So what actually happened?


Apparently the bomb story isn't true,(he -was- allowed heavier bombs, and so, of course, was not demoted for their use , but for some other, unmentioned, reason), he was married, not a bachelor as portrayed, and his main detractor in the movie is a fictional general. So what else? Why didn't Mitchell just resign in the first place, and fight this battle as a wealthy civilian, as a politician, and actually get something done? His high-handed mixed emotions about loyalty to the Army while attacking their policies and high-ranking generals doesn't sit right; there's got to be more to it. And his predictions: Are there any records to corroberate them? Did he really predict that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor twenty years before the actual event? Amazing if true, really stupid if not. How about an explanation: Did he merely realize the ease with which the attack could be carried out, and then deduce that therefore it -would- be done? Mitchell placed great hope in (later to be) President Roosevelt to strengthen air support, but Roosevelt made sure that Pearl Harbor -would- be attacked. Mitchell's predictions are a big maybe, but his mistakes are for sure. If the bulk of the motivations claimed for Mitchell are true, I'd have to say that he was as stupid about how to get things done as he was smart about aviation.

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Mitchell was a much more flamboyant and prickly character right from the start than Cooper's usual understated acting style ("wooden" if you're feeling uncharitable) portrays him. Like many of the air aces of WW I, his charismatic but highly individual personal style earned him the devotion of his peers and the antagonism of his superiors before the end of the war. He did indeed predict the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor -- not in the feverish courtroom scene but in a carefully thought-out 300+ page report in 1924, ironically arising out of his superiors' posting him to Hawaii and the East to get an uncomfortable gadfly out of the way.

My father, a bush pilot between the wars and a senior RCAF officer during and after WW II, spoke of many of the early heroes of aviation he had known as not easy to get along with outside the excitement and cameraderie of dangerous missions. After WW II, he quietly fought some battles similar to Mitchell's as politicians began cutting back armed forces allotments once again. He had no stomach for the infighting of politics and personal ambition in the highest ranks of the Forces, and so retired as an Air Commodore (equivalent to Mitchell's temporary wartime rank). After a disillusioning encounter with the Prime Minister of the time, he decided that civilian politics was not for hime either, and became instead an indefatigable letter-writer, to newspapers, cabinet members, and anyone else who would listen. So, although their characters were very different, he and Mitchell had much in common, and I can well understand how Mitchell came to act as he did -- and why he was not listened to at the time by those at the top.

See wikipedia.org for a good summary of Mitchell's career.

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Better still, read "A Question of Loyalty: Gen. Billy Mitchell and the Court-Martial that Gripped the Nation", by Douglas Waller (2004). An excellent biography that concentrates, as the title states, on his trial and the events that led up to it. Far better than relying on anything in the notoriously unreliable wikipedia.

Incidentally, the book deals with the 1955 film briefly, expressing the family's dislike of Cooper's lackadaisical portrayal, though he did bear some physical resemblance to Mitchell. They felt James Cagney would have been much the better choice, in terms of reflecting Mitchell's own combative temperment. He was not as laid back or as unwilling to fight back at the trial as the movie portrays him. (Nor was he a bachelor, as the movie infers.) The military and War Dept. wanted him silenced, so they forced him out. The real shame is that Mitchell died in 1936, before Pearl Harbor and even before WWII broke out, and so never lived to see his predictions borne out. Even after his death, the military and the War (later Defense) departments fought to keep Mitchell from receiving any formal recognition, to have his conviction overturned, or have his back pay restored. The most that happened was that in 1945 Congress voted to award him a "special medal" posthumously in a hollow attempt to honor him. His son threw it in a back drawer in his house because it was not the Congressional Medal of Honor many had fought for him to receive.

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I just wanted to write how true hobnob53's observation was about Wikipedia being "notoriously unreliable." The web site has improved in some technical subjects in the six years since hobnob53 posted that opinion but concerning World War II biographies they've arguably gotten worse. Like today's celebrities, the admirals and generals of World War II have their fans and it is these people that do most of the work on these Wikipedia biographies. Due to this, most of them are written with an agenda. Wikipedia's rule that everything must have a source has only be marginally successful in controlling its bias.

