Airpower Pioneers: From Billy Mitchell to Dave Deptula

By Naval Institute Press

Airpower Pioneers studies twelve especially influential airmen, detailing their impact on the evolution of the United States Air Force (USAF). Rather than focus on command in a series of air campaigns, this book describes the personal qualities and careers of people who distinguished themselves first and foremost by advancing airpower theory, doctrine, and strategy, and in certain cases by implementing significant organizational changes in the USAF structure. Some held important positions during wartime, but except for a few who excelled in both combat and peace, those selected for inclusion in this volume made their main contributions to advancing aerospace power away from the front line as planners, organizers, educators, and strategists. The future of aerospace power requires airmen not only to push the limits in combat but also to emphasize, publicly and frequently, what is special and vital about airpower. The distinctive characteristics of airpower—speed, range, flexibility, precision, and lethality—have improved with every new generation of aircraft and weapon systems. The history of modern warfare is full of empirical evidence of airpower’s relevance. Looking ahead, the main challenge for air forces all over the world is to match advances in technology with new ideas. All air forces need visionary men and women whose reach exceeds their grasp, who are determined to adapt to new security and defense realities rather than adhere to romanticized ideas of yesteryear, and whose organizational skills ensure successful implementation of new ideas despite inevitable resistance to change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781682478134

Book preview

Preface

This book completes a trilogy of anthologies published by U.S. Naval Institute Press on airpower in its wider context. The first, Airpower Reborn: The Strategic Concepts of John Warden and John Boyd (2015), offers a conceptual approach to warfare that emphasizes airpower’s unique capability to achieve strategic effects. It looks beyond the land-centric, battlefield-oriented paradigm that has continued to dominate military theories and strategies long after airpower began offering new options. The book acknowledges the essential role of advanced technology in improving airpower capabilities but emphasizes that air services must cultivate and harness the intellectual acumen of airmen and encourage officers and enlisted personnel to think conceptually and strategically about the application of aerospace power.

The second in the trilogy, Airpower Applied: U.S., NATO, and Israeli Combat Experience (2017), reviews the evolution of airpower and its impact on the history of warfare. Through a critical examination of twenty-nine case studies in which various U.S. coalitions and Israel played significant roles, this book offers perspectives on the political purpose, strategic meaning, and military importance of airpower. The case studies give military professionals insight into the political context in which air operations must be assessed and serve as a guide to the best uses of this potentially decisive tool.

This third anthology, Airpower Pioneers: From Billy Mitchell to Dave Deptula (2023), profiles a selection of American airmen who made significant contributions to advancing airpower thought and application. It includes individuals from the United States Air Force (USAF) and its predecessor organizations who dedicated their careers to transforming the United States into an aerospace nation. The book centers on intellectual leadership and organizational reform and the development of concepts and ideas. By focusing on extraordinary individuals and their times over a one hundred–year period, it also aids understanding of how airpower has developed into a leading element in maintaining national security.

Airpower Reborn, Airpower Applied, and Airpower Pioneers—emphasizing theory, history, and personalities, respectively—seek to advance awareness of airpower’s past to set the direction for furthering the profession. The complete trilogy, or any of the individual volumes, should be of interest to members of the armed forces as well as to general readers and students of military history, particularly those seeking deeper understanding of the utility of airpower as a national instrument of force. The books are intended to engage both a specialist and wider audience, spanning military professionals; scholars and experts in the field of military studies; students of airpower history, theory, and strategy; and faculty and students at both military and civilian colleges and universities.

I am indebted to my fellow authors who agreed to participate in this book project. Their professionalism and constructive engagement have ensured that producing the text was a very rewarding process. I am particularly thankful to Phillip S. Meilinger for a series of brainstorming sessions; his understanding of airpower is unique. I am grateful to series editor Paul J. Springer and to Padraic Carlin, Ashley Baird, and the rest of the team at the Naval Institute Press for their expertise and productive collaboration, ensuring a smooth transition from idea to publication. I would like to acknowledge the Air Force Historical Research Agency for contributing photos. I am also beholden to my colleagues at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies for inspiration and encouragement. Finally, I am once again obliged to Margaret S. MacDonald for extraordinary editorial competence and support.

John Andreas Olsen

Oslo, Norway

Introduction

Airpower Profiles

John Andreas Olsen

The birth of powered flight at Kill Devil Hills on December 17, 1903, initiated by two bicycle shop owners, ushered in a new era for humankind. The high ground quickly became the sky, and then space itself, requiring a new kind of warrior to take advantage of the opportunities offered by this seemingly unlimited warfighting dimension. These warriors had to think and act differently than their counterparts in the traditional and more familiar land and sea domains. They realized intuitively that you cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore. Advances in technology extended the airmen’s reach far beyond terrestrial borders and enabled aircraft to deliver effects in minutes or hours rather than weeks or months. In the hands of capable and daring airmen, the tyranny of time and distance was vanquished. The founding of the United States Air Force (USAF) on September 18, 1947, was another pinnacle moment, answering the need for an independent service to advance the airpower profession. While far younger than the Army and the Navy, the Air Force has become the sharpest and most responsive instrument of force. As with any organization, even one founded on innovation and high technology, it is the USAF’s people and thought leaders who ensure progress and relevance.

