Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917-1945

2. Progressive Prophecy

35 2• Progressive Prophecy as air power can hit at a distance, after it controls the air and vanquishes the opposing air power, it will be able to fly anywhere over the hostile country.the menace will be so great that either a state will hesitate to go to war, or, having engaged in war, will make the contest much sharper, more decisive, and more quickly finished. this will result in a diminished loss of life and treasure and will thus be a distinct benefit to civilization. • Brig. gEn. WiLLiam mitChELL, 1925 there is one thing certain: air power has given to the world a means whereby the heart of a nation can be attacked at once without first having to wage an exhausting war at that nation’s frontiers. • maJ. haroLd LEE gEorgE, 1935 21July1921 For Billy Mitchell, the final attack on a relic of the Kaiser’s navy was as important as any he had directed on the Western Front. One by one, the six Martin mb-2 bombers and a single Handley -Page flew past Mitchell’s Osprey, a blue and white dh-4 with a blue command pennant flapping from the rudder. The dualengine biplanes formed the essence of the First Provisional Air Brigade, which Mitchell had created ad hoc in January 1921. For the next six months, its thousand men had devoted their full attention to preparing for the task that now awaited the seven bomber crews—sinking the rust-covered German battleship Ostfriesland . The Navy had received the dreadnought, along with several smaller warships, for testing as a result of the Versailles Peace Treaty, and Mitchell had convinced influential congressmen that 36 pr o g r e ssi v e pr o phe c y the Air Service should participate in those tests as well. To him, though, only the Ostfriesland mattered. His goal was to demonstrate —unequivocally—that bombers could sink the world’s mightiest warships. By proving that air power had supplanted the Navy as America’s traditional first line of defense, Mitchell believed that he would establish an ironclad rationale for his dream of an independent air force. The challenge was formidable. The Navy anchored the Ostfriesland sixty-five miles off the Virginia Capes, requiring Mitchell ’s aircraft, based at Langley Field, Virginia, to fly almost one hundred miles before arriving at their destination. Navy rules also limited the number of hits airmen could score against the imposing target. Launched in 1911, the twenty-seven-thousandton dreadnought sported a four-layered hull and numerous watertight compartments. It had survived eighteen direct hits and a mine detonation at the Battle of Jutland. And it had withstood earlier attacks that morning and on the previous day by Navy aircraft and Mitchell’s Martins. The Martin bombers had scored three hits with 1,100-pound bombs, but Navy inspectors deemed that the ship remained seaworthy. Mitchell agreed; he knew that standard bombs would not suffice to wreck the German behemoth. In his eyes, the previous attacks had been for the Navy’s benefit, as they permitted observers to scrutinize the damage inflicted at periodic intervals. After the next bomb run, he aimed to make further inspections superfluous. Slung beneath the fuselage of each bomber that flew past the Osprey was a specially built two-thousand-pound bomb. While those bombs would likely cause substantial damage to the German battleship if they hit it, Mitchell had directed his crews to drop their ordnance in the water near the ship. He planned to take advantage of the Navy’s limit on direct hits by relying on the hammer-like pressure of underwater explosions to crush the unarmored hull. The first of the massive bombs exploded one hun- 37 pr o gr e ssi v e pr o phe c y dred feet off the Ostfriesland’s starboard bow, causing the ship to list 15 degrees before righting itself. The second detonated three hundred feet in front of the vessel. The third glanced off her port bow, exploded in the water, and ripped a gaping hole in the hull. The fourth landed off her port beam, and the fifth struck the water twenty-five feet off the port side near the waist gun turret. These last two blows raised the bow, causing the ship to roll from side to side while the stern disappeared below the waves. A sixth bomb landing off the starboard side...