Air Power Champion Butts Heads With The Brass

Col. Billy Mitchell, outspoken advocate of air power, left San Antonio on Sept. 24, 1925, never to return in uniform to the flight training center.

As commander of American aviators in the First World War, Mitchell became the chief champion of airborne tactics. To prove his controversial point that the weapon with wings had rendered the battleship obsolete, he sank three captured German ships in a dramatic 1921 demonstration.

Nevertheless, stubborn superiors dismissed the airplane as a novelty with little combat potential and Mitchell as a troublemaking crackpot. He was punished for his persistence in early 1925 with the loss of his number-two post in the Army Air Service, demotion from brigadier general to colonel and exile to the Lone Star State.

Abe Yeager, military reporter for the “San Antonio Light,” was already well-acquainted with both sides of the heated debate. Unhappy pilots at Kelly Field and Brooks Field regularly cried on the newspaperman