Mitchell, Billy (1879-1936), a United States Army general, was one of the most controversial figures in American military history. An early and vigorous advocate of airpower, he was court-martialed for defiance of his superiors in 1925. He resigned from the Army rather than accept a five-year suspension, and he was branded at first as an extremist and insurgent. But early in World War II (1939-1945), events confirmed many of his predictions. The creation of the U.S. Air Force as a separate armed service in 1947 supported his vision of airpower.
Mitchell enlisted in the Army as a private at the start of the Spanish-American War in 1898. He remained in the Army and rose rapidly in the Signal Corps, which first controlled the development of aviation in the U.S. Army. Mitchell learned to fly in 1916 and became air adviser to General John Pershing in World War I (1914-1918). He was in Europe when the United States entered the war and quickly got in touch with Allied air leaders. Mitchell commanded several large air units in combat, including the largest concentration of Allied airpower of the war, during the Battle of St.-Mihiel. Mitchell had become a brigadier general by the time the war ended.
After the war, Mitchell became assistant chief of the Air Service and the leading advocate of an air force independent of the Army and the Navy. He found a natural resistance among leaders of the older services and appealed to the public through books, articles, interviews, and speeches. Because airplanes were then limited in size and range, many people thought his claims for airpower were exaggerated. But he convinced many others, especially after a 1921 experiment when he sank three former German ships—a destroyer, a cruiser, and a battleship—with aerial bombs. He repeated this success in tests against three obsolete U.S. battleships. But Mitchell failed to achieve his goal, perhaps partly because he was often violent in argument and bitter in his condemnation of those who disagreed with his ideas.
William Mitchell was born on Dec. 29, 1879, in Nice, France, of American parents. He wrote Our Air Force (1921), Winged Defense (1925), and Skyways (1930). He died on Feb. 19, 1936. In 1946, Congress awarded him a Congressional Gold Medal for “pioneer service and foresight in the field of American military aviation.”
