From the Publisher

It had all the ingredients of a movie drama:a scandal that grips Washington and touches the White House; bitter battles and backroom intrigue at the highest levels of the U.S. military; glamorous women who make or break the careers of powerful men; a high-stakes trial with a celebrity defendant who captures the nation's attention ...

A Question of Loyalty plunges into the seven-week Washington trial of Gen. William "Billy" Mitchell, the hero of the U.S. Army Air Service during World War I and the man who proved in 1921 that planes could sink a battleship. In 1925 Mitchell was frustrated by the slow pace of aviation development, and he sparked a political firestorm, accusing the army and navy high commands, and by inference the president, of treason and criminal negligence in the way they conducted national defense. He was put on trial for insubordination in a spectacular court-martial that became a national obsession during the Roaring Twenties.

Douglas Waller has crafted a compelling new biography of the daring Billy Mitchell, a larger-than-life figure remembered as much for his outspokenness as for his innovations in the use of airpower. Waller has uncovered a trove of new letters, diaries, and confidential documents that have enabled him to capture in detail the drama of the court and to build a rich and revealing biography of Mitchell, one of the army's most controversial and flamboyant generals.

Born to a millionaire Midwest family at the end of the 1870s, Mitchell joined the military at the age of eighteen and became one of its rising stars. During World War I, he led the largest armada of airplanes ever to attack an enemy force and returned to the United States adashing young general with a chest full of medals and a radical vision of airpower as the only decisive instrument for future wars. But as the military shrank in the postwar years, Mitchell became increasingly impatient and vocal, lashing out at bureaucratic enemies he accused of impeding airpower's progress. After a tragic airship accident that shocked the nation, he publicly blasted the War and Navy Departments for their handling of aviation and was put on trial for it.

A Question of Loyalty is a story about Washington politics, about love and betrayal, about heroes in battle, about determined lawyers and powerful military men pitted against one another in a courtroom.

The Washington Post - John Lehman

As Congress debates intelligence reform, this fascinating book reminds us of Harry Truman's dictum that the only thing new in the world is the history you don't know.

Publishers Weekly

A superb and charismatic Signal Corps officer and innovative air tactician in WWI, Mitchell, the son of a Wisconsin senator, faced an internal conflict: should he be loyal to his superior officers, whom he regarded as almost treasonably incompetent, or to what he saw as his country's best interests, which included a vastly larger, united and independent air arm? The result was a famous court-martial, which Time magazine correspondent Waller (The Commandos), with scholarship and balance, makes extremely comprehensible and gripping to readers more than 75 years on. The shorter biographical portion portrays Mitchell as egotistical, insubordinate, a so-so pilot, a racist, a spendthrift and borderline alcoholic, and heavily responsible in a messy divorce from his first wife. The trial itself was a media circus of modern proportions; Mitchell emerges as somewhat more than a gadfly if something less than a hero, essential to the growth of modern American air power but hardly a spotless martyr or a major strategic thinker. Agent, Kris Dahl at ICM. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Although this year also saw the publication of William Schwarzer's The Lion Killers: Billy Mitchell and the Birth of Strategic Bombing, Waller's broad research results in a more detailed portrait of the controversial Mitchell. Between the world wars, American airpower was in transition, and Mitchell led the charge to force the army and navy to develop a separate air force. The powers that be weren't receptive as Mitchell carried out a media campaign that featured both figurative and literal shouting matches. After a deadly aircraft accident, Mitchell accused the military command of criminal negligence and treason, implicating President Woodrow Wilson by extension. Events culminated in Mitchell's court-martial. Waller reveals that much of Mitchell's bombast was carefully designed for publicity and self-promotion, putting his ego on a collision course with his superiors; the detailed background information on Mitchell's family life only illustrates how unlikable he must have seemed to his enemies. Unfortunately, the writing, while faithfully recounting the trial and Mitchell's shortcomings, fails to capture the charisma that must have sparked Mitchell's career. Recommended for military history collections.-Elizabeth Morris, Illinois Fire Service Inst., Champaign Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Pilot, patriot, and popinjay: a thoroughgoing account of Billy Mitchell's now-forgotten fall from grace. WWI aviator and hero Billy Mitchell smarted when, instead of being given command of the Army's air branch, he was reduced in rank and shipped off to a post in Texas. "In Washington, he had a platoon of air officers as loyal to him as disciples to a prophet," writes Time correspondent Waller (Big Red, 2001, etc.). "His staff now consisted of two clerks and a stenographer." Insisting, as he would for the rest of his life, that he be called General Mitchell, he went on the offensive soon after the Navy dirigible Shenandoah crashed in a storm over Ohio, releasing a scathing report to the press that criticized the military leadership's aviation policy, "dictated by non-flying officers of the army and navy who know practically nothing about it." For his pains, Mitchell was hauled up before the brass for insubordination, and his trial commanded headlines for weeks in 1925. Waller points to the justice of some of Mitchell's complaints and to the correctness of many of his military theories-some developed on an eight-month tour of Asia in 1923, after which he wrote a report predicting that Kapan would one day attack the US at Pearl Harbor, and, moreover, that the attack would begin at 7:30 a.m. with a swarm of fighter planes, a "scenario . . . eerily similar to what actually happened eighteen years later." But, working with long-buried transcripts, Waller also puts some black marks next to Mitchell's name: he was a martinet; he stole some of his bestselling book, Winged Defense, from an army report that, to make matters worse, was still classified. In the end, convicted, Mitchell resigned hiscommission, though he remained a public hero, especially when WWII began and his complaints about the lack of preparation of the US armed forces were proven true. A worthy read for aviation and military-history buffs. Agent: Kristine Dahl/ICM

