment from an already inadequate and increasingly obsolescent force. Mitchell’s tours, especially that to the Pacific convinced him that the

United States was in greater danger than leaders at home realized, making the

lack of progress an even greater threat. Neither the War Department nor Mason

Patrick appeared—to him—to share his anxiety and sense of urgency. Finally,

the Lampert hearings gave him the opportunity to protest in public, and he did

so. Ultimately, it was not just Mitchell’s words that led him into trouble, but the

intemperance with which he used them. In the words of one historian, Mitchell

“was banished to the hinterland of the Air Service realm not only for what he said

and wrote, but also for the stridency of his tone and his unorthodox public

40

Among Mitchell’s friends was the great humorist, Will Rogers, sitting here on

the fuselage of Mitchell’s aircraft. Rogers dropped in unexpectedly during the

courts-martial to lend support.
approach.” Further, his statements were bold and sweeping and not always factual, something that would get him in trouble in the near future. 

Unfortunately, exile to Texas failed to keep Billy quiet. He published several articles and, in August 1925, a book, Winged Defense, which was little more

than a “hastily compiled collection” of previously published articles and speeches, illustrated inside the covers with newspaper cartoons that lampooned his

opponents, including Secretary Weeks. The book itself was disorganized and

repetitive, and poorly timed since Weeks was seriously ill.

Then, on August 31, 1925, three Navy flying boats took off from California

in an attempt to fly from San Francisco to Hawaii, a feat that had yet to be

accomplished. Mechanical problems downed two aircraft early in the flight, and

naval ships had to rescue their crews. Close to Hawaii, the third disappeared

completely. Several days later, it was finally found drifting and the crew rescued.

While the search for the missing seaplane was in progress, however, on

September 3 another disaster followed. The Navy had ordered the great dirigible

Shenandoah on a tour of Midwest at a time when sudden thunderstorms were

common. The dirigible was under the command of Mitchell’s friend, Lt. Cdr.

Zachary Lansdowne, the same officer who had stood on the deck of the

Henderson as Billy’s men sank the Ostfriesland. Near Caldwell, Ohio, the dirigible hit a powerful line squall that tore it apart, killing fourteen men, including

Lansdowne. 

41

Billy Mitchell, his second wife, Elizabeth Trumbull Miller, and his military aides

on their way to the Emory Building in Washington, DC, site of the court-martial.

Elizabeth’s wealthy father financed Mitchell’s defense.
On September 5, Mitchell called six local reporters into his office and

issued a statement that read in part: “These accidents are the result of the incompetency, the criminal negligence, and the most treasonable negligence of our

national defense by the Navy and War Departments.” This charge, as Billy knew

and intended, was something that the Department of War and the Coolidge

administration could not ignore.

A quiet investigation ensued, and Mitchell was ordered back to Washington

in September 1925, where he would stand courts-martial on the charge of “conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline and in a way to bring

discredit upon the military service.” Mitchell selected Congressman Frank Reid

to be his civilian defense counsel.

Before the court-martial convened, however, another significant development occurred. Embarrassed by the continuing controversy over an independent

air arm, President Coolidge determined to sort out the confusion over aviation

by appointing businessman Dwight Morrow to head a special board. Coolidge

intended to resolve some of the aviation questions that had dominated headlines

before the Mitchell court-martial assumed center stage, and, as a preventive measure, might also draw the fangs of Billy Mitchell. The Morrow Board was made

up of distinguished military and civilians selected to inspire the confidence of

the public, the Congress, and the military, and its conduct was the ultimate in

unsensational propriety.

42

At a dramatic moment in the court-martial, Mitchell, standing, looks to his left

as Elizabeth Mitchell reacts. Sitting on Mitchell’s right is his civilian defense

counsel, Congressman Frank Reed of Illinois. 
The usual cast of Army and Navy leaders testified before the Morrow Board,

but the star was Maj. Gen. Hugh Drum who put forth the Army argument against

an independent air force and for a combined arms team clearly and succinctly

with abundant evidence from the Great War. Maj. Gen. Mason Patrick presented the only new idea in a month of testimony by outlining his request for an Air