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Thank you, carthur27, and I strongly second what you wrote. Wikipedia is better than it used to be but many political as well as military figures have been given mindlessly obsequious and inaccurate treatment by contributors who ignore anything detrimental or contrary to the writer's political views in order to present a false, distorted and incomplete picture of someone they agree with.

But I should check out their page on Mitchell to see how it looks today. I still highly recommend the book on him I mentioned back in '07!

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See my post below if you're interested in further information on Mitchell.

I take issue with one of your statements -- that "Roosevelt made sure that Pearl Harbor would be attacked." There are lots of allegations and conspiracy theories about the attack, as there always are with major events that some people simply can't accept as having occurred without benefit of some vast plot (the JFK assassination being the prime example). Some people still try to argue that Pearl was "allowed" to happen to drag us into the war, but not one theory or supposed piece of evidence has ever stood up. As with all conspiracy theories, the "facts" cited are lies, inventions, misrepresentations, out-of-context statements, selectively cherry-picked facts, and so forth. Every reputable historian who ever looked into Pearl Harbor has refuted such falsehoods. See especially the several works of the late Gordon Prange, probably the single most informed and knowledgeable person on the attack and its background. Prange spent decades on the subject and wrote extensively on it and proved conclusively that neither the US nor FDR nor anyone else outside of the Imperial Japanese staff and the attack fleet knew of Pearl in advance. As an historian he would have been excited to have found otherwise, it would have been a major revelation, but it's just untrue, and all reputable historians and journalists agree. Besides, no such conspiracy could have existed and not have had the proof surface after 65 years. ("Proof", not phony and dishonest theories meant to make a few bucks for their purveyors.)

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Hobnob, please PLEASE don't tell me that Elvis is actually dead! I'll fall apart if I find out that the government is not keeping him in suspended animation at Hangar 18!!

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No, no, Elvis is captaining Donald Trump's yacht. The government however IS keeping various aliens, including but not limited to Gort, Alf, Kronos, The Man from Planet X, several Teenagers from Outer Space, and Timmek, on ice, along with Billy Mitchell's feet and Ted Williams's head, in Hangar 18 -- which is really Hangar 21 but was renumbered to conform to the drinking age provisions of the federal highways act. Also the ray gun used to kill Kennedy.

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What a relief! You're a kind-hearted person, Hobnob.

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In the words of Billy Mitchell, "Guilty!"

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Hobnob, I ordered Teenage Caveman and Stephen King's The Dark Half today.
Hope they arive soon.

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Great! Alert me via WWE. By the way, I'm paying a visit to our DAY THE WORLD ENDED thread after typing this. (I've been away for two days and am having a long fight with someone about Jayne Mansfield on another site. Very ugly!)

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You don't want to overstate the similarities between Pearl Harbor and 9/11. It's true they were the last two successful attacks on the United States (so considered even though, in 1941, Hawaii wasn't actually part of the U.S. but still a territory), and about the same number of people were killed in each. But they came from very different kinds of enemies (a single nation vs. a stateless terrorist group), and of course for completely different reasons.

I don't agree that most Americans think they can devise a strategy that will anticipate or cover all eventualities. On the contrary, most Americans believe that while we can improve our security systems and foil many further attacks (as has happened), it's widely assumed that another successful attack will eventually come. This attitude isn't quite a pessimistic or fatalistic one, just a realistic assessment of the situation. Confronting terrorists isn't as straightforward a matter as engaging in a conventional war with an enemy nation.

We all wonder what form the next attack may take. Nuclear? Biological? Gas? Anything's possible. I tend to doubt Canada will be a target, though of course you never know. Canada maintains a pretty low-profile internationally, tends to advocate a more pacific foreign policy, and remains aloof from direct involvement in most international conflicts -- very different from its more activist attitude through the Second World War and first 20 years or so of the Cold War. Britain is a more likely target, or perhaps other European countries, many of which have been in the forefront of combating terrorism. (Attacks have occurred since 9/11 in the UK and Spain, of course.)

Given the nebulous nature of international terrorism, it's pretty surprising that there have been as few attacks as there have been, and that so many have been thwarted. War with an actual nation-state is always more open and continuous, but also ultimately results in a definite end. Unfortunately, such a result isn't really possible when the foe is a widespread multiplicity of terrorists, often of many stripes and causes.

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Did anyone want to punch the prosecutor with his "irrelevant and immaterial"?

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