Billy Mitchell

:For the Twin Galaxies affiliated player see Billy Mitchell (Pac-Man).

Post-War Demotion

Returning to the United States in early 1919, Mitchell was appointed the deputy chief of the Air Service, retaining his one star rank. 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."

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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.

Related Topics:
War - Navy - Supercharger - Torpedo - Forest fires - Transcontinental - Air race

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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. In 1921, he successfully sank numerous ships, including one of the world's largest war vessels, the German battleship Ostfriesland and the U.S. battleship Alabama. This proved—at least to Mitchell—that surface fleets were obsolete. In 1922 he met the like-minded Italian air power theorist Giulio Douhet on a trip to Europe and soon after an excerpted translation of Douhet's The Command of the Air began to circulate in the Air Service.

Related Topics:
1921 - ''Ostfriesland'' - ''Alabama'' - 1922 - Giulio Douhet

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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 was mostly ignored.

Related Topics:
1924 - Hawaii - Asia - Japan - Attack on Pearl Harbor

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He also experienced difficulties within the Army, notably with his superiors Charles Menoher and later Mason Patrick, and in early 1925 he reverted to his permanent rank of Colonel and was transferred to Texas. 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.

Related Topics:
1925 - Colonel - Texas - Major General - Army Corps of Engineers - 1919

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