Information about Billy Mitchell

William (Billy) Mitchell
December 28, 1879 - January 19 1936 (aged -1879)
Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, United States Army Air Service
Nickname	"Billy"
Place of death	Died February 19, 1936
Allegiance	United States Army
Years of service	1897 - 1926
Rank	Major General {posthumous}
Commands	US Army Air Service
Battles/wars	Spanish-American War World War I *Battle of Saint-Mihiel
Awards	Distinguished Service Cross Distinguished Service Medal Congressional Gold Medal {posthumous}

For other people with the same name, see Billy Mitchell (disambiguation).

William Lendrum "Billy" Mitchell (December 28, 1879 – February 19, 1936) was an American general who is regarded as one of the most famous and most controversial figures in American airpower history. He is regarded as the father of the U.S. Air Force.

Early life

Born in Nice, France to John L. Mitchell, a wealthy Wisconsin senator and his wife, Mitchell grew up on an estate in what is now the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, Wisconsin. Alexander Mitchell, his grandfather, was the wealthiest person in Wisconsin for his generation and established what became the Milwaukee Road along with the Marine Bank of Wisconsin. Mitchell Park and the street Mitchell Boulevard were named in honor of Alexander.

Billy Mitchell attended Columbian College (now George Washington University), where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. He then enlisted as a Private at age 18 during the Spanish American War. Quickly gaining a commission due to his father's intervention, he joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He predicted as early as 1906, while an instructor at the Army's Signal School in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, that future conflicts would take place in the air, not on the ground.

After tours in the Philippines and Alaska Territory, Mitchell was assigned to the General Staff—at the time, its youngest member at age 32. He became interested in aviation and was assigned to the Signal Corps (the Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps was responsible for US military aviation until the establishment of the Army Air Service in 1918). In 1916 at age 38 he took private flying lessons because the Army considered him too old and too high-ranking for flight training.

World War I

On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany, and Mitchell, by then a lieutenant colonel, was immediately deployed to France. He collaborated extensively with British and French air leaders, studying their strategies as well as their aircraft. Before long, Mitchell had gained enough experience to begin preparations for American air operations. Mitchell rapidly earned a reputation as a daring, flamboyant, and tireless leader. He eventually was elevated to the rank of Brigadier General and commanded all American air combat units in France. In September 1918 he planned and led nearly 1,500 British, French, and Italian aircraft in the air phase of the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, one of the first coordinated air-ground offensives in history.

Recognized as one of the top American combat airmen of the war alongside aces such as Eddie Rickenbacker he was probably the best-known American in Europe—he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, and several foreign decorations, but nevertheless, alienated most of his superiors—both flying and non-flying—during his 18 months in France.

Post-war advocate of air

Returning to the United States in early 1919, Mitchell was appointed the deputy director of the Air Service, retaining his one star rank. It had been widely expected throughout the Air Service that Mitchell would receive the post-war assignment of Director of Air Service, but the Army chose an infantryman and commander of the Rainbow Division in France, Maj. Gen. Charles T. Menoher, to maintain operational control of aviation by the ground forces.

Mitchell did not share in the common belief that World War I would be the war to end all wars. "If a nation ambitious for universal conquest gets off to a flying start in a war of the future," he said, "it may be able to control the whole world more easily than a nation has controlled a continent in the past."

His relations with superiors continued to sour as he began to attack both the War and Navy Departments for being insufficiently farsighted regarding airpower. He advocated the development of bombsights, ski-equipped aircraft, engine superchargers and aerial torpedoes. He ordered the use of aircraft in fighting forest fires and border patrols and encouraged a transcontinental air race, a flight around the perimeter of the United States, and encouraged Army pilots to challenge speed, endurance and altitude records—in short, anything it took to keep aviation in the news.

