AMERICAN AVIATOR WILLIAM “BILLY” MITCHELL was born in Nice, France, in 1879, and grew up speaking French as well as he spoke English.

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He joined the U.S. Army on the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 and as a second lieutenant saw action

against the guerrillas of Emilio Aguinaldo in the Philippines.

 

After the war he led a pathfinding mission for a telegraph cable route across the Alaskan wilderness.

 

While journeying across the territory’s vast expanses, he developed a keen interest in aviation, then a brand-new technology.

 

He worked as an intelligence officer for the U.S. Army General Staff in 1912 and learned to fly in 1915.

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After the United States entered World War I on the side of the Allies in April 1917, Mitchell, by then a colonel,

was appointed commander of the Army’s Air Service in France.

 

He was from the start an innovator in the use of airpower, and deployed his aircraft in large-scale bombing attacks against German targets

in addition to their more usual roles of reconnaissance and fighting enemy warplanes.

 

After the war Mitchell loudly criticized the hidebound army and navy officers who did not share

his vision of airpower and refused to finance their aviators in the cash-strapped postwar era.