Sometimes a Court-Martial Isn't the Last Word

Army, Feb 2008 by Sinnreich, Richard Hart

My editor, an old Air Force hand, reminded me earlier this week that 82 years ago, an Army court-martial convicted then-colonel and military aviation pioneer William (Billy) Mitchell of insubordination and behavior "to the prejudice of good order and discipline."

One of America's earliest military fliers and a national hero as commander of all U.S. air combat units in France during World War I, Mitchell, after the war, led a bitter intramural fight to establish airpower as a recognized component of the nation's armed forces.

His outspokenness-and flair for publicity-earned him enemies among both Army and Navy senior officers, the latter, especially, after he orchestrated a bombing demonstration in July 1921 that succeeded, against all betting, in sinking several obsolescent warships, including the U.S. pre-dreadnought battleship Alabama and the "unsinkable" German dreadnought Ostfriesland.

It was less his actions that got Mitchell into trouble, however, than his words. Dispatched to Hawaii early in 1924-mostly to get him out of Washington and away from Congress, in which he had many allies-he returned nine months later with a report that would remain buried in secret archives until 1958. In it, Mitchell described with what turned out to be astonishing prescience how the Japanese one day would attack Pearl Harbor and the Philippines.

Throughout the remainder of that year and into the next, Mitchell became increasingly vocal in his criticism of the War and Navy Departments' refusal to acknowledge the growing air threat. In March 1925, when his appointment as assistant director of the Army Air Service expired, he wasn't reappointed. Instead, stripped of the temporary rank of brigadier general that he had held since the war, Mitchell was banished to San Antonio, Texas, as air officer of an Army corps.

Then, on September 2, on a barnstorming tour that both her captain and Mitchell opposed, the Navy dirigible Shenandoah broke apart in a storm while attempting to cross the Alleghenies, killing 14, including her captain. When Navy secretary Dwight Wilbur took advantage of the accident and the earlier loss of a Navy amphibian over the Pacific to declare publicly that "we have nothing to fear from an enemy aircraft that is not on this continent," Mitchell unloaded.

On the morning of September 5, in a lengthy written statement to reporters, Mitchell declared the two accidents to be "the direct result of the incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense by the Navy and War Departments." Within hours, his accusations made headlines in newspapers across the country.

For the Army's leadership, it was the last straw. On September 28, nine generals, headed by 61-year-old Maj. Gen. Robert Lee Howze, convened to try Mitchell on eight counts of insubordination. Among them was Mitchell's long-time friend, then-Maj. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who ironically would himself be relieved for insubordination by President Harry Truman a quartercentury later.

The outcome was inevitable. Mitchell stood condemned by his own words. On December 17, 1925, after deliberating for only half an hour, the court found Mitchell guilty on all eight counts and the general charge, and sentenced him "to be suspended from rank, command and duty with the forfeiture of all pay and allowances for five years."

It was an astonishingly mild sentence, given a finding that by rights should have produced Mitchell's outright discharge from the service. It had the same effect, however. Within weeks, Mitchell resigned his commission. He died on February 19,1936, at age 56. A year earlier, on March 1, 1935, all operational Army air combat units were consolidated for the first time under a single air force headquarters.

Nearly seven years afterward, on December 7,1941, Japanese naval air units struck Hawaii and the Philippine Islands almost exactly as Mitchell had predicted they would. Four months later, Army Air Corps B-25 bombers bearing his name struck back at the Japanese home islands from the aircraft carrier Hornet in America's first offensive air operation of World War II.

In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt promoted Mitchell posthumously to the rank of major general on the retired list, and in 1946 Congress presented his son William Jr. a special gold medal on behalf of the people of the United States. In June 2007, the Air Force awarded the newly created Air Force Combat Action Medal to six veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq. Its design was inspired by the personal insignia Billy Mitchell painted on the aircraft he flew over French battlefields in September 1918.

So much for history's verdict. The court-martial? It still stands despite efforts to repeal it. No one would have been less surprised by that than Billy Mitchell.

RICHARD HART SINNREICH writes regularly for The Lawton (Okla.) Sunday Constitution. This article originally appeared in the December 16, 2007, Lawton Constitution and is reprinted by permission of the author.