Aeronautics: Old Song, New Audience

Last week William (“Billy”) Mitchell, once the youngest brigadier general in the Army, stood up before the House Post Office Committee and declared that the air arms of the Army, Navy, Treasury, Post Office, Department of Commerce and

Department of Agriculture should be unified in a Department of Aeronautics. He attributed the Army’s failure to fly the mail satisfactorily to the War Department’s “boneheadedness,” to bad equipment, to the flyers’ lack of proper experience. Billy Mitchell has been singing the same song ever since the War. With it he sang himself into the Washington spotlight and out of the Army eight years ago. His tune had grown so familiar that the country had wearied of it. But now, though the song was the same, the audience was different. Senate Majority Leader Robinson was echoing the call for unification. President Roosevelt himself was thinking about unification. And President Roosevelt was having Billy Mitchell to luncheon at the White House. U. S. expatriates in Nice, France, who read this news in their Paris Heralds last week could have stepped around to the Place Grimaldi and inspected on the door of an old house a bronze plaque which read: “Here was born William Mitchell, Brigadier General, United States Army Air Service. Dec. 29, 1879.” Born during a belated honeymoon, first of the seven children of U. S. Senator John Lendrum Mitchell of Wisconsin, Billy Mitchell did not see the U. S. until he was two years old. A growing boy, he could pop a tomato can at 100 ft. with his airgun, climb the tallest tree, ride the most fractious horse. At seven he made a successful parachute jump—out of a hayloft, clutching an umbrella. When the Spanish-American War came he enlisted as a private. A year later, at 19, he was a first lieutenant, youngest officer in the Army, chasing guerrillas at the head of 70 cavalrymen. At 24 he was the youngest Army captain by seven years. Meanwhile the Wright Brothers had got their flying contraption off the ground at Kitty Hawk. Billy Mitchell followed their doings and those of a onetime bicyclist named Glenn Curtiss with intense interest. In 1912 he got friends to take him up while he practiced bombing by throwing oranges at ground targets. Not until three years later did a transfer to the War College in Washington enable him to become an aviator by the fly-or-be-killed method. He was sent to Spain to learn if that country intended to fight on Germany’s side. U. S. entry into the War found him in Toledo. He hastened to Paris, was the first U. S. officer to fly over the lines. He dipped into his pocket for $2,000 to form what was the nucleus of the A. E. F. Air Force. No one was surprised when he was appointed its chief. Chief of Air Force Mitchell did not stay on the ground. He led his men on many a reconaissance and combat flight, piled up 2,500-odd hours of flying time. He was a potent factor in wresting control of the air, bit by bit, dog fight by dog fight, from the Germans. When Brigadier General Mitchell got home, his breast ablaze with medals, he was disgruntled because, although 3,000 of the touted new De Havilands had been manufactured, only 100 reached the front before Armistice. But that was behind; ahead was the next war, which he, as Assistant Chief of the Army’s Air Service in Washington, was sure would be settled in the air. He felt the Army and Navy air forces should be combined in one autonomous defense arm. The General Staff controlling military aviation he viewed as a hidebound, opinionated gang of groundlings who knew nothing about flying and he said so. The Navy and Navy-loving statesmen hated him because he declared that any battleship afloat could be sunk by bombing planes in a few minutes—a statement he was partially able to prove in tests off the Virginia Capes. By March 1925, he had made himself such a pestiferous gadfly about Washington on the subject of a united air force that another man was given his air corps job and he was reduced to a colonelcy and shipped off to Fort Sam Houston in Texas. The Shenandoah was torn apart in a storm. Three seaplanes started for Hawaii; two never got out of sight of land while one was forced down in mid-Pacific. Colonel Mitchell said the Shenandoah was 50% overweight, that its framework had been weakened months before the disaster when it wrenched loose from its mooring mast. He said the Hawaii flight was a botched publicity stunt. “These accidents,” he summed up, “are the direct result of the incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense hy the Navy and War Departments. The lives of the airmen are being used merely as pawns in their hands.” Later that year Colonel Mitchell was court-martialed for his free & easy talk against his superiors. After a trial that turned into a circus he was found ”guilty of conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline” and sentenced to be “suspended from rank, command and duty with forfeiture of all pay and allowances.” All his friends and some of his enemies thought he had been “railroaded” for speaking his mind on national defense. President Coolidge later restored half his colonel’s pay. Billy Mitchell answered by resigning from the Army. Billy Mitchell retired to “Boxwood,” a 120-acre estate near Middleburg. Va., 40 mi..from Washington, turned energetically to gentleman farming. The country may have forgotten Farmer Mitchell but Farmer Mitchell had not forgotten U. S. aviation. He -wrote articles for Liberty, Aeronautics, Satevepost. The Hearst papers clamoring for a sky black with U. S. warplanes, gave him a ready ear. He could see no difference in administration sentiment after Herbert Hoover was inaugurated. But in 1931, while he was predicting that Japanese planes would soon be streaking for Alaska, he made another prophecy: that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be the next U. S. President. Thus enrolled in the select “For Roosevelt Before Chicago” band, Billy Mitchell after Chicago wrote and talked to help elect the Democratic nominee. When Franklin Roosevelt went into the White House Billy Mitchell’s dark eyes burned. Here was a man who would listen. Of this he was triply convinced when the domestic airmail contracts were canceled and uproar began in Washington. Billy Mitchell hastened up from “Boxwood,” soon began to make front-page headlines remindful of 1925. To the House Military Affairs Committee he said: “My old program was defeated because merchants were running the Government. Merchants are people who sell things. I think President Hoover was a merchant. Aircraft manufacturers are merchants.” Along with Charles Lindbergh, Clarence Chamberlin and Eddie Rickenbacker he was invited as an expert to testify before the Senate Committee weighing new airmail legislation, told it U. S. aviation was ten years behind. At a Manhattan luncheon he said: “The Curtiss-Wright Corp. and the United Aircraft & Transport Corp. between them control the aviation industry of the U. S. . . . They present a united front to any third party, including the Government of the U. S. . . . Neither . . . has been responsible for the introduction or adoption of any actual improvement in aircraft or aircraft engines.” Curtiss-Wright sued Billy Mitchell for $200,000 damages. Last week Billy Mitchell was once more singing his old song from the centre of the stage to a packed audience. But, what was more important, he stood as good a chance as any man in the U. S. of heading a Federal Department of Aeronautics if and when President Roosevelt is ready to create one.