The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. 1 (archived PDF)

T H E A R M Y A I R A R M B E T W E E N T W O W A R S
Mitchell, sent to the Orient to quiet down after the battleship tests
of September 1 9 2 3 , returned in the following July to renew his fight.33
In October 1924 a joint congressional committee was appointed to
investigate alleged irregularities in the contracts and expenditures for
Army and Navy aviation. The Lampert Committee went far beyond
its designated mission, bringing under review the whole province of
military aeronautics. Its hearings lasted nearly a year, during which
time a hundred and fifty witnesses were examined. Proponents of re-
form in the handling of air power were received sympathetically, and
the hearings became especially a public forum for the dissemination
of Mitchell’s H e continued to urge the establishment of the
separate unified air force but conceded that a unified Department of
Defense with coequal air, ground, and naval forces would probably
serve sati~factorily.~~In 1 9 2 3 Harding had suggested, as an economy
measure, unification of the armed services-though without any special
reference to the autononious air This solution to the problems
of organization gained in popularity, eventually being accepted even
by the cautious
Ailitchell did not confine his testimony to recommendations for
changes in the administrative structure. H e elaborated upon specific
evils in the current conditions of the Air Service and denounced those
in authority who were responsible. Archconservatives who controlled
the General Staff, the W a r Department, and the Navy, he charged,
were deliberately hostile to improvements in the air arm, refusing to
heed the suggestions of air officers and attempting to control their
public testimony by more or less veiled intimidati~n.~’T h e virulence
of hilitchell’s attacks in the hearings and in widely read magazine
articles led Secretary of W a r John Wingate Weeks to replace the
troublemaker as Patrick’s a s ~ i s t a n t . ~ ~In April 1 9 2 5 Mitchell was trans-
ferred to San Antonio as air officer for the Eighth Corps Area, a de-
motion so transparent as to lead his friends to speak, with fine disregard
for climatic conditions, of his exile to Siberia.4o O n 5 September he
used the recent disaster to the Navy’s dirigible Sheizandoah as an oc-
casion for releasing to the press a statement containing a grave indict-
ment of those in the Army and Navy responsible for the neglect of
aviation. His intent was deliberate, and his blast attained results he
must have expected-a summons to Washington to stand trial before
a general court-martial. T h e trial, lasting from z s October to 1 7 De-
cember, was not a model of judicial procedure. Testimony again
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