Most of us would like to know more about the people who influenced history and how they made a difference. Reading about the life and times of a successful or remarkable person can be an inspirational, educational, and, in some rare cases, life-altering experience. As we learn about the challenges that others have overcome, we can make connections to our own lives and careers.¹ Well-researched biographies of airmen—written by experts who can provide scholarly rigor, historical accuracy, and situational context—are therefore an essential part of the historiography of airpower and the military profession itself. An understanding of those who contributed to advancing military aviation in the past could inspire the next generation of airmen to apply their own insights to their profession and perhaps exert equal or even greater influence in the future.

Airpower Pioneers studies twelve especially influential airmen, detailing their impact on the evolution of the USAF. Tracing their stories over time, the book shows how, why, where, and when these visionaries left their mark. Rather than focus on command in a series of air campaigns, this book describes the personal qualities and careers of people who distinguished themselves first and foremost by advancing airpower theory, doctrine, and strategy and, in certain cases, by implementing significant organizational changes in the USAF structure.² Some held important positions during wartime, but, except for a few who excelled in both combat and peace, those selected for inclusion in this volume made their main contributions to advancing aerospace power away from the front line as planners, organizers, educators, and strategists. The airmen chosen are a mixture of well-known personalities who merit renewed attention and less known, previously unsung thought leaders.

Synopsis: Twelve Remarkable Airmen

Each of the book’s twelve case studies offers insights into the background and character traits of the individual discussed, describing his early years and career progression, how he arrived at certain ideas, and how these ideas were implemented and ultimately shaped the application of air-power. The authors have consulted a wide variety of primary and secondary sources to anchor their respective research within other works about the selected individuals. They also account for the controversial and contentious issues that dominated the times of the particular airman described, including assessments of rival personalities and opposition, as well as team efforts that led to new ideas. The order of the twelve chapters is roughly chronological, according to the time frame during which these men served or made their conceptual and organizational impacts. Thus, while the individual thought leader is at center stage, he is also a vehicle for telling a wider story of how aerospace power has developed. The book highlights both how airpower changed the conduct of war and how creative, strong-minded individuals can make a difference.

Brigadier General William Billy Mitchell

It is natural to start with the most famous and contentious figure in the history of American airpower. Billy Mitchell was a respected commander and a man who seized the chance to be America’s first combined force air component commander in 1918. He was the first prominent American to espouse publicly a vision of an independent air force and strategic airpower that would dominate future war. He believed that aircraft were inherently offensive, strategic weapons that revolutionized war by allowing direct attack on an enemy country’s vital centers—that is, the key industrial areas that produced armaments and equipment so necessary in modern war. Mitchell was a daring, flamboyant, and outspoken leader who was court-martialed, found guilty of insubordination, and suspended from active duty for five years without pay. While he was revered by many as a martyr for his cause, others would argue that his use of the press and his lack of hesitation about playing off Congress, the president, the Army, and the Navy against one another was unacceptable. For Mitchell, sensationalism was gratifying but also a means of drawing attention to his farsighted ideas on aviation. Mitchell was a man with a mission and a true pioneer of modern aviation but remains one of the least-understood figures of modern military history. Through his crusade, he is the starting point for any discourse on the utility of airpower.

General Henry Harley Hap Arnold

Commanding general of the Army Air Forces during World War II, this visionary five-star general established the enduring technological and scientific tradition of today’s USAF. One of the first Army pilots and then a protégé of firebrand Billy Mitchell, Arnold embodied the close linkage between airpower technology and training and their applications to doctrine. His relationships with aeronautical scientists, aviation engineers, and industrial moguls created the military-industrial-academic support structure that still underlies today’s U.S. air and space forces. Arnold’s characteristic sheepish grin could not camouflage his demanding—sometimes explosive—leadership style, which was often a result of the wartime pressure of expanding the infant Army Air Corps into the massive Army Air Forces—consisting of 2.4 million airmen and nearly 300,000 planes—in less than five years. With top cover from the Army chief of staff, General George C. Marshall, Arnold patiently and deliberately resisted pressure of military aviators and his own desire to establish an independent air force until victory over the Axis powers was assured. At war’s end, after suffering multiple heart ailments while remaining on active duty, Arnold saw his vision for an independent U.S. Air Force realized in 1947. Left to carry the torch for strategic air and space power were commanders and advisors groomed under his reign. Arnold had a genius for accomplishing great things and inspiring others to do likewise.

Major General Haywood S. Hansell Jr.