Corps similar to the Marine Corps. Mitchell appeared before the board on

September 29, but not as a sworn witness. Instead, he gave testimony without

interruption for questions. It was not the flamboyant Mitchell who sat in the chair

before the Board, however. Unaccountably, instead of calling on his dynamic

speaking ability, Mitchell read whole chapters from Winged Defense into the

record in a dull monotone, and Morrow, who could have stopped him at any time,

let him drone on and on. It thus became abundantly clear that Billy had nothing

new to say. And by not challenging Mitchell, Morrow prevented him from generating controversy. Thus, the Morrow Board—reporting after the Mitchell

court-martial began—presented stolid, unimaginative, and—perhaps most

important to the President—inexpensive recommendations that added minimum

additional cost to the budget. The Morrow report reassured the nation that it was

safe from aerial attack. It concluded that a clear separation should exist between

military and civilian aviation; specified that the Army and Navy would retain

their air arms; approved Patrick’s concept of an Army Air Corps; and advocated

a five-year buildup of the Army air arm.

Meanwhile, Mitchell’s career came to an end, though in many ways the courtmartial was more aftermath than central event. It was, however, one of the great

trials of the early twentieth century, ranking in its day with those of Sacco and

Vanzetti, Leopold and Loeb, John Scopes, and Bruno Hauptman. It had fireworks, especially, when Mitchell challenged the president of the court, Gen.

Charles Summerall, off the bench. And Billy’s defense team made every effort to

turn the event into a trial of airpower, not just of Mitchell. The Navy monitored

the event closely, and provided assistance to the Army prosecution team, proving

that the two services could work together when their interests dove-tailed. But in

the final analysis the verdict was a forgone conclusion. Mitchell was found guilty.

The sentence, on the other hand, was probably somewhat of a surprise. Cashiering

Billy had the potential of creating a martyr, something no one but his friends

wanted. Instead, the court sentenced him to five years suspension without pay.

And after review, President Coolidge reduced the sentence to five years on half

pay. The difference meant little to Mitchell. He lived beyond his means anyway

and could not afford go on half pay for five years, then return to active duty for

the three years he needed to reach retirement. On February 1, 1926, he resigned

from the Army. Other than howls from Mitchell supporters like the American

Legion and friends like Eddie Rickenbacker, public reaction was muted and shortlived. Congressman Fiorello La Guardia of New York introduced a bill limiting

the court-martial to the power of sentencing Mitchell for no more than thirty days.

Congressman Thomas Blanton of Texas, sought to abolish all peacetime courtmartials, restore Mitchell to brigadier general, and sentence Generals Drum and

Nolan as well as two members of the court to five-year suspensions.

43
Mitchell and his wife retired to their estate near Middleburg, Virginia, where

Mitchell enjoyed the life of a horseman and country gentleman. He still had to

make a living and tried for a time through writing and speaking. Both petered out

rather quickly. As it had become apparent during the Morrow Board, Mitchell

had little new to add to the discussion and resignation from the Army cut him off

from sources of new information. Besides, the Morrow Board addressed many

of the elements of the controversy—no matter how imperfectly—for the time

being, and both Congress and the public soon found the subject dull. Other concerns rose to importance, especially after the crash of the stock market in 1929.

Airpower ceased to be of interest or importance to a people plunged into the

depths of the Great Depression.

Mitchell himself increasingly moved toward long-range strategic bombing

as the key to successful war and adopted Douhet’s “vital centers” arguments

based on the Italian’s Ill Domino dell ‘Aria, and especially after the same theme

appeared in a neatly written, clearly organized work, Paris: On the Future of

War, which appeared in 1925. But Billy’s evolving beliefs had little real impact. 

Mitchell also looked into politics. However, his home state was Wisconsin,

his residence was in Virginia, and he maintained a home in Washington, complicating the matter. He had little real knowledge of Wisconsin issues or politics

and no political base within the state. Thus, he appears never to have seriously

considered running. A good Democrat, like his father, Mitchell gained considerable political capital with the party during the 1928 presidential election by

stumping across the country at his own expense for candidate Alfred E. Smith.