Anti-ship bombing demonstration

Mitchell was concerned that the building of dreadnoughts was taking precious defense dollars away from military aviation. He was convinced that a force of anti-shipping airplanes could defend a coastline with more economy than a combination of coastal guns and naval vessels. A thousand bombers could be built at the same cost as one battleship, and could sink that battleship.^[1] Mitchell infuriated the Navy by claiming he could sink ships "under war conditions," and boasted he could prove it if he were permitted to bomb captured German battleships. The Navy reluctantly agreed to the demonstration, specifying strict guidelines so that they could carefully study the bomb damage. There would be a news blackout until all data had been analyzed at which point only the official news report would be released. Mitchell felt that the Navy was going to bury the results.

Mitchell assembled an air and ground crew of 125 aircraft and 1000 men and began training in anti-ship bombing techniques at Langley, Virginia. Alexander Seversky, a veteran Russian pilot who had bombed German ships in WWI, joined the effort, suggesting the bombers aim near the ships so that expanding water pressure from the underwater blasts would stave in and separate hull plates.

Mitchell held to the Navy guidelines for the first sequence of tests and successfully sank numerous ships, including the U.S. pre-dreadnought battleship Alabama. Finally, in late July, 1921 the Navy brought out the German WW1 battleship, Ostfriesland, considered unsinkable. Anticipating such a target, Mitchell had previously seen to the design and manufacture of 2000 lb. and 4300 lb. bombs, ordnances too large to be allowed in the guidelines. The bombs were loaded and heavy bombers scored two direct hits plus four more dropped in the water close enough to rip hull plates. The ship sank in 21 minutes, with one last bomb dropped on the foam rising up from the sinking ship.

Although Mitchell had stressed "war-time conditions", the tests were under static conditions and the sinking of the Ostfriesland was accomplished by violating agreed-upon rules that would have allowed Navy engineers to examine the effects of smaller munitions; Mitchell's airmen disregarded the rule and quickly sank the ship in a coordinated attack. This proved—at least to Mitchell—that surface fleets were obsolete. Later studies of the wreck of the Ostfriesland show she had suffered little topside damage from bombs and was actually sunk by progressive flooding which could have been stemmed by a fast-acting damage control party on board the vessel. Mitchell used the sinking for his own publicity purposes, though his results were downplayed in public by General of the Armies John J. Pershing who hoped to smooth Army/Navy relations. Still, the test was highly influential at the time, causing budgets to be redrawn for further air development and forcing the Navy to look more closely at the possibilities of naval airpower.^[2]

Promoting air power

In 1922 Mitchell met the like-minded Italian air power theorist Giulio Douhet on a trip to Europe and soon afterwards, an excerpted translation of Douhet's The Command of the Air began to circulate in the Air Service. In 1924, Mitchell's superiors sent him to Hawaii, then Asia, to get him off the front pages. Mitchell came back with a 324-page report that predicted future war with Japan, including the attack on Pearl Harbor. His report, published in 1925 as the book Winged Defense, foretold wider benefits of an investment in air power:

Those interested in the future of the country, not only from a national defense standpoint but from a civil, commercial and economic one as well, should study this matter carefully, because air power has not only come to stay but is, and will be, a dominating factor in the world’s development.^[3]

The book was little read outside the air power community.

Friction and demotion

Mitchell experienced difficulties within the Army, notably with his superiors Charles T. Menoher and later Mason Patrick, when he appeared before the Lampert Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and sharply castigated Army and Navy leadership. The War Department had endorsed a proposal to establish a "General Headquarters Air Force" as a vehicle for modernization and expansion of the Air Service, but then backed down before objections by the Navy, incensing Mitchell.

In March 1925 he reverted to his permanent rank of Colonel and was transferred to San Antonio, Texas, as air officer to a ground forces corps. Although such demotions were not unusual at the time—Patrick himself had gone from Major General to Colonel upon returning to the Army Corps of Engineers in 1919—the move was nonetheless widely seen as punishment and exile, since Mitchell had petitioned to remain as Assistant Director of the Air Service when his term expired, and his transfer had been directed by Secretary of War John Weeks.

Court-martial and later life

When the Navy dirigible Shenandoah crashed in a storm, killing 14 of the crew, Mitchell issued a statement accusing senior leaders in the Army and Navy of incompetence and "almost treasonable administration of the national defense." In 1925 he was court-martialed at the direct order of President Calvin Coolidge, found guilty of insubordination, and suspended from active duty for five years without pay (one of the officers who sat on the board of the court-martial was Douglas MacArthur). Mitchell resigned instead, as of February 1, 1926, and spent the next decade writing and preaching air power to all who would listen. However his departure from the service sharply reduced his ability to influence either policy or public opinion.

