Mitchell, Billy [William] (1879–1936), army officer, airpower theorist.Scion of a Wisconsin railroad and banking family, Mitchell was born in Nice, France, where his parents were vacationing. Enlisting as a private in the
Spanish‐American War, nineteen‐year‐old Billy was promoted to lieutenant as a result of an appeal by his father, John Mitchell, a U.S. senator. In 1901, he became a regular army lieutenant in the Signal Corps. Promoted to major, he was appointed chief of the Signal Corps' new aviation section in 1916.
In World War I, as a brigadier general, Mitchell organized and ably led the U.S. Army's fledgling Air Service in France. In addition to aerial pursuit, reconnaissance, and ground support, he experimented with mass bombing of enemy military formations and installations in the war zone. From this experience and his discussions with Sir Hugh Trenchard, head of the Royal Flying Corps, Mitchell became a champion of airpower.
In the early 1920s, as a war hero and assistant chief of the army's Air Service with headquarters in Washington, D.C., Mitchell campaigned for a large, independent air force. He used the new mass media, including motion pictures, to advance his program against the opposition of senior army and navy officers as well as cost‐cutting Republican administrations and Congress. Mitchell's planes dramatically sank captured naval warships in prearranged tests off the Virginia Capes in 1921–22, but his constant criticism led to his reassignment to Texas.
Even more outspoken in 1925, Mitchell was tried by a court‐martial for calling army and navy leaders criminally negligent and responsible for the deaths of aviators in outmoded aircraft. His trial, portrayed by the media as the martyrdom of a prophet standing alone against entrenched bureaucracy, was one of the most sensational of the decade. Found guilty, Mitchell was suspended from active duty for five years; instead, he resigned from the army in 1926.
As a civilian, Mitchell became even more strident in interviews, articles, and books. Much like Trenchard and the Italian airpower theorist
Giulio Douhet, Mitchell claimed that strategic bombing would be decisive in future wars, and as a deterrent to war, because it could bypass enemy fleets and armies to strike directly at the industrial and population centers of hostile nations. Mitchell died of a heart attack in 1936, but since the adoption of many of his ideas in World War II, he has been eulogized by the air force.
[See also
Air Force, Predecessors of: 1907–46;
Air Warfare.]
Bibliography
Alfred F. Hurley , Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power, 1964.
Burke Davis , The Billy Mitchell Affair, 1967.
Michael L. Grumelli
