The 1920s featured many famous trials such as Sacco/Vanzetti in Massachusetts and the Scopes trial in Tennessee. But none of them caught the public’s attention or influenced governmental policy as did the court-martial of Billy Mitchell.
Mitchell came from a wealthy Wisconsin family and enjoyed many privileges. He was a flamboyant personality who owned horses, played polo and frequently hunted. He dropped out of college during the Spanish-American War to join the Army. He saw service in the Philippines and decided to make the military his career. He became a pilot and led the fledgling Army Air Corps in World War I. Mitchell was given the temporary rank of brigadier general and he became convinced that the emergence of air power would make the other military forces basically irrelevant.
In 1921, during a demonstration in front of politicians and military brass, Mitchell’s squadron successfully bombed and sank a captured German battleship which the Navy had considered unsinkable. But the upper military echelon remained unimpressed and was weary of Mitchell’s high public profile. He was returned to his previous rank of colonel and assigned to Fort Sam Houston in Texas. For the next few years, Mitchell constantly wrote letters to his superiors, including the Secretary of the War Department and the Secretary of the Army, urging them to upgrade the air services. They had no effect and, in 1925, Mitchell wrote a book called “Winged Victory” to state his case.
At about the same time the book was published, the Navy, which had a large air wing, decided to score some publicity points in its bureaucratic squabbles with the Army Air Corps to obtain adequate funding. The Navy’s pride and joy was a huge blimp called the Shenandoah. It was sent on a cross-country trip across the nation and, at the same time, three Navy seaplanes were ordered to fly from Seattle to Hawaii. None of the seaplanes made it, and the Shenandoah got caught in a sudden storm and crashed in Ohio. The crashes resulted in the deaths of several of the flyers.
The disasters galvanized Mitchell into action. He issued a written statement that said, “These incidents are the direct result of the incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense by the Navy and War Departments.”
President Calvin Coolidge was outraged by the comments since they implied that he, as commander in chief, was unfit for the job. He ordered a court-martial under the 96th Article of War, which covered “all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.” Coolidge was a shrewd politician, and he knew the prosecution of the popular Mitchell could have some serious blowback for his administration. To forestall that, he set up an Aircraft Board to investigate the condition of the nation’s commercial and military aviation and chose his college friend, Dwight Morrow, to chair it.
The court-martial before a panel of nine generals, none of whom was an airman, lasted seven weeks. Their decision was a foregone conclusion as Mitchell repeated his statements in open court and even predicted that Japan would one day attack Pearl Harbor. He was found guilty and was suspended from active duty with no pay for five years. Coolidge changed that to half-pay, but Mitchell chose to retire from the Army effective Feb. 1, 1926.
A few weeks before that verdict, the Morrow commission issued its report. Mitchell was disappointed on reading it because it downplayed the future role of air power in the national defense. The report did recommend that a semi-autonomous air corps be created within the army and that there be an assistant secretary for aviation in the War and Navy departments. The report also advocated larger air power budgets.
Upon Mitchell’s retirement, the wealthy father of his second wife purchased a large property for the Mitchell family in rural Virginia. But Mitchell had always lived beyond his means and finances were a problem for the rest of his life. He died in January 1936. Many of his views on air power were vindicated during World War II, and he is still revered today by members of the Air Force. There is a statue of him at the Air Force Academy and Congress issued a special medal of honor in his name. His outspokenness and forward thinking were ahead of his time but history has proven them to have been prophetic.
Richard Szlosek lives in Northampton.