Mitchell viewed the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Navy man, as advantageous for airpower. He believed the new president might even appoint him as assistant secretary of war for air or perhaps even secretary of defense in a new and unified military organization. Neither ever materialized. Mitchell died of a variety of ailments including a bad heart and a massive and extreme case of influenza in a hospital in New York City on February 19, 1936 and was buried at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Posthumous recognition

• The North American B-25 bomber, utilized by Jimmy Doolittle to bomb Tokyo in 1942, was nicknamed the "Mitchell," after Billy Mitchell. The B-25 "Mitchell" is the only American military aircraft that has been named after a specific person.
• In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt, in recognizing Mitchell's contributions to air power, elevated him to the rank of major general (two stars) on the Army Air Corps retired list and petitioned the U.S. Congress to authorize a special gold medal for his services to the United States, which was awarded in 1946.
• In 1946, Mitchell was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, "in recognition of his outstanding pioneer service and foresight in the field of American military aviation."
• In 1955, the Air Force Association passed a resolution calling for the voiding of Mitchell's court-martial. His son petitioned in 1957 to have the court-martial verdict set aside, which the Air Force denied while expressing regret about the circumstances under which Mitchell's military career ended.
• The 1955 motion picture The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, directed by Otto Preminger, portrays Mitchell's plight in a dramatic yet vindicating light (Douglas MacArthur portrays himself in the movie, in a non-speaking role).
• General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is named after him, as is the much smaller Billy Mitchell airstrip in Cape Hatteras, NC.
• In 1967 the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee renamed its "Old Main" building after the Mitchell family.
• The cadet dining hall at the United States Air Force Academy is named after him.
• William (Billy) Mitchell High School (Colorado) in Colorado Springs, Colorado is also named after him, as is Mitchell Hall at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
• The Civil Air Patrol cadet program includes an award called the Billy Mitchell Award.
• The U.S. Air Force Pipes and Drums, which existed as a free-standing unit within the U.S. Air Force Band between 1960 and 1970, wore the Mitchell family tartan, in honor of Billy Mitchell.
• In 2004, Congress voted to reauthorize the President to commission Mitchell as a Major General in the Army, posthumously, which the President did in 2005 although President Franklin Roosevelt previously did this in 1942.
• In 1999, General Mitchell's portrait was put on an US airmail postage stamp.
• On May 18, 2006, the US Air Force unveiled two prototypes for new service dress uniforms, referencing the service's heritage. One, modeled on the United States Army Air Service uniform, was designated the "Billy Mitchell heritage coat" (the other was named for Hap Arnold). http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123020472
• Hap Arnold told reporters shortly after Mitchell's death, "People would often say Billy Mitchell was years ahead of his time but many would forget how it was also true."
• In 2007, the Air Force first awarded the Air Force Combat Action Medal, which is based on the insignia painted on Billy Mitchell's own aircraft during World War I.^[4]

References

Further reading

• American Airpower Biography: Billy Mitchell
• Cooke, James J. Billy Mitchell (2002)
• Cooke, James J. The U. S. Air Service in the Great War: 1917-1919. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-275-94862-5.
• Davis, Burke. The Billy Mitchell Affair. New York: Random House, 1967.
• Henrotin, Joseph. L'Airpower au 21e siècle: Enjeux et perspectives de la stratégie aérienne. Bruxelles: Emile Bruylant (RMES), 2005. ISBN 2-8027-2091-0.
• Hurley, Alfred H. Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power (revised edition). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975. ISBN 0-253-31203-5, ISBN 0-253-20180-2.
• Kennett, Lee. The First Air War, 1914–1918. New York: Free Press, 1991. ISBN 0-684-87120-3.
• Mitchell, William. Memoirs of World War I: From Start to Finish of Our Greatest War. New York: Random House, 1960.