William Mitchell as an Adult

 Guest Post by Lori Martello

William “Willie/Billy” Mitchell is a perfect character to be represented in this Twitter reenactment, for his widely documented characteristics and vital importance in air power, the First World War, and Milwaukee history provide substantial materials to foster the historical imagination. Mitchell was a member of the Milwaukee Mitchell family and rose to prominence not in finance or railways like his father and grandfather before him but in the military. Mitchell was a fighting man both in physicality and spiritually; his voluntary enlistment in the Spanish-American War with the First Wisconsin Infantry was his first military experience, and throughout his lifetime, his on-the-ground and in-the-air experience as a soldier contributed to his outspoken attitudes, commentary, and eventually criticisms of military events but also in his defense of soldiers and the protection of them.

It was in the First World War that he became a hero; when the United States entered the war, Mitchell was sent to France to oversee the American Expeditionary Forces, and he used his knowledge and passion for flight and air power which led to a strategic victory at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in April 1918. Mitchell, in charge of all American aviation, coordinated a British, Italian, and French air fleet that aided the American ground forces. An aspect that made Mitchell a rising star and then an eventual nuisance to the military was his passion for air power and continual research and documentation of how useful the establishment of an air force would be to the United States military. Mitchell spent time in Alaska, Cuba, and the Philippines, establishing a knowledge that the environment of future wars and the success of those wars would depend on air superiority. Mitchell promoted the various ways airships could be used, such as for antisubmarine missions. In the interwar periods and during his honeymoon, he spent time constructing documentation that predicted the attack on Pearl Harbor twelve years prior to the event. His contentions with the military over this topic, mostly the lackadaisical speed at which the military encouraged the production of air power, intensified when the Navy began building airships. Mitchell, an experienced airman, spent his whole military career and life researching how to establish an air force that would dictate the success of future wars, and yet his expertise was not consulted, which seemingly would be due to his aggressive manners in the War Department.

The crash of the USS Shenandoah, a Navy-created helium-based airship, in September of 1925 was the event which led to the eventual court martial of Mitchell. Mitchell took to the press to condemn the Navy for its “neglect” and inexperience that led to the death of fourteen crew members. After his court martial, Mitchell spent the rest of his life lecturing and writing on the supremacy of air power and the absolute need for an air force and continued his perspectives on the threat that was Japan. Mitchell died in 1936, just two years before the start of the Second World War wherein air power was the culmination of fighting and eleven years before the establishment of the United States Air Force.

Interested in more? Want to learn about Billy Mitchell during his childhood? Follow the Twitter handle @BillyMinthesky and the hashtag #MitchellsMKE!