Mitchell, William “Billy”

(1879–1936)

General and Air Power Enthusiast

William “Billy” Mitchell was the most outspoken advocate in the United States of air power and an independent air force during the interwar period. Despite his eventual court-mar-tial and public resignation from the military, his ideas formed the central intellectual matrix for the U.S. Army Air Corps in the years prior to World War II. His theories influ-enced the strategic air bombardment campaign—the Combined Bomber Offensive, of World War II. Eleven years after his death, one of his goals, the creation of a sepa-rate U.S. Air Force, became a reality.

Mitchell, the son of a U.S. senator, was born into an influential Milwaukee, Wisconsin, family that had inherited money from that state's railroad and banking interests. Upon the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898, he used family connections to acquire a commission in the regular Army's Signal Corps, which was responsible for communications. He stayed in the Army after the war, rising to the rank of major. Mitchell took flying lessons on his own time and at his own expense. The investment paid off when Mitchell was named commander of the new aviation section of the signal corps in 1916.

He soon arranged a posting to Spain, a neutral nation in World War I, so that he could observe the war as closely as [Page 534]American neutrality permitted. Upon America's entry into the war in April 1917, Mitchell, now a lieutenant colonel, went immediately to France. He toured the Western front and quickly came to appreciate the possibilities of air power. Because Mitchell was one of the few American senior offi-cers in Europe at the time of America's entry into the war, his firsthand observations of the war were invaluable to American Expeditionary Forces commander Gen. John Pershing, who arrived in France two months later.

During World War I Mitchell became convinced that mastering the air was the key to the future of warfare. He rose to colonel and incorporated many of the ideas of Great Britain's most influential air power enthusiast, Sir Hugh Trenchard, in his work. As commander of the American First Army Air Service on the Western front, Mitchell began new air missions and used innovative tactics in support of ground operations, including pursuit (fighters), bombardment, and close air support. At the September 1918 battle of St. Mihiel, Mitchell organized more than 1,400 airplanes into the largest air armada to date. Mitchell's experiences at St. Mihiel and during the war more generally convinced him that air power would only reach its full potential if America followed the British pattern and created an independent air service. Otherwise, he believed, traditionalists in the Army and Navy would never fully consider the potential of aviation.

After the war Mitchell toured Europe to learn about other nations' plans for their air forces. In 1921 he was pro-moted to brigadier general and named assistant chief of the Air Service. He wrote a book, Our Air Force(1921), to bring his ideas to the American public. To prove his theories about the dominance of aviation to his fellow officers, he staged a number of aerial demonstrations designed to show that air power, not sea power, was the best for defending American shores. In the most famous case, he used custom-designed 2,000-pound bombs to sink a captured German battleship, the Ostfriedland. Mitchell's air attack sank the anchored, undefended ship, considered by several admirals to be unsinkable, in less than 30 minutes. Two years later Mitchell designed an even larger operation that used air power to sink three American battleships in succession.

...