“A perfectly logical and sensible thing”: Billy Mitchell Advocates a Canadian-American Aerial Alliance against Japan

In 1923 Brigadier General Billy Mitchell made a short and hitherto-ignored trip to Canada to meet with prominent Canadian officials. Mitchell’s report to his superiors made clear that Canada, as an air-minded Anglo-Saxon nation, was ideally suited to join with the United States in an aerial alliance, centered on Alaska, designed to bomb Japan into submission in any future war. Although Mitchell’s plan, which was the logical culmination of his air power notions, appealed to neither American nor Canadian officials, he pushed the alliance notion until his death in the mid-1930s, as did his air power acolytes in the Army Air Corps.