The tests began as scheduled, and the careful preparations paid off. The bombers sank a German destroyer first, followed by an armored light cruiser and then one of the world’s largest war vessels, the German battleship Ostfriesland, followed by the U.S. battleship Alabama–and later the battleships New Jersey and Virginia. As far as Mitchell and the press were concerned, the assertion that air power should be the nation’s first line of defense had been proved. “No surface vessels can exist wherever air forces acting from land bases are able to attack them,” Mitchell declared.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Aviation History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Mitchell’s subsequent writings and pronouncements–all duly carried by the nation’s press–continually fanned the flames of interservice rivalry. He proposed that the U.S. Army Air Service should take over all control of defense responsibilities for 200 miles out to sea. In view of the bickering over the tests that had taken place, he asserted that fundamental changes in defense policy were necessary and called for a “Department of National Defense…with a staff common to all the services” and with “subsecretaries for the Army, Navy and the Air Force.” Mitchell staged a simulated bombing attack on New York City and mock bomb runs over other eastern cities, and he let the press carry the message to the public.

To quell the resultant fury of the battleship admirals and get Mitchell off the front pages, his superiors sent him to Hawaii. However, he returned with a scathing report on the inadequate defenses he saw there. He also went to Europe and the Far East to study the advances being made in aviation. After returning from the latter trip in 1924, he wrote a shocking 323-page report–probably the most prophetic document of his career–that stressed that, when making estimates of Japanese air power, “care must be taken that it is not underestimated.”

Mitchell believed that Japan was the dominant nation in Asia and was preparing to do battle with the United States. He predicted that air attacks would be made by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines and described how they would be conducted.

His report was received with all the enthusiasm of “a green demolition team approaching an unexploded bomb,” according to one writer. The report was ignored; it is said that even his boss did not read it for two years.

In the following months, Mitchell wrote many articles expounding his theories and demanding national awareness of the new dimension of warfare that he perceived. Despite his efforts, large appropriations for new aircraft were not forthcoming. The Air Service was still flying aging de Havillands. Crashes occurred frequently, and with each one, Mitchell lambasted the shortsightedness of the War Department and Congress for allowing them to happen.

Mitchell’s attacks became more vitriolic and were embarrassing to his superiors as well as to Capitol Hill and the White House. When his term with the Air Service expired in April 1925, he was not reappointed. He reverted to his permanent rank of colonel and was transferred to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, as air officer for the VIII Corps.

On September 1, 1925, a naval seaplane was lost on a nonstop flight from San Francisco to Hawaii. Two days later, the U.S. Navy dirigible Shenandoah was destroyed while on a goodwill flight. Mitchell’s reaction was prompt. From his post in “exile,” he released a scathing denunciation of the Navy and War Department and dropped the heaviest bomb of his career. He released a 6,000-word statement saying that these and other accidents were “the result of incompetency, criminal negligence, and the almost treasonable negligence of our national defense by the War and Navy departments.”

Mitchell added that “all aviation policies, schemes and systems are dictated by the non-flying officers of the Army and Navy, who know practically nothing about it.” He ended his denunciation by saying that “I can stand by no longer and see these disgusting performances…at the expense of the lives of our people, and the delusions of the American public.”

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to