Smith lost, but Mitchell’s efforts placed him in good position in 1932, when

Franklin D. Roosevelt was a guaranteed winner. Billy had several talks with candidate Roosevelt and appears to have believed that he had been promised that

when the FDR was elected, he would revamp the U.S. defense system and create

a cabinet-level position for aviation that Mitchell would fill. In reality, FDR was

a brilliant practitioner of the politician’s art of telling people what they wanted to

hear. He gained Mitchell’s aid—Billy helped line up support for FDR from the

Virginia Democratic Party—but probably never had any intention of making

serious changes in U.S. defense policy, certainly not immediately. Further, as a

former assistant secretary, FDR accepted the traditional view that the U.S. Navy

was the nation’s first line of defense. He had also run up against Mitchell during

the Army-Navy controversies in 1919-1920. At the time of the courts-martial,

FDR told his son that he had little sympathy for the airpower advocate’s position.

Following the 1932 election, Billy lost access to the President. 

In 1933, Mitchell and his followers launched his last campaign to establish

an independent air force, but despite some political support inside Congress, the

effort made no headway. Its main impact may have been at the Air Corps Tactical

School at Maxwell Field, Alabama, where instructors like Maj. Harold George,

Lt. Kenneth N. Walker, and others were already busily polishing and openly

advocating a doctrine of long-range, strategic bombardment. These and other

young officers had a better practical sense of what was possible than had

Mitchell. They also enjoyed the promise of better bombers. The Boeing B–9 and

44
Martin B–10—low wing, all-metal monoplane bombers with every technological improvement available and twice the speed of those Mitchell had known—

were already in hand, and by 1935 the four-engine Boeing B–17 was already on

the horizon.

Billy did not live to see his ideas come to fruition. He took ill in January

1936 and entered a New York hospital. On the same day, the House Military

Affairs Committee began considering a bill to restore him to the Army’s retired

list as a colonel. The dilemma the committee members faced; however, was in

many ways the tragic one that Mitchell had created. How could they honor him

for the real services he had given the nation without seeming to condone his

methods? The measure failed. It was Billy Mitchell’s last disappointment before

his death on February 17, 1936.

* * *

Billy Mitchell is with us today—both as a symbol and in the practical results

of his campaign for independent airpower. The symbol is obvious. Mitchell

remains the single most famous, significant, and controversial figure in the history of American airpower. In the years following the court-martial and his early

death, and despite the efforts of many Army leaders to suppress his impact, Billy

became a martyr to the cause of independent airpower and to the mission of

long-range, strategic bombardment. He was the most prominent American to

advocate a vision of strategic airpower that would ultimately come to dominate

future warfare, and he remains the most prominent figure today.

Mitchell’s methodology, however, was self-defeating. His willingness to

appeal to Congress and the public outside the chain of command in the face of

rules, regulations, and direct orders offended those who should have been his

greatest backers. Inadvertently, Mitchell did spur naval air leaders toward their

goal of developing carrier aviation. They were successful in great part, because

leaders like Rear Adm. William A. Moffett—who headed the Bureau of

Aeronautics for eleven years until his death in the crash of the rigid airship U.S.S.

Akron in 1933—proved more adroit bureaucratic infighters than Mitchell’s temperament allowed him to be. If Mitchell was not the father of naval air, as some

have written, he was at least its godfather. Within the U.S. Army, it took the farsighted, mature, capable leadership of Maj. Gen. Mason Patrick to match that of

Admiral Moffett, his counterpart, and enable the Air Service to progress during

the 1920s. Mitchell’s vision of the future, however, more than offset his flaws; a

future that sustained the U.S. Army Air Forces and the fledgling U.S. Air Force

through their darkest hours.

Likewise, the practical result of Mitchell’s campaign is obvious. The U.S. Air

Force is Billy Mitchell’s physical legacy. Much of this success came through

Billy’s boys, the younger officers who heeded his message and remained committed to his cause. Mitchell’s vision remained alive in Air Corps headquarters under

its successive chiefs, Mason Patrick, Maj. Gen. James E. Fechet, and, somewhat

ironically, Mitchell’s old adversary, Maj. Gen. Benny Foulois, who became chief

in December 1931. The vision took a hiatus under Maj. Gen. Oscar Westover, who

became chief in 1935 and who held strong convictions that the air arm should

45
remain subordinate to the Army and under the control of the General Staff. Mitchell’s concepts, did not disappear, however, they simply shifted base to Langley

Field, Virginia, where Maj. Gen. Frank Andrews established GHQ Air Force in

that same year. Fiery proponents of independence and strategic bombardment on

his staff included Hugh Knerr and George Kenney, and they had a practical tool

to experiment with—the Boeing B–17 “Flying Fortress.” Perhaps Andrews’s

greatest service took place in 1939, however, when he escorted Maj. Gen. George

C. Marshall, soon to be Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, on a nine-day flying tour by B–17 of GHQ Air Force facilities across the nation, including the

Boeing production plant outside Seattle, Washington. Andrews and Marshall

became close friends, and the tour was a profound education on airpower for the

future Chief of Staff. In the words of writer DeWitt S. Copp, Andrews “guided his

perceptive and open-minded guest through the ambit of all that was embodied in

making a clenched fist out of airpower—everything from training to precision

bombing.” “Clenched fist”—shades of Billy Mitchell at the St Mihiel!