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Read an Excerpt

A Question of Loyalty

HarperCollins

Chapter One

It was evening when Billy Mitchell finally sat down in the parlor of his quarters at Fort Sam Houston to write to Betty (as his wife, Elizabeth, was known) about the plane accident. Shade from leafy trees, some ripe with figs and pecans in the front yard, surrounded the home and cooled the dry air in the evening. But summer at the army post, just outside San Antonio, Texas, was still unbearably hot and dusty. Mitchell was glad Betty had remained with her parents in Detroit to give birth to their first child, while he managed the moving in of their furniture and the laying of new carpets.

Quarters Number 14 was not the best on the post, certainly not as fine as the accommodations usually given to generals. But it was comfortable. The house was built according to a two-story Italianate design, with limestone from the city's rock quarries. It had three bedrooms, a parlor, dining room, and servants' quarters in the back. Stables nearby housed three horses Mitchell had brought with him from Virginia: Eclipse, Boxwood, and Flood Tide. From the parlor's bay window, Mitchell had a beautiful view of a vast parade ground. He had to walk just several blocks to reach his office in the post's quadrangle. His old boss in Washington, Maj. Gen. Mason Patrick, had ordered that Mitchell's personal plane, the Sea Gull 3rd, be flown down to him.

Still, Fort Sam Houston, as Will Rogers saw it, was "Siberia." (The two had become fast friends after Mitchell took the famous humorist up for his first plane ride four months earlier.) Mitchell had been busted from brigadier general to colonel and banished to this "mosquito post in Texas," Rogers had written in one of his columns, because he had angered the brass in Washington.

But Texas was far from a backwater. Fort Sam Houston was the army's largest post in the United States. For decades it had guarded the country's strategically important southern flank against threats percolating up from Mexico. As the new air officer of the Eighth Army Corps, Mitchell had an area of responsibility that stretched from Texas to the West Coast. Elizabeth was thankful the army hadn't sent him farther away, to Panama. And though Mitchell had been reduced in rank, the army did not consider it a demotion. Colonel was his permanent rank, the highest he ever held during his career. Brigadier general had been his temporary rank during World War I, when officers were promoted rapidly as the army expanded for combat. After the war most reverted to their permanent peacetime ranks. Colonels went back to being captains, generals sank as low as major. The only reason Mitchell had been lucky enough to keep his star after the war was that his job as assistant director of the air service allowed for that rank while he held that position. When the job ended he stopped being a general.

But Mitchell felt humiliated by the reduction in rank. Elizabeth knew his feelings had been hurt "much more than he ever will say," she wrote to one of his sisters. John Weeks, Calvin Coolidge's secretary of war, had refused to reappoint him as air service assistant director the previous March, which meant that he returned to the rank of colonel. Mitchell had been so publicly critical of the War Department's management of air power - and so reckless with the facts, as far as Weeks was concerned - that he had practically been insubordinate. As far as Mitchell was concerned, he should have been named director of the army air service and promoted to major general a long time ago. He refused to accept the rank of colonel now. Soldiers on post still called him "general," and he never corrected them.

True, the Eighth Corps territory was vast, but its air arsenal was puny. In Washington, Mitchell had lorded over the entire air service, and his instant access to the national press and the city's powerful allowed him to push his cause for an air force independent of the army. Now he was relegated to a do-nothing job far away, the War Department hoped, from politicians and the media. In Washington, he had a platoon of air officers as loyal to him as disciples to a prophet. His staff now consisted of two clerks and a stenographer, Maydell Blackmon, whom he'd brought from Washington and who spent most of her days answering the hundreds of letters that poured in each week - most from admirers who thought he'd gotten a raw deal. It amused "Blackie" (the nickname Mitchell had given her) that he always dictated letters while walking in wide circles in his office. "The general," as Blackie always called him, had a good command of the language and always seemed to know what he wanted to say. He rarely went back and edited what he had dictated.

