Billy Mitchell

Billy Mitchell is also considered the father of the Air Force.  Without Billy Mitchell the Air Force might have been started later than September 18, 1947.  It also might not have been where it was during World War II.  Although Bill Mitchell didn’t get to see the effects of air power in World War II, he did get to see the effects in it in World War I.

Billy Mitchell was born on December 28^th, 1879 in Nice, France (Wikipedia).  He soon moved to America where he lived in Milwaukee.  When Mitchell was eighteen he enlisted in the United States Army as a Private.  He was soon sent to fight in the Spanish-American War.  During his enlistment he was sent on tours of duty in the Philippines and Alaska territory, but this was before the First World War.

When the First World War broke out in 1914, the United States stayed out of it.  It wasn’t until 1917 that the United States entered the war.  The year before the United States entered the war, Mitchell took private flying lessons because the Army would not allow someone as old and high ranking as him to fly a plane.  In 1917 when the United States entered the war, Mitchell was sent to France where he became a Lieutenant Colonel.  Soon he received the rank of Brigadier General (General rankings go from lowest to highest: Brigadier General (one star), Major General (two stars), Lieutenant General (three stars), General (four stars), and only in a time of war a General of the Army (five stars) can be allowed only if the other Generals of the other countries are the same rank.) and commanded all of the United States air combat in France.

In the closing weeks of the war, Mitchell led an astonishing 1,500 British, French, and Italian aircraft in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel.  The Battle of Saint-Mihiel was one of the first coordinated air-ground attacks in recorded history (Platt).  This battle probably made Mitchell think that air power is going to be essential if you plan on winning the battle or even a war.  At the war’s end Mitchell was probably one of the best known Americans in Europe alongside Eddie Rickenbacker (Rickenbacker was the ace of World War One for America with twenty-six confirmed kills, while the ace of the war was Manfred von Richthofen a.k.a. the “Red Baron” with at least eighty confirmed kills).