Evening star., 1942-01-18

ranked in official breasts2 What here.
sizes did he utter to earn him the distinc-
ton OF the most impressive court.
martial, when rank is taken into con.
sideration, ever assembled in the history
of the United States and the sentence tc
be suspended from rank, command ano
duty for period of five years? Even a
lowliest private in a squad has rank
Col. Mitchell had none. Above him were
not only the Armys >12,462 officers. but
the 122, ,792 enlisted men as well.
The intervening years have dimmed
the memory of the statement that
brought the controversy between Col.
Mitchell and Army and Navy officials to
head. But a glance at it today pre-
cludes the possibility that it was the way
he said it and not what he said that
mattered. 1t oozes irreverence. The
choice of words is too precise to permit
any other interpretation than that he
meant every word.
Not all that he said was prophetic.
Perhaps he overstated at times, but it
was an age of overstatement. There
was the Navy official who, Col. Mitchell
recalled, was so contemptuous of the
power of an air bomb to sink battleship
that he offered to stand on the bridge
while q bombardment was going on.
There was the official opinion of the
Army general staff, expressed before a
congressional committee, that anti
aircraft weapons were so effective that
dozen 3-inch guns would be adequate to
protect Washington from hostile air
craft. Opinions were more dogmatic in
those days.
Col. Mitchell had many arguments
with War Department officials OF his
day over the growing importance of air
power. For his advocacy of separate.
air force at congressional hearings, in
opposition to official Army policy, he was
relieved as assistant chief of the Air
Service and sent to 9th Corps Area head
quarters at San Antonio as air officer, a
resounding demotion for the former head
of the Armys air forces in France in
1918.
Shortly before his final round, he pub
lished book, Winged Defense" on his
favorite and highly controversial sub
ject without securing approval or per-
mission from his superiors. 1t opens with
the statement:
"The former isolation of the United
States is thing of the past" and goes
on to say that the advent of air power
has completely changed all former
systems of national defense" and de-
clares that "the power of navies as a
fense has been relegated to secondary
position"
The crash of the Navy dirigible Shen-
andoah in a storm over Ohio September
3, 1925, with the loss of her commander
and l3 Of the crew, set the stage for the
final act. On Saturday morning, two
days later, Col Mitchell called in re-
porters to his high ceilinged Office in
the historic quadrangle at Fort Sam
Houston and handed them 6,000-page
statement, II typewriter pages of caus-
tic criticism of the handling Of avia-
tAOAl al VIC 1AAAAS oAAA
Explaining that he was prompted by
requests for an opinion from all parts
Of the country following the destruction
Of the Shenandoah and several recent
airplane flights ending in fatalities. Col.
Mitchells statement launched into a
bitter denunciation of the Navy and War |,
and left no room for doubt
that he had resolved to accept the con-
sequences of his act.
Almost REASONABLE"
"This statement is given out" he said,
Publicly by me after mature delibera-
ton and after a sufficient time has
elapsed since the terrible accidents to
our naval aircraft to find out something
about what happened. My opinion is as
follows:
"These accidents are the direct result
Of the incompetency, criminal negli-
gence and almost reasonable admin
istration of the national defense by the
Navy and War Departments. In their
attempts to keep down the development
of aviation into an independent de-
partment, separate from the Army and
Navy and handled by aeronautical ex-
perts, and to maintain the existing
systems, they have gone to the utmost
lengths to carry out their point.
"An aviation policies, schemes and
systems are dictated by the non-f1ying
officers of the Army or Navy, who know
practically nothing about it. The lives
Of the airmen are being used merely as
pawns in their hands"
Plunged headlong into his subject Col.
Mitchell asserted that the War and Navy
used Congress "as If 1t
we're an organization created for their
benefit, to which evidence of any kind,
whether true or not, can be given with
out restraint" Officers of these Serv-
Ices, he went on, gave incomplete, mis-
leading or false information" about
aeronautics, which either they knew to
be false when given or was the result
Of such gross ignorance of the question
that they should not be allowed to
appear before legislative body" Air
men themselves were "bluffed and bull
dozed" by threats to their future careers
to prevent their telling the truth and
deprived of future advancement unless
they subscribed to the dictates Of their
superiors, who either "distort
facts or openly tell falsehoods about
aviation to the people and to the Con-
gress," he continued.