Possum stands in the front rank of airpower theorists and planners. While on the faculty of the Air Corps Tactical School (ACTS) in the mid-1930s, Hansell recognized the interconnectivity of modern industrial economies and argued that they were vulnerable to disruption by aerial bombing. He helped develop the industrial web concept that turned abstract theory into executable strategy. Following his tour at ACTS, Hansell was instrumental in setting up an air intelligence branch. He made his most notable contribution while assigned to the nascent Air War Plans Division in the summer of 1941. The Roosevelt administration had requested a munitions requirement plan to defeat our potential enemies. In nine days Hansell and three former ACTS colleagues produced Air War Plans Division (AWPD)-1, the strategic blueprint for the American air war against Germany. He also crafted the successor plan, AWPD-42, and forged cooperation with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Combined Bomber Offensive. Hansell held important frontline commands but was less successful in that role. Hap Arnold relieved him as commander of XXI Bomber Command in the Marianas during the strategic bombing of Japanese cities and sent him back to the United States to exercise his primary talent: training and educating airmen. In retirement Hansell became a fierce defender of American airpower’s contribution to victory in World War II, writing and lecturing widely right up to his death in 1988.

General Hoyt S. Vandenberg

Van was an outstanding planner, staff officer, diplomat, and commander during World War II, finishing his active-duty career as commander of Ninth Air Force, the largest tactical air unit in history. Following the war, he served as Army intelligence chief and then as director of the Central Intelligence Group (which became the Central Intelligence Agency) and as the first USAF vice chief of staff. He next became chief of staff (CSAF), a position he held for five years (1948–1953), the longest tenure to date of any USAF chief. His term spanned the Berlin Airlift, formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Korean War, and the move to an all-jet Air Force. He played an important role in the formation of national-security policy and the organizational structure of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). Vandenberg embodied the superb blend of leader and manager that the new service needed if it was to become a smoothly functioning organization. Facing the formidable task of establishing and managing an infant service, Vandenberg was an effective member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Despite his youth (at the time he was the second-youngest full general in American history) and the still-evolving structure of the USAF, he was extremely effective in convincing not only the public but also Congress and the president to view airpower as the first line of American defense.

General Curtis E. LeMay

One of the icons of American military history, LeMay was a unique, larger-than-life figure. Upon America’s entry into World War II, he was sent to Europe as a lieutenant colonel to lead a bomb group and three years later had become the nation’s youngest major general. He had a remarkably practical and creative mind and devised the tactics employed by the Eighth Air Force in bombing enemy targets in Europe. Consequently, he was then chosen to head the B-29 attacks against Japan. During the Berlin crisis of 1948 LeMay was tapped to lead SAC, which he commanded for nine years—an unprecedented tenure—and with such flair that he became Mr. Atom Bomb personified. His relentless emphasis on realistic training and in-flight discipline shaped SAC into one of the most effective and respected military units in the world. Today this longest-serving four-star general in USAF history is remembered as a great combat commander during World War II and an unparalleled leader of SAC but a merely competent Air Force vice chief of staff (1957−1961) and then CSAF (1961−1965). His outspoken criticism of the Vietnam War strategy led to his retirement in 1965, but, assessed against the criteria for airpower advocacy, integrity and honesty, lifetime achievement, principled positions against political opposition, and performance as member of the JCS, LeMay was an exceptional airpower pioneer.

General Bernard A. Schriever

Best known as the father of the USAF’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programs, throughout his postwar career, which began when Hap Arnold appointed him as the new service’s first scientific liaison, Bennie Schriever was a champion of forward-leaning technological development in the Air Force. The service turned to him to reorganize the development of the high-priority but troubled Atlas ICBM program; he went on to lead the Thor and Titan missile programs and then the development of the solid-fueled Minuteman—which became the backbone of the U.S. ICBM force through the 2020s—while also successfully advocating that the USAF establish a separate division for its space programs. Schriever’s organizational innovations to accelerate research and development and manage weapon systems as more than the sums of their parts ultimately spread throughout the USAF and the rest of the Department of Defense. Becoming the first commander of Air Force Systems Command in 1961, he was responsible for all U.S. military space programs and for research, development, and acquisition of all new weapons used by the USAF and launched programs ranging from new types of transport aircraft to early generations of precision-guided munitions. Missileman Schriever, as he was referred to on the front cover of Time magazine, not only produced an ICBM force in record time but also led the way to American dominance in space.

Lieutenant General Glenn A. Kent

As analyst, strategist, and mentor to generations of airmen, Kent was one of the most influential officers guiding the development of the USAF in the 1960s and 1970s. His work on nuclear-weapons planning and strategy shaped U.S. policy on force structure and arms control through the second half of the twentieth century. Kent initiated and helped establish the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff, which oversees development of U.S. nuclear war plans. His study on damage limitation led to a fundamental and enduring shift in U.S. policy for deterrence and laid the basis for the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and nuclear arms limitation and reduction treaties. Under Kent’s leadership, the USAF’s Office of Studies and Analysis (OSA) developed the first generation of computer-simulation models. With these, OSA conducted analyses that were instrumental in informing such major USAF modernization initiatives as the F-15 and F-16 fighters, the E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar (JSTARS) aircraft, numerous guided-munitions programs, and the USAF’s overseas basing posture. Kent also pioneered and formalized an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to developing and evaluating novel operational concepts, focusing innovation on the most pressing challenges facing U.S. national security. Working quietly, responsibly, and consistently for decades, Kent was the quintessential intellectual leader of his times on nuclear strategy.