46

Maj. Gen. Mason M. Patrick’s great contribution to independent air power was

the establishment of the Army Air Corps, approved by President Coolidge on

July 2, 1926. Mitchell and his followers condemned the Air Corps as an ineffective half-way measure. The leaders of the new Air Corps in 1926 included left to

right General Patrick, Brig. Gen. James E. Fechet, Assistant Chief of the Air

Corps, and Brig. Gen. Frank P. Lahm, Commanding General of the Air Corps

Training Center at San Antonio, Texas. The other was Brig. Gen. William E.

Gillmore, Chief of the Materiel Division at Dayton, Ohio.
In the meantime, Mitchell’s vision also followed the career of one of his

strongest supporters and close personal friends, Henry H. “Hap” Arnold. With

Billy out of the picture after 1925, Arnold found himself de facto leader of the

independent air force faction, along with such close friends as Herbert Dargue,

Ira Eaker, and Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, another Mitchell favorite. But Arnold got

himself in trouble just after the Mitchell court-martial and a furious Mason

Patrick exiled him to Ft. Riley, Kansas. From limbo, Arnold quietly worked himself back into good graces. He remained as committed to an independent air

force and strategic bombardment as ever, but ceased being a visible advocate and

began working for change within the command system. In 1938, he became

chief of the Air Corps following Westover’s death in an aircraft accident. Arnold

thus guided the Army Air Corps through the build-up and modernization that

created the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1941, and he successfully wielded that

mighty weapon throughout World War II.

It is perhaps too much to say that, after the U.S. Army Air Forces’s great contributions to victory during that conflict, an independent air force was inevitable.

There was really no guarantee of independence following World War II. The

final step probably depended upon on one individual. George Catlett Marshall

recognized what was required and in 1943 directed his staff to prepare a study

for an independent air force that would follow the victory to come. 

In March 1946, another one of “Billy’s boys,” Gen. Carl Spaatz, replaced his

friend, Hap Arnold, as commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces. Under Spaatz’s

leadership began the postwar creation of an independent air force as a force-inbeing unprecedented in peacetime, a new entity that would provide a standing

military force alert to retaliate against an aggressor’s capacity to wage war.

Airpower would become the primary instrument of American foreign policy. On

July 26, 1947, President. Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act of

1947 creating a National Military Establishment including a Department of the

Army, a Department of the Navy, and a Department of the Air Force. Billy

Mitchell’s legacy, the U.S. Air Force, came into being on September 18, 1947. 

47
RECOMMENDED READING

Arnold, Henry H. Global Mission. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949.

Braim, Paul. The Test of Battle: The American Expeditionary Force in the

Meuse-Argonne Campaign. Newark: University of Delaware Press,

1987.

Cooke, James J. Billy Mitchell. Boulder, Co.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002.

________ . Pershing and His Generals: Command and Staff in the AEF.

Westport, Ct.: Praeger, 1997.

________ . The U.S. Air Service in the Great War. Westport, Ct.: Praeger, 1996.

Davis, Burke. The Billy Mitchell Affair. New York: Randon House, 1967.

Foulois, Benjamin D. From the Wright Brothers to the Astronauts. New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1968.

Grumelli, Michael F. “Trial of Faith: The Dissent and Court-Martial of Billy

Mitchell.” Ph.D. dissertation, 1991.

Hallas, James H. Squandered Victory: The American First Army at St. Mihiel.

Westport, Ct.: Praeger, 1995.

Hurley, Alfred H. Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power. Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1975.

Johnson, Herbert A. Wingless Eagle: U.S. Army Aviation through World War I.

Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001. 

Kennett, Lee. The First Air War, 1914-1918. New York: Free Press, 1991.

