6 minute read
General Billy Mitchell Landed Nicely in Middleburg
General Billy Mitchell Landed Nicely in Middleburg
By Denis Cotter
For the last decade of his life, legendary General Billy Mitchell (1879-1936), often called “the Father of the U.S. Air Force,” lived in Middleburg off The Plains Road at his 250-acre farm “Boxwood.” It’s now the location of Boxwood Winery and listed in the National Park Service’s register of historic places.
William Lendrum Mitchell, the oldest of nine children, was born in Nice, France when his parents were on an extended overseas vacation. His father, John, was from Wisconsin, an inheritor of significant railroad and banking wealth, who served in the Union Army in the Civil War and went on to become a Congressman and U.S. Senator.
In 1898, at age 18, Billy dropped out of Columbian University (now George Washington University) and enlisted as a private in the 1st Wisconsin Infantry to fight in the Spanish-American War. The military would be his life for the next 27 years.
His initiative, courage, and leadership saw him rise through the ranks. He served in Cuba, the Philippines, Alaska, and along the Mexican border, mainly in the Signal Corps. He became the youngest member of the War Department’s General Staff and, in 1915, was assigned to the aviation section of the Signal Corps. That’s when his love of flying began in earnest.
At age 38, Mitchell learned to fly at his own expense. He took private aviation lessons at Curtiss Flying School in Newport News. The Army had considered him too old to be worth training as a pilot. He also became a close friend of Orville Wright, the co-inventor of the world’s first successful airplane.
When the U.S. entered World War I in April, 1917, Mitchell was already in Europe as a military observer. Later that month, he became the first American Army aviator to cross enemy lines under German fire. He collaborated with British and French air leaders and laid the basis for the tactical Air Services Europe before the arrival of the American Expeditionary Forces.
In September, 1918, he planned and led almost 1,500 British, French, and Italian aircraft in the air phase of the major Battle of Saint-Mihiel on the Western Front. It was the dawn of American airpower in the first combined arms ground and air operation.
Mitchell was a WWI flying ace, like his good friend Eddie Rickenbacker, who had once been his driver. With Mitchell’s help, Rickenbacker had gone to Army flying school; Rickenbacker initially had been considered too old to be an Army pilot.
Mitchell was daring and tireless and was promoted rapidly during his 18 months of service in France – from Lieutenant-Colonel, to Colonel, to Brigadier General. He ended the war with numerous decorations that recognized his valor – the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal, the World War I Victory Medal with eight campaign clasps, the French Croix de Guerre, the French Pilot Badge, and the Italian War Merit Cross.
He also ended the war with distinct hostility from his superior officers. In their eyes, his flamboyant and brash methods, his unwillingness to work within the chain of command, negated his superb leadership and excellent combat record. They were irritated and alienated and over time, had their revenge in the years that followed.
After the war, Mitchell became an outspoken advocate for military air power. He railed against the lack of vision in the Army and Navy bureaucracies, campaigning publicly for a greatly expanded air service. At the time, there was a serious tilt away from wartime expenditures into domestic, peacetime spending.
During the 1920s, Mitchell’s loud insistence – before Congress and within the military – resulted in a number of bombing runs where aircraft teams he commanded sank captured German ships and retired U.S. Navy vessels. These were demonstrations of the effectiveness of air power. It also offered proof, at least in Mitchell’s eyes, of the ineffectiveness of both Navy and Army resources for upcoming wars he was certain would happen before too long.
Things came to a head in 1925 after he published his polemical book, “Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern AirPower—Economic and Military.”
Two aviation disasters shocked the country. In September, a Navy seaplane disappeared over the Pacific en route to Hawaii, and a Navy dirigible, the Shenandoah, crashed in Ohio.
Mitchell issued a nine-page statement to the press blaming the tragedies on “the incompetency, criminal negligence, and almost treasonable administration of the National Defense by the Navy and War Departments,”
In short order, he was court-martialed on the charge of “Conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline and in a way to bring discredit upon the military service.”
The trial lasted seven weeks, from mid-December, 1925 to late January, 1926. All but one of the 13 judges—the exception was Douglas McArthur – found Mitchell guilty of insubordination, sentencing him to five years suspension from active service, with no pay.
President Calvin Coolidge affirmed the decision, mitigating it slightly to five years suspension with half-pay. Before the court could officially impose the sentence, Mitchell resigned his commission and left the Army on February 1, 1926. He was 46.
Mitchell retired to Boxwood with his second wife, Elizabeth. He lived the life of a country gentleman, breeding horses and hunting dogs, and was an avid equestrian.
He rode in the Cobbler Hunt with George Patton, his long-time friend, and was an active participant in equine events throughout the area. When his friend Mrs. Agnes Boeing Ilsley was murdered in Middleburg in January, 1932, Mitchell was a leader in the local manhunt for the suspected killer.
Mitchell also continued as a prolific speaker and writer about the military necessity of America having a strong air power. He warned about the expansionist policies of Japan, predicting Japan would start a war with America with an aircraft attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
In the isolationist 1930s, Mitchell was a voice crying in the wilderness, an ignored Cassandra. Unlike his fellow warrior, Patton, he would not live to see another war. A heart attack, complicated by pneumonia, led to his unexpected death in February, 1936 at age 56.
Mitchell’s reputation was completely rehabilitated during and after World War II. The North American B-25 Mitchell bomber, introduced in 1941, was named for him. The main airport in his hometown of Milwaukee was renamed General Mitchell Field in his honor and is now Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport.
President Franklin Roosevelt successfully petitioned Congress to posthumously award Mitchell the Congressional Gold Medal, “in recognition of his outstanding pioneer service and foresight in the field of American military aviation.”
Most significantly of all, Mitchell’s recommendation from decades earlier to have a separate Air Force department equal to the Army and Navy was implemented, as was his recommendation for a unified Department of Defense.