General David C. Jones

Reformer, supreme organizer, and proponent of jointness, General Jones served for four years as CSAF and four years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) under Presidents Carter and Reagan. As CSAF, having flown and commanded both bomber and fighter wings, Jones worked determinedly to advance the F-15, F-16, and A-10 programs. During his second term as CJCS, he set out to make the chairman the primary military adviser to the president and the secretary of defense, arguing that such a change would improve the quality and aptness of military advice. Jones continued his efforts after retirement and saw them come to fruition with the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986. Jones worked persistently through his time as CSAF and CJCS to strengthen relations with the Army and improve doctrine and coordination between the two services. Veteran of World War II, the Korean conflict, and the Vietnam War, Jones remains the longest-serving member on the JCS. With General LeMay as his teacher, the oft-forgotten Jones in turn mentored Wilbur L. Creech, a symbolic representation of the transitional bridge between the old SAC and the prominence of the Tactical Air Command (TAC).

General Wilbur L. Creech

During his tenure as commander of TAC from 1978 to 1984, Bill Creech was the heart and soul of the effort to rebuild the USAF after the disastrous war in Vietnam. He improved Red Flag training exercises by increasing their realism and by inviting allied aircrews to participate, recognizing that American airmen would fight in a coalition context in any future war. He also moved to develop new measures for enabling the opening of a medium-altitude air-attack window so that aircraft might be more survivable in the face of heavy enemy defenses. He did so through such innovations as jam-proof radios, improved anti-radiation missiles, and electro-optical and laser-guided precision munitions. Through such efforts, he championed the rollback doctrine that stressed the suppression of enemy air defenses as any campaign’s priority. He also revitalized operational readiness, decentralized force management, and stressed the importance of instilling pride and integrity in service. In addition, he mentored and supported the advancement of a number of his most promising subordinates who then followed him as key Air Force leaders. Through such initiatives Creech was the main player during the first decade after Vietnam in pressing for a more-effective application of airpower. In essence, Creech left an enduring mark on the USAF’s evolution in terms of its training, leadership development, equipment, organizational style, and concepts of operations.

Colonel John A. Warden

Architect of the concept underlying the Desert Storm air campaign, Warden is one of the most influential American airpower thinkers since World War II. He is also one of the most controversial officers in the Air Force. An outspoken advocate of using airpower as the dominant and decisive element in a military campaign, rather than merely as support to the ground commander’s scheme of maneuver, Warden had acquired a reputation as a radical thinker by the late 1980s. His Five Rings Model and theory of strategic paralysis stood in stark contrast to the then-dominant AirLand Battle doctrine espoused by TAC leadership. Warden developed a nearly messianic drive to proselytize airmen mired in conventional thinking, played a significant role in conceiving a new approach to the conduct of warfare, helped restore air campaign planning and theory to the forefront of the USAF agenda, and encouraged a new generation of Air Force officers to think about airpower. His key concepts—strategic focus, leadership-oriented inside-out operations, parallel warfare, and bombing for functional effect—have since become common within the USAF and a key subject at military universities throughout the world. As theorist, strategist, wartime planner, intellectual leader, agent of change, and educator Warden remains the symbol of the renaissance in aerospace thinking that took place in the 1990s and continues to this day.

General Merrill A. McPeak

CSAF during Operation Desert Storm, Tony McPeak conceived and then, together with Secretary of the Air Force Donald B. Rice, executed the most extensive reorganization in the service’s history. In implementing the doctrine of Global Reach—Global Power, McPeak oversaw the disestablishment of SAC, TAC, Military Airlift Command, Air Force Systems Command, Air Force Logistics Command, and Air Force Communications Command, with assets transferred primarily to the newly established Air Combat Command, Air Mobility Command, Air Force Materiel Command, and the then–Air Force Communications Agency. As the fourteenth CSAF, McPeak led the Air Force for four years during its most tumultuous period in decades, overseeing a downsizing by nearly one-third, which caused him to reexamine basic questions regarding the USAF’s roles, mission, vision, organization, and force structure. An admirer of General Creech, McPeak aimed to streamline and emphasize operations and combat readiness. He also implemented the Air Force Expeditionary Wing concept, a fusion of combat forces and support into a single organization. McPeak’s legacy is one of controversy; he was ridiculed for sweeping changes to the service dress uniform; the introduction of Quality Air Force received mixed reviews; and he was at times accused of ignoring the needs of nonflying officers and enlisted personnel, giving priority to single-seat fighter pilots. Except for General LeMay, McPeak is the only CSAF who has published extensive memoirs—The Aerial View Trilogy.³