Maurer, Maurer, ed. The Air Service in World War I. 4 Vols. Washington, D.C.:

Office of Air Force History, 1978.

____________. Aviation in the U.S. Army, 1919-1939. Washington, D.C.:

Office of Air Force History, 1987.

Meilinger, Philip S., ed. The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of Airpower

Theory. Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1997.

Miller, Roger G. “The U.S. Army Air Corps and the Search for Autonomy,

1926-1943.” in

Rebecca H. Cameron and Barbara Wittig, eds. Golden Legacy, Boundless

Future: Essays on the United States Air Force and the Rise of

Aerospace Power. Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums

Program, 2000.

Mitchell, William. Memoirs of World War I: From Start to Finish of our

Greatest War. New York: Random House, 1960.

__________ . Our Air Force: The Key to National Defense. New York: Dutton,

1921.

__________ . Winged Defense. New York, G. P. Putnam, 1925.

Morrow, John H., Jr. The Great War in the Air: Military Aviation from 1909 to

1921. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1993.

de Seversky, Alexander. Victory Through Air Power. New York: Simon and

Shuster, 1942.

48
Tate, James P. The Army and Its Air Corps: Army Policy Toward Aviation, 1919-

1941. Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air University Press, 1998.

Trimble, William F. admiral William A. Moffett: Architect of Naval Aviation.

Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.

White, Robert. P. Mason Patrick and the Fight for Air Service Independence.

Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 2002.

49
50
Appendices

51
52
Appendix I

Mitchell: “Colonel” or “Brigadier General”?

No relationship exists between Billy Mitchell’s rank and the results of the

famous courtmartial in 1925. Twice during his career, Mitchell served as a temporary brigadier general, but the highest Regular Army rank he wore was

colonel, as of July 1, 1920.

The confusion over Mitchell’s grade has much of its origin in the U.S.

Army’s promotion system, which provided for temporary promotion to higher

rank to meet specific military needs, especially during wartime. The number of

regular officers in the peacetime Army was simply too small to command and

administer a force that by late 1918 was well over two million men strong.

Temporary rank had to be authorized for the duration of the conflict. Ultimately,

thousand of new officers were recruited from civilian life while thousands of

professional officers served in grades two or three higher than those they had

worn in peacetime. For most of World War I, Mitchell was actually a lieutenant

colonel (as of May 15, 1917), but on October 14, 1918, he pinned on the single

star of a brigadier general, a rank he held until after the end of hostilities.

Regular Army major general and brigadier general positions were strictly

limited by statute. Promotion was by seniority and few officers ever attained flag

rank. Wartime offered an opportunity to excel and the greatest award was promotion to one of the few Regular Army general slots. As noted in the text, Mason

Patrick advocated that Mitchell be promoted to brigadier general, but there was

simply too few positions available and these went to others who had also proven

themselves in combat. The price of not getting a promotion to a higher grade, was

a return the officer’s permanent grade. Again, as noted in the text, Mitchell’s rival,

Benny Foulois, was in effect a brigadier general at the top of the ship’s boarding

ramp when he returned from France and a major when he reached the bottom.

Following World War I, the National Defense Act of 1920, established the

Air Service as a permanent combatant force. The act authorized the new organization one permanent major general position and three colonel positions, but did

not provide for a permanent brigadier general slot. The War Department, however, had the option of authorizing temporary promotions to fill certain positions

where additional rank was required. Mitchell became the Assistant Chief of the

Air Service, and because of the position itself, he assumed the temporary rank

of brigadier general on July 16, 1920. When the War Department allowed

Mitchell’s appointment to this office to expire in 1925, he returned to his permanent rank of colonel.

The 1925 courtmartial suspended Mitchell from active duty for five years

without pay. Subsequently, President Calvin Coolidge reduced the sentence to

five years on half pay, but Mitchell elected to resign from the U.S. Army instead.

He was never reduced in rank as a form of punishment.

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In 1930, the 71st U.S. Congress passed a law that authorized all personnel

who served honorably during wartime to “bear the official title and upon occasions of ceremony to wear the uniform of the highest grade held by them during

their war service.” Thus, it became quite proper to refer to Billy Mitchell as a

brigadier general, his highest rank during World War I.

Further confusion appears to have been cause by an effort to have the U.S.

Congress posthumously promote Mitchell to the rank of major general in 1942.

This effort failed to follow the normal process, which called for the War and

Navy Departments to submit recommendations to the White House. The

President would then submit the names to the Senate for approval. The House

played no role in this process. The 1942 effort, however, began as a joint resolution approved by the Senate. This approach did require the approval of the

House, which was not forthcoming. The favorable vote by the Senate may have

been confused by some as being the final vote on confirmation, but it was not.

Mitchell’s proper title remains brigadier general.

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Appendix II

Mitchell: Medal of Honor Winner?

In the years following the famous 1925 courtmartial, many efforts have been

made to have the U.S. Congress honor the legacy and memory of Billy Mitchell.

Following World War II, Congress voted to give Billy Mitchell posthumous

award of a special medal that honored his notable services to the United States.

This medal, authorized on August 8, 1946, was presented to Mitchell’s son, Billy,

Jr., in 1948. 

There is one big “however.” The medal presented to Mitchell was not the

“Medal of Honor,” the highest decoration awarded military personnel for heroism in combat. Under U.S. law, this medal can only be awarded to an individual

who “distinguishes himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk

of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” And it can only be awarded for

actions that take place in wartime.

Congress has many times in its history voted to award a special medal to

honor victories or significant contributions to the nation. One such medal, for

example, was given to Gen. George Washington for his military success at

Boston against the British army in 1776. These special medals of honor are traditionally struck in silver or gold and are the noncombatant equivalent of the

Medal of Honor. This was the type of medal awarded by Congress to Billy

Mitchell.

The legislation authorizing the Mitchell medal requested that the President

of the United States “cause a gold medal to be struck, with suitable emblems,

devices and inscriptions, to be presented to the late William Mitchell, formerly a

colonel in the United States Army, in recognition of his outstanding pioneer service and foresight in the field of American military aviation.” The citation concluded that: “General Mitchell crusaded to achieve greater recognition of airpower as the major force on national defense.”

Three other special medals of honor have been struck to honor Air Force flyers for heroic efforts in other than combat situations. These were presented to

Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, Gen. Ira Eaker, and Brig. Gen. Charles “Chuck”

Yeager.

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56
Appendix III

Decorations and Awards

Spanish-American War:

Spanish War Service Medal (National Guard)

World War I:

Distinguished Service Cross —- G.O. 120, War Dept, December 4, 1918

CITATION:

For repeated acts of extraordinary heroism in action at Noyon, France,

March 26, 1918, near the Marne River, France, during July 1918, and in the St.

Mihiel salient, France, September 12 to 16, 1918. For display of bravery above

and beyond that required by his position as Chief of Air Service, First Army,

American Expeditionary Forces, setting a personal example to the United States

aviation by piloting his airplane over the battle lines since the entry of the United

States in the war, some instances being a flight in a monoplane over the battle of

Noyon on March 26, 1918, and the back areas, seeing and reporting upon the

action of both air and ground troops, which led to a change in our aviation’s tactical methods; a flight in a monoplane over the bridges which the Germans had

laid across the Marne during July 1918 which led to the first definite reports of

the location of these bridges and the subsequent attack upon the German troops

by our air forces; daily reconnaissances over the lines during the battle of St.

Mihiel salient, September 12 to 16, securing valuable information of the enemy

troops in the air and on the ground, which led to the excellent combined action

by the Allied air services and ground troops in this battle.

Distinguished Service Medal —- G.O. 87, War Dept. July 5, 1919

CITATION:

For exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services. As Air Service

commander, first of the advance and later of the First Corps, by his tireless energy and keen perception he performed duties of great importance with marked

ability. Subsequently as commander, Air Service, of the First Army, and, in addition, after formation of the Second Army, as commander of Air Service of both

armies, by his able direction of these vitally important services, he proved to be

a potent factor in the successes achieved during the operations of the American

armies. 

World War I Victory Medal with clasps for

Cambrai

Somme Defensive

Meuse-Argonne

Champagne-Marne

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Aisne-Marne

Oise-Marne

St. Mihiel

Defensive Sector

France:

Croix de Guerre with 5 Palms

Commandeur, de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur

Grand Officer de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur

Great Britain:

Companion of St. Michael and St. George

Italy:

Commander, Italian Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus

Grand Officer of the Order of the Crown of Italy

Medaglia Dell Guerra, 1915-1918

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