He antagonized many administrative leaders of the Army with his arguments and criticism and in 1925, his temporary appointment as a brigadier general was not renewed, and he reverted to his permanent rank of colonel, due to his insubordination.

On May 26, 1900, the United States Congress appropriated $450,000 to establish a communications system connecting the many isolated and widely separated U.S. Army outposts and civilian Gold Rush camps in Alaska by telegraph.

[11] He predicted as early as 1906, while an instructor at the Army's Signal School in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, that future conflicts would take place in the air, not on the ground.

Mitchell administered the section until the new head, Lieutenant Colonel George O. Squier, arrived from attaché duties in London, England, where World War I was in progress, then became his permanent assistant.

[4] He arrived in Paris on April 10, and set up an office for the Aviation Section from which he collaborated extensively with British and French air leaders such as General Hugh Trenchard, studying their strategies as well as their aircraft.

In September 1918, he planned and led nearly 1,500 British, French, and Italian aircraft in the air phase of the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, one of the first coordinated air-ground offensives in history.

Instead, he returned to find that Maj. Gen. Charles T. Menoher, an artilleryman who had commanded the Rainbow Division in France, had been appointed director on the recommendation of his classmate General John Pershing, to maintain operational control of aviation by the ground forces.

[16] Mitchell received appointment on February 28, 1919, as Director of Military Aeronautics,[17] to head the flying component of the Air Service, but that office was in name only as it was a wartime agency that would expire six months after the signing of a peace treaty.

He found encouragement in a number of bills before Congress proposing a Department of Aeronautics that included an air force separate from either the Army or Navy, primarily legislation introduced concurrently in August 1919 by Senator Harry New of Indiana and Representative Charles F. Curry of California, influenced by the recommendations of a fact-finding commission sent to Europe under the direction of Assistant Secretary of War Benedict Crowell in early 1919 that contradicted the findings of Army boards and advocated an independent air force.

[4] He advocated the development of a number of aircraft innovations, including bomb-sights, sled-runner landing gear for winter operations, engine superchargers, and aerial torpedoes.

[24] Mitchell infuriated the Navy by claiming he could sink ships "under war conditions", and boasted he could prove it if he were permitted to bomb captured German battleships.

Daniels had hoped to squelch Mitchell by releasing a report on the results written by Captain William D. Leahy stating that, "The entire experiment pointed to the improbability of a modern battleship being either destroyed or completely put out of action by aerial bombs.

Supported by General Pershing, the Navy set rules and conditions that enhanced the survivability of the targets, stating that the purpose of the tests was to determine how much damage ships could withstand.

On the scheduled day, 230, 550, and 600 lb (100, 250, and 270 kg) bomb attacks by Navy, Marine Corps, and Army aircraft settled the Ostfriesland three feet by the stern with a five-degree list to port.

Further bombing was delayed a day, the Navy claiming due to rough seas that prevented their Board of Observers from going aboard, the Air Service countering that as the Army bombers approached, they were ordered not to attack.

[31] On the morning of July 21, in accordance with a strictly orchestrated schedule of attacks, five Martin NBS-1 bombers led by 1st Lt. Clayton Bissell dropped a single 1,100 lb (500 kg) bomb each, scoring three direct hits.

[39][40] Mitchell was dispatched by President Harding to West Virginia to stop the warfare that had broken out between the United Mine Workers, Stone Mountain Coal Company, the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency, and other groups after the Matewan Massacre.

[41] Miners outraged by the ambush slaying of Matewan Police Chief Sid Hatfield by agents for the coal company marched on Mingo and Logan County leading to the Battle of Blair Mountain, August 25 to September 2, 1921.

[46] Winged Defense sold only 4,500 copies between August 1925 and January 1926, the months surrounding the publicity of the court martial, and so Mitchell did not reach a wide audience.

"[50] Of the thirteen judges, (Charles Pelot Summerall, William S. Graves, Robert L. Howze, MacArthur, Benjamin A. Poore, Fred W. Sladen, Ewing E. Booth, Albert J. Bowley, George Irwin, Edward K. King, Frank R. McCoy, Edwin B. Winans, and Blanton Winship), none had aviation experience and three (Summerall, who was the president of the court, Sladen, and Bowley) were removed by defense challenges for bias.

[51] Among those who testified for Mitchell were Eddie Rickenbacker, Hap Arnold, Carl Spaatz, Ira Eaker, Robert Olds, Thomas George Lanphier Sr.[52] and Fiorello La Guardia.

Mitchell's public assertions about non-aviation officers being ignorant of aviation matters were shown to be based on events he falsely claimed to have witnessed in Hawaii during experiments led by Lesley J. McNair, the Hawaiian Department's assistant chief of staff for operations (G-3).

Mitchell viewed the election of his one-time antagonist Franklin D. Roosevelt as advantageous for air power, and met with him early in 1932 to brief him on his concepts for a unification of the military in a Department of Defense.

[69] According to the Office of Air Force History, "this effort failed to follow the normal process, which called for the War and Navy Departments to submit recommendations to the White House."

[1] One author wrote that Mitchell's true history was more complicated than the simple narrative that he was a passionate airpower advocate; according to one historian, he was "vain, petulant, racist, overbearing, and egotistical", which may explain reservations about the many attempts to revise his legacy.

[1] An air force officer reflected that if Mitchell's promotion were granted, it would be "only a pyrrhic victory", since it would not "erase the questionable actions that proceeded from his passionate advocacy of airpower's independence".

[70] Congress subsequently passed legislation in 1930 that permitted "all commissioned officers who served in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and/or Coast Guard of the United States during the World War, and who have been or may be hereafter retired according to law .

[76] However, it appears that since this act required the officer to be formally retired, it did not apply to Mitchell because he had resigned his commission rather than be subject to the pay forfeiture from his court martial conviction.

[78] However, the 1930 legislation did allow non-retirees to use the wartime titles of ranks they had held honorably, meaning that Mitchell could subsequently call himself a brigadier general without actually being one as a matter of law.

The battleships Conte di Cavour, Duilio, Littorio, Arizona, Utah, Oklahoma, Prince of Wales, Repulse, Roma, Musashi, Tirpitz, Yamato, Schleswig-Holstein, Lemnos, Kilkis, Marat, Ise and Hyūga were all put out of commission or destroyed by aerial attack including bombs, air-dropped torpedoes and missiles fired from aircraft.