Mitchell had wrenched his right shoulder in the plane accident that morning. He had scratches on his hands and face, and a plaster cast was packed on his nose, which was probably broken when his head slammed into the cockpit's forward crash pad. He had sent Betty a quick telegram earlier that morning hoping it would reach her in Detroit before she read about the mishap in the afternoon newspapers. In fact, reporters had already phoned her shortly after his Western Union message arrived, asking her for a comment. "Thank heaven you are safe," she had wired back. Betty had given birth to their first child, Lucy, less than a month earlier. She did not need the extra worry, not with everything else going on in this turbulent year. "I wanted you to know ahead of any news items appearing that nothing had happened to your old man," Mitchell now wrote in the peace and calm of his parlor.

(Continues...)

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Read a Sample Chapter

Chapter One

Exile

MONDAY, AUGUST 31, 1925

It was evening when Billy Mitchell finally sat down in the parlor of his quarters at Fort Sam Houston to write to Betty (as his wife, Elizabeth, was known) about the plane accident. Shade from leafy trees, some ripe with figs and pecans in the front yard, surrounded the home and cooled the dry air in the evening. But summer at the army post, just outside San Antonio, Texas, was still unbearably hot and dusty. Mitchell was glad Betty had remained with her parents in Detroit to give birth to their first child, while he managed the moving in of their furniture and the laying of new carpets.

Quarters Number 14 was not the best on the post, certainly not as fine as the accommodations usually given to generals. But it was comfortable. The house was built according to a two-story Italianate design, with limestone from the city's rock quarries. It had three bedrooms, a parlor, dining room, and servants' quarters in the back. Stables nearby housed three horses Mitchell had brought with him from Virginia: Eclipse, Boxwood, and Flood Tide. From the parlor's bay window, Mitchell had a beautiful view of a vast parade ground. He had to walk just several blocks to reach his office in the post's quadrangle. His old boss in Washington, Maj. Gen. Mason Patrick, had ordered that Mitchell's personal plane, the Sea Gull 3rd, be flown down to him.

Still, Fort Sam Houston, as Will Rogers saw it, was "Siberia." (The two had become fast friends after Mitchell took the famous humorist up for his first plane ride four months earlier.) Mitchell had been busted from brigadier general to colonel and banished to this "mosquito post in Texas," Rogers had written in one of his columns, because he had angered the brass in Washington.

But Texas was far from a backwater. Fort Sam Houston was the army's largest post in the United States. For decades it had guarded the country's strategically important southern flank against threats percolating up from Mexico. As the new air officer of the Eighth Army Corps, Mitchell had an area of responsibility that stretched from Texas to the West Coast. Elizabeth was thankful the army hadn't sent him farther away, to Panama. And though Mitchell had been reduced in rank, the army did not consider it a demotion. Colonel was his permanent rank, the highest he ever held during his career. Brigadier general had been his temporary rank during World War I, when officers were promoted rapidly as the army expanded for combat. After the war most reverted to their permanent peacetime ranks. Colonels went back to being captains, generals sank as low as major. The only reason Mitchell had been lucky enough to keep his star after the war was that his job as assistant director of the air service allowed for that rank while he held that position. When the job ended he stopped being a general.

But Mitchell felt humiliated by the reduction in rank. Elizabeth knew his feelings had been hurt "much more than he ever will say," she wrote to one of his sisters. John Weeks, Calvin Coolidge's secretary of war, had refused to reappoint him as air service assistant director the previous March, which meant that he returned to the rank of colonel. Mitchell had been so publicly critical of the War Department's management of air power -- and so reckless with the facts, as far as Weeks was concerned -- that he had practically been insubordinate. As far as Mitchell was concerned, he should have been named director of the army air service and promoted to major general a long time ago. He refused to accept the rank of colonel now. Soldiers on post still called him “general,” and he never corrected them.

True, the Eighth Corps territory was vast, but its air arsenal was puny. In Washington, Mitchell had lorded over the entire air service, and his instant access to the national press and the city's powerful allowed him to push his cause for an air force independent of the army. Now he was relegated to a do-nothing job far away, the War Department hoped, from politicians and the media. In Washington. he had a platoon of air officers as loyal to him as disciples to a prophet. His staff now consisted of two clerks and a stenographer, Maydell Blackmon, whom he'd brought from Washington and who spent most