Lieutenant General David A. Deptula

The twenty-first-century reincarnation of Billy Mitchell, Deptula has been tirelessly educating the members of the armed services about the unique characteristics and benefits of aerospace power for thirty years. His transition from fighter pilot to airpower champion occurred when he worked for the secretary of the Air Force in 1990 on Global Reach—Global Power, the seminal document that charted the relevance of airpower in the post–Cold War era.⁴ Deptula tested his theories in the crucible of war during Desert Storm in 1991, becoming the driving force that transformed strategy and targeting into action. His Master Attack Plan drove the tempo of the war both on the ground and in the air. He went on to influence not just the USAF but militaries around the world as well in shifting focus from strategies concentrating on creating the maximum destruction to strategies aimed at achieving desired effects with minimum damage to the enemy’s infrastructure and civilian population. Deptula went on to transform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance as well as drone operations from systems and cultures that had remained essentially unchanged since the Cold War and make them relevant to the twenty-first century. According to former CSAF General David L. Goldfein, as head of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies Deptula has become the conscience of the Air Force, and his institution is now America’s premier think tank for aerospace issues.

In the following pages the authors scrutinize the careers and personalities of these prominent air-minded leaders and strategists, and in the process they explain how the United States became and remains the world’s leading aerospace nation. It is a story of progress but, as with life itself, one that does not lend itself to neat and linear steps. Times of confusion and discouragement are interwoven with advancement and accomplishment. The book’s underlying hypothesis is that the USAF has stayed relevant for its seventy-five years of existence because thought leaders have been committed to the purpose and principles of airpower while at the same time adapting as necessary to new technology and changing geopolitical realities. The recipe of future success for any air force lies in its officers and enlisted personnel having a profound understanding of the profession of airpower itself, a proper comprehension of the new strategic environment in which it will operate, and an ability and willingness to develop new ideas and better concepts.

Notes

1. Excellent histories can be found in Phillip S. Meilinger, Airmen and Air Theory: A Review of Sources (Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 2001); John L. Frisbee, Makers of the United States Air Force (Washington, DC: Air Force History Museums Program, 1996); and Walter J. Boyne, Beyond the Wild Blue: A History of the U.S. Air Force (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997).

2. In comparison, John Andreas Olsen, ed., Air Commanders (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2012), centers on individuals and their command and leaderships in specific air campaigns. It offers profiles of generals Carl A. Spaatz, George C. Kenney, Otto P. Weyland, Curtis E. LeMay, William H. Tunner, George E. Stratemeyer, William W. Momyer, John W. Vogt Jr., Charles A. Horner, Michael E. Ryan, Michael C. Short, and T. Michael Moseley. The only subject included also in Airpower Pioneers is General LeMay, whose contribution was significant both in World War II and in peacetime, particularly as commander of Strategic Air Command (1948–1957), but also as vice chief of staff (1957–1961) and chief of staff (1961–1965).

3. See General Merrill A. McPeak (ret.), Hangar Flying (Lake Oswego, OR: Lost Wingman Press, 2012); Below the Zone (Lake Oswego, OR: Lost Wingman Press, 2013); and Roles and Missions (Lake Oswego, OR: Lost Wingman Press, 2017). See also Curtis E. LeMay, Mission with LeMay: My Story, with MacKinlay Kantor (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965).

4. U.S. Department of the Air Force, The Air Force and U.S. National Security: Global Reach—Global Power (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Air Force, 1990).

1

Brigadier General William Billy Mitchell

Visionary Firebrand

Richard P. Hallion

Brigadier General William Billy Mitchell stands tall in the pantheon of American air personages. Next to Charles Lindbergh, Mitchell was the second-most influential of all interwar American aviation personalities, a man obsessed with flight who approached it as a crusader, an evangelist, and ultimately a martyr. Moreover, he had the saving grace to be right.¹ During the Great War, he proved a brilliant air leader. He looked after his airmen with a mix of professional interest and paternal affection, often at his own great expense. In return, most repaid his faith in them with a respectful awe bordering on outright worship, for Mitchell was one of them: happily cavorting about in fighters and experimental airplanes, often making multiple flights in a single day. Mitchell’s very public war against the battleship has endured as a misleading shorthand for his views and place in history, for there was far more breadth to both his vision and the man.

Early Years

Born in Nice, France, on December 29, 1879, to well-to-do expatriate parents, William Mitchell—known within his family as Willie—was very much a product of the late nineteenth century. Years later, his Gallic birth caused one admiral to acidly grouse to another, Now you can understand what is the matter with him. He is about as unstable and flamboyant as the French, and he apparently was inoculated when young.²

Mitchell came from a Scots background, his paternal grandfather, Alexander Mitchell, having emigrated from Aberdeenshire to the United States in 1839 at the age of twenty-one, then settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This family patriarch founded a bank and presided over a highly successful regional railroad, becoming a multimillionaire and, through his Massachusetts-born wife, a patron of the arts. From early 1871 to early 1875 Alexander Mitchell served as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

His son, John Mitchell, born in 1842, married twice and fathered twelve children, the sixth of whom (by John’s first wife, who died in 1882) was Billy Mitchell. Like his father, John Mitchell entered politics, but not until after first serving with distinction as a company-grade Union officer in bitter (though ultimately victorious) combat against Confederate forces in Kentucky and Tennessee. Afterward, Mitchell served in both the Wisconsin legislature and the U.S. Congress, first as a member of the House and then as a senator. Immensely successful in business, he was, like his parents, an enthusiastic supporter of the arts. His son Willie would grow up in a loving and nurturing household with strong traditions of military and public service and with the finest advantages in education and refinement that a child could obtain at the time.

Young Willie Mitchell seemed destined for the same business and political life as his forebears and was already off to college at Columbian University (now George Washington University) in Washington, D.C., when the United States declared war on Spain. He immediately dropped out of school, enlisting as a U.S. Army private in the 1st Wisconsin Infantry Regiment. He thereafter served in the Philippines on counterinsurgency operations in Luzon, during which he was commissioned as second lieutenant and assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Mitchell thrived in both the Army and the Signal Corps and next helped establish a telegraph network across the Alaskan district. (Alaska did not become a federal territory until 1912 and eventually became the forty-ninth state in 1959.)

The Making of an Airman

William Mitchell early recognized the coming age of three-dimensional warfare thanks to the airplane and the submarine, teaching as early as 1906 while he was an instructor at the Signal School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, that future wars would be waged in the air and in the depths of the ocean as well as on the surface. The next year the Signal Corps issued a milestone specification for a reconnaissance airplane, stipulating that it carry a crew of pilot and observer, be capable of flying at forty miles per hour, and be transportable on a horse-drawn wagon. From this sprang the prototype Wright Military Flyer (a modified Wright Model A) of 1908 and the 1909 Signal Corps Flyer, the world’s first military aircraft accepted for service.³ Thereafter the Signal Corps oversaw the early rise of Army aviation, though its progress was fitful, troubled, and marred by internal discord.⁴

Mitchell progressed rapidly in the Army, graduated from the School of the Line at Fort Leavenworth and was then fast-tracked into the Army Staff College. In February 1913, following a two-year assignment in the Philippines during which he undertook a covert assessment of Japanese military strength in the region—he concluded that war with Japan was already inevitable—he moved to Washington at the age of thirty-four, the youngest officer ever assigned to the Army general staff, a singular distinction.⁵

That same year, influenced by a close friendship with Lt. Thomas DeWitt Milling, an early aviator, Mitchell decided to learn to fly. His growing enthusiasm for flight earned him the respect of almost all early Army aviators, save for one, then–1st Lt. Benjamin D. Foulois. Likely envying Mitchell his privileged background, Foulois clearly saw him as a potential rival, proving the start of what would soon fester into mutual enmity. Mitchell also earned the wrath of a powerful nonflying officer, Lt. Col. Samuel Reber, then head of the Signal Corps’ Aeronautical Division, which oversaw the airmen of the Aviation Section. In a letter to a fellow officer, Reber wrote that he fought tooth and nail to frustrate the plan of Signal Corps’ chief, Brig. Gen. George P. Scriven, to transfer Mitchell into the Aviation Section.⁶ But Reber’s own shortcomings—most notably failing to permanently ground the dangerously unstable Wright Model C Flyers, which were killing and injuring Army airmen at an alarming rate—soon led to his official censure and removal from his position in 1916.

Mitchell now stepped in as acting head of the Aeronautical Division, staying on as deputy to Lt. Col. George Squier, Reber’s permanent replacement in Washington. Promoted to major and still refused assignment for official Army flight training, Mitchell took private lessons at his own expense in the summer of 1916 at the Curtiss Flying School at Newport News, Virginia. He earned his aviator’s brevet (but not official Army wings, which were denied him until September 1917, when he was already flying in France) after thirty-six flights totaling fifteen hours of instruction, all at a cost of $1,470 (equivalent in 2021 to $37,000).⁷

In January 1917 Mitchell received orders to France to serve as an aeronautical observer. It was then that he transformed from an energetic officer interested in flight into a combat airman, commander, and air-power strategist.

Mitchell reached Paris on April 10, by which time President Thomas Woodrow Wilson had secured a declaration of war against Germany. At the time Wilson addressed Congress, combined U.S. aviation personnel totaled 1,520: 1,218 from the Army, 252 from the Navy, and 50 Marines. Of these, only twenty-three Army pilots and approximately the same number of naval airmen—Navy and Marine—were fully trained.⁸

Mitchell’s arrival coincided with General Robert Nivelle’s ill-considered, badly executed, and costly offensive on the Aisne that ended amid widespread mutiny among French divisions distributed across the front. The immense casualties left Mitchell aghast. He realized that the airplane, by its speed, maneuvarability, and range, could strike without confronting a foe’s might across a defended front. But his thinking required the insight of experienced airmen, and so he sought advice from French and British air commanders. Most important to him was another airpower icon, Maj. Gen. Sir Hugh Trenchard, commander of the Royal Flying Corps on the Western Front.

Boom Trenchard had little patience with those who came by idly to visit his air headquarters, and his initial inclination was to brush off Mitchell as quickly as possible. But Mitchell’s clearly evident enthusiasm and willingness to learn won Trenchard over. Come with me, young man, the fearsome Boom said; I can see you’re the sort who usually gets what he wants in the end. (Later in the war Trenchard confided to an assistant with some perspicacity, He’s a man after my own heart, adding, If only he can break his habit of trying to convert opponents by killing them, he’ll go far.)⁹

At the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in September 1918, Mitchell proved a masterful air commander, controlling almost 1,500 aircraft (of which approximately six hundred were American, the rest French and British). He employed them in layers from attack flights at three hundred feet over the front to medium-altitude fighter sweeps and escorted bomber operations at ten thousand feet, and air superiority fighter sweeps and reconnaissance flights as high as 20,000 feet. Behind Allied lines, fighter aircraft protected artillery cooperation aircraft and observation balloons.¹⁰ In his role, responsibilities, and actions, Mitchell functioned much like a modern joint and combined force air component commander.

America’s Aviation Muddle

By war’s end Mitchell was convinced airpower would eventually dominate warfare. By then the Army’s Air Service totaled more than 150,000 officers and men. Fully forty-five Air Service squadrons operated on the Western Front with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), and their total personnel strength, plus support elements and personnel assigned to British and French units, numbered just short of 63,000 officers and men. The Navy was smaller, at 37,409 officers and men, approximately half of whom were overseas. The Marine contingent likewise had grown significantly, to 2,462 officers and men, a seventy-fold increase over the Corps’ strength in April 1917.¹¹

As impressive as this may have appeared, the United States had neither a self-sufficient nor a robust aviation industry. Indeed, Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the AEF, wrote in his final report that in aviation we were entirely dependent upon our Allies.¹² In early 1919 U.S. ace of aces Capt. Edward V. Eddie Rickenbacker had visited Washington to urge corrective action. I spent a week with congressional and military leaders, he recalled; I pulled no punches, pointing out that American equipment was inferior to that of England, France, Germany, even Italy.¹³

That May, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker directed Assistant Secretary Benedict Crowell to lead an aviation study mission to Europe. Its members returned recommending a British Air Ministry–like Department of Aeronautics overseeing civil and military aviation; a unified national-defense establishment; an independent air force; an aviation academy equivalent to West Point; a federally run airways network with weather reporting, communications, and searchlight beacons; flying fields in strategic locations; training facilities; subsidies for carriers that [kept] their facilities available for use in time of war; and a well-defined and continuing military acquisition and production program to support the aviation industry until commercial demand proved sufficient to form an effective nucleus upon which can be built a war-time production in case of need.¹⁴

Secretary Baker was no fan of either aviation or aviators, and, arguing the Crowell mission had exceeded its mandate by recommending changes in policy and proposing reorganization, he declared that the assistant secretary had gone too far in suggesting a single centralized air service.¹⁵ Baker then appointed a board chaired by Maj. Gen. Charles T. Menoher to assess the future of Army aeronautics.¹⁶ A nonaviator then commanding the Air Service, Menoher swiftly antagonized his airmen by insinuating their quest for independence merely reflected their selfish desires for quick promotion rather than a sincere concern for national defense. Predictably his board, composed of Army traditionalists, saw no role for aviation beyond battlefield support of the Army. Consequently they rejected any Crowell-like reforms, even though they paid lip service to establishing a healthy aircraft industry and appropriate federal air regulation. Legislative maneuvering and sniping continued into early 1920, when this first drive for a separate air service finally died.¹⁷

While this appears to have been a setback, in retrospect Crowell’s report constituted a veritable template for subsequent structuring of U.S. civil and military aviation over the next four decades, for most of the report’s recommendations became reality: federal air regulation in 1926, a unified Department of Defense with an independent Air Force in 1947, an Air Force Academy in 1954, and a Federal Aviation Agency in 1958. But implementing the recommendations in such haphazard fashion was far less beneficial than legislating them all at once would have been, had traditionalist prejudices not, unfortunately, prevailed.

Even prior to the Crowell mission, Mitchell already had advocated essentially all its recommendations, particularly an Air Ministry–like civil-military Department of Aeronautics coequal with the War and Navy departments and an independent air service as part of a Department of National Defense, anticipating federal aviation policy and structure by over three decades.

Obsessed with performance, Mitchell constantly pushed his technical staff to increase the capabilities of new aircraft, always seeking higher speeds and altitudes. He championed air safety, suggested painting town names on railway stations, and supported inventing new instruments for blind flying. An advocate of civil aviation, he predicted as early as 1921 that future transport airplanes would be multiengine all-metal monoplanes, turbosupercharged to fly at high altitudes, with comfortable pressurized cabins, and with the motors set in the leading edges of the wings [and] the landing gears folding up into the body. He even predicted electronic flight controls and airliners flying from New York to Europe in six to ten hours, something not achieved for the next fifty years.¹⁸

By the early 1920s coastal defense increasingly absorbed Mitchell’s interest. Future control of the seas, he prophesied, depends on the control of the air.¹⁹ Instead of building battleships, he believed, the Navy should build aircraft carriers, and in April 1919 he urged U.S. authorities to lay down two such ships fully nine hundred feet long, a size of carrier that only appeared a quarter century later.²⁰ He believed a future enemy fleet built around aircraft carriers once having assumed command of the sea could then "launch their airships [sic] against our cities … and cause tremendous destruction," a prescient-if-unheeded warning made tragically manifest two decades subsequently at Pearl Harbor.²¹

The Bomber versus the Battleship

If not the first, Mitchell was nevertheless the most energetic of air-versus-ship partisans, and his active advocacy forced Secretary of War Baker to send Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels a formal request for Air Service participation in forthcoming naval gunnery and bombing trials against captured German ships and submarines. It was something Daniels could ill afford to refuse given the growing public interest that Mitchell’s advocacy generated. Even so, arrangements consumed months of intricate and deliberate maneuvering, at times seeming more like diplomatic negotiations between adversaries than procedural discussions between partners to arrange a mutually beneficial ordnance exercise.

At one meeting in early May, a senior Navy officer declared, The primary object of the exercises is to learn the effect of the explosives rather than tactical methods.²² But Mitchell was concerned about far more significant issues, particularly command, control, and communications, all reflected in what he called the search problem. He wanted an integrated joint-force exercise testing the Navy, Coast Artillery, Coast Guard, and Army wire and radio communication services. This offers a good opportunity to really work out something, he stressed, adding, I think we should come to a definite understanding as to how we are going to conduct that search problem.²³ He suggested that Army and Navy air elements be controlled by a single air commander working for the exercise commander, with one center, one staff, and one headquarters, rather than being independently controlled by their respective services.²⁴ Though he failed to get approval for this, Mitchell’s thinking anticipated by nearly seven decades future U.S. defense doctrine regarding the command and control of joint-service airpower forces.

By the summer of 1921 the Army and Navy had at last reached agreement on the bombing trials.²⁵ Both services’ airmen would bomb a submarine, a destroyer, a cruiser, and—the pièce de résistance—the surrendered battleship Ostfriesland. It had fought in every major North Sea action between Germany’s High Seas Fleet and Britain’s Grand Fleet. At Jutland it had served as a squadron and division flagship, where it had heavily damaged the faster and more powerful battleship HMS Warspite, helped sink the scouting cruiser HMS Black Prince, and survived encountering a British mine before returning safely to Wilhelmshaven.²⁶

Few expected that airplanes could sink this heavily armored, multi-compartmented veteran, then just a decade old. Reputedly, Navy Secretary Daniels even offered to stand bareheaded on the bridge of any battleship during any bombardment by any airplane.²⁷ Inspectors from the minelayer USS Shawmut would evaluate the effects of each attack. The battleship USS Pennsylvania, bristling with twelve fourteen-inch cannon—three each in four turrets—would steam nearby to finish off any damaged-but-still-floating ships with a thunderous nautical coup de grâce that would also conveniently highlight the power of one of the fleet’s newest battlewagons. But what Navy planners saw as an exercise to examine explosive effects and gain favorable publicity, Army airmen considered something else: a spectacular chance to sink a powerful battleship at sea, overturning long-cherished assumptions of maritime supremacy.

The target vessels were moored east of the Cape Charles lightship, roughly seventy miles offshore. Very quickly the Navy and Army airmen demonstrated their ship-killing proficiency. On June 21 naval aviators flying three Curtiss F-5L twin-engine seaplanes sank the submarine U-117 in seven minutes, hitting it with a 170-pound bomb and dropping eight others so close aboard that, like depth charges, they opened its hull. The next day, for practice, Mitchell had thirteen of his Martins bomb the wreck of an old target ship in Chesapeake Bay’s Tangier Sound. Lester Gardner, founder-publisher of Aviation magazine, observed the attack, riding with Mitchell in an Army blimp. The accuracy with which they dropped these bombs from four thousand feet was startling, he marveled to Glenn Martin, the bombers’ builder, then adding in a wildly enthusiastic overstatement, It was the greatest test that has ever been made in this country!²⁸

On June 29, during a search exercise, the airship located another target ship, this time the radio-controlled Iowa steaming between Cape Hatteras and Cape Henlopen, and reported its position. Though the Iowa followed an erratic course and maneuvered evasively, Navy Martin bombers hit it with multiple dummy bombs that, if live, would have inflicted at the least serious damage.²⁹ On July 13, Army airmen flying eleven SE-5 fighters, fifteen DH-4Bs, and sixteen Martin bombers sent the destroyer G-102 into the depths, hitting it with twenty-five small antipersonnel bombs and with seven three hundred–pound ones. On July 18, the cruiser Frankfurt succumbed to three six hundred–pound bombs dropped from Martin bombers, two hitting it amidships and the third exploding alongside, "fairly lifting the Frankfurt out of the water," breaching its hull and sending it plunging bow-first into the depths.³⁰

Now only the Ostfriesland remained, gray, weathered, and sinister. Attacks on July 20 by Navy F-5L seaplanes and Marine DH-4B bombers dropping 230-pound bombs registered no hits, though their shrapnel slashed and pockmarked the battleship’s upper