Billy Mitchell (General)

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Billy Mitchell

William Lendrum "Billy" Mitchell (born December 28, 1879 in Nice , † February 19, 1936 in New York City ) was an American general .

Billy Mitchell is considered to be the father of the United States Air Force . He is one of the most famous and controversial figures in American military aviation . He served during the Spanish-American War and during the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in the First World War . Mitchell received numerous awards, such as the Distinguished Service Cross and posthumously in 1946 the Gold Medal of Honor of Congress on the proposal of then President Franklin D. Roosevelt .

Mitchell undertook tests in 1921 in which he sank the delivered German ships SMS Ostfriesland and SMS Frankfurt with bomb hits from the air. The effects on the naval war were however not understood by the politicians and the military leadership, whereby Mitchell came into conflict with them. The loss of large, modern battleships like the HMS Prince of Wales at the start of World War II came as a shock. Douglas MacArthur commented:

“ Sir Tom went down with the Prince of Wales and an era with him. Never again were large ships sent into enemy waters without air support; Billy Mitchell was right. "

- Douglas MacArthur : Reminiscences, New York 1964 and Reid, John Alden. "Bomb the Dread Noughts!" Air Classics , 2006

General William "Billy" Mitchell was convicted and demoted by a military tribunal in 1926 for publicly criticizing his superiors for resisting the expansion of the US Air Force.

Billy Mitchell is the only American personality after whom a fighter aircraft, the North American B-25 , was named. In 1955 Hollywood memorialized him with the biography Damned to Silence , where Gary Cooper played Mitchell. In 1966 he was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame . The Billy Mitchell volcano on Bougainville is named after him.

Web links

Commons : Billy Mitchell  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Father of the US Air Force , US Air Force website, Warren Air Force Base
  2. ↑ Information on Billy Mitchell , engl.
  3. ↑ http://www.lexikon-der-politischen-strafverarbeitung.de/glossar-schlagwort/militaergericht/
personal data
SURNAME Mitchell, Billy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mitchell, William Lendrum
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American general
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Nice
DATE OF DEATH February 19, 1936
Place of death New York City