Free The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh by Winston Groom

Doolittle had won “the world’s premier seaplane trophy,” observed cattily that “the Army men never seem to take tows in Neptune’s realm.”
    B Y THE MID-1920S B ILLY M ITCHELL ’ S attacks against politicians and the army brass had become more strident and relentless, as he accused them of ignorance and even willful collaboration in the deaths of military pilots as the result of a lack of funding and oversight. At first the commander of the Air Corps tried to silence Mitchell by reducing his rank and banishing him to duty in San Antonio instead of making him permanent second in command, slotted for the future top spot.
    This only made Mitchell more outspoken and caused him to publish an accusatory book lambasting the Navy and War Departments, Congress, and even the president. In 1925 he used the occasion of several fatal air crashes to charge that the administration of the national defense was “incompetent, criminally negligent, and almost treasonable.” President Calvin Coolidge convened a board of business and military men to construct some coherent national policy regarding aviation, headed by the Morgan & Co. banker Dwight W. Morrow (the future father-in-law of Charles Lindbergh).
    Called to testify before the Morrow commission, Mitchell lashed out with the same caustic verbiage he had been using to condemn the administration, naming names, which of course filled the press columns day after sensational day. That was enough for Coolidge who, using his powers under the articles of war, preferred court-martial charges through the War Department against Mitchell for insubordination. The specific allegation was that Mitchell’s conduct was “prejudicial to good order and military discipline” and “of a nature to bring discredit upon the military service.”
    The case quickly developed a circus atmosphere. The trial, begun in October 1925, was held in a decrepit warehouse near the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The court was composed of U.S. Army generals—including the young major general Douglas MacArthur—none of whom were fliers or had any experience with aviation.
    The military judge in the case straightaway agreed with the prosecutor that Mitchell’s guilt or innocence was not dependent on the truth of his accusations against the higher authorities, only whether they were prejudicial to good martial order and whether they discredited the military organization, a legal confinement that severely hamstrung Mitchell’s planned defense and limited him from making the trial a cause célèbre for the promotion of airpower.
    Public sentiment was on the side of Billy Mitchell, and the press slanted their reporting toward him, too, since he always provided good copy. Among the throng of spectators was the humorist Will Rogers, who had taken his first plane ride with Mitchell. It was reported that hundreds of spectators mobbed the sidewalks trying to get into the courtroom, including mink-draped society matrons “in luxuriously equipped limousines,” who had to compete for seats with the military, the press, and hoi polloi.
    Doolittle and his fellow flying officers continued to agree with much of what Mitchell said, but Jimmy again opined that Mitchell “had gone overboard in his criticisms.” Eddie Rickenbacker, however, was under no such constraints as Doolittle and the other active duty servicemen; he was free to speak his mind and did so with acerbic gusto when it came his time to testify about his former boss.
    I N 1926 THE C URTISS -W RIGHT C ORPORATION asked the army to grant Doolittle extended leave to help in its effort to market the Curtiss P-1 Hawk fighter in South America. Doolittle would become, in effect, a “flying salesman, [to] demonstrate the plane’s capabilities in flight, and prove that it was the finest pursuit airplane in the world.” It was a smart move on Curtiss-Wright’s part. Ever anxious in peacetime to unburden itself of another salary to pay, the army promptly acceded to the