Good biography of Billy Mitchell, who championed building up the air power of the United States. ( )

The author shows Gen Billy Mitchell as a complex character. While the trial is the centerpiece of the book the author tells Mitchell's biography to help you understand the main character at the trial. I felt the author was neither biased overly for or against Gen Mitchell. He highlighted his failures and his successes as a warrior and a man. And you will probably come away agreeing with the author that Gen Mitchell probably deserved to be found guilty.

From the standpoint of working in the military justice system it was interesting to note the way things have changed for the court-martial process. Now there would be a military judge sitting in the room and not a legal advisor sitting with the jury members. The questions of whether all the evidence that the defense put on as to the truth of Gen Mitchell's statements being part of the evidence or only to be considered in mitigation would be decided before that evidence would have been presented.

Gen Mitchell was right that the Air arm of the service needed to be greatly strengthened and it was vital for the next war. But, while he should have said this message loudly he could have been more effective had he been more tactful.
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Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell returned from World War I passionately committed to the idea that long-range bombers – used offensively to strike the enemy’s “vital centers” – would be the decisive weapon in future wars, and became a tireless advocate of “air power.” A relentless and often strident advocate for the expansion of American military aviation and the establishment of an independent Air Force, he endeared himself neither to his own service nor to the Navy. The already thin professional ice beneath his feet broke when, in September 1925, he publicly accused the War and Navy Departments of “incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense.” Promptly charged with insubordination and “conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the military service,” he stood trial before a court-martial in Washington, DC that fall.

Mitchell’s fellow air-power advocates spent the decades after his death in 1936 painting him as a visionary and a martyr: a “prophet without honor” who was vindicated by “the verdict of history.” The 1955 film The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell enshrined that view for subsequent generations. Military historians have long since demolished it, however, and Douglas C. Waller -- working with meticulous care from court records, contemporary newspaper accounts, and Mitchell’s personal papers -- confirms their judgment. He paints Mitchell as brilliant, driven, and toweringly ambitious: a man who reveled in grand concepts but was impatient with practical details. He loved the idea of a literal “day in court,” but – wildly overconfident, and defended by an equally ambitious but ill-prepared civilian attorney – bungled the execution. There were, Waller makes clear, no “Hollywood moments” in the trial, only factual testimony about the state of military aviation and Mitchell’s conduct, leavened with feints and jabs over legal procedure and the blatant bias exhibited by Mitchell’s enemies on the court.

Waller paints a detailed, well-rounded picture of Mitchell – interspersing biographical chapters with the trial narrative – and explains aviation, military law, and court-martial procedures with superb clarity. The result is a superb narrative history that is simultaneously accessible and scholarly. A Question of Loyalty is, however, a portrait of Mitchell as he really was – a man felled by arrogance, overconfidence, and a fatal lack of judgment – rather than as we might like him to be. If you want the stirring tale of a martyred prophet, well . . . Hollywood has a movie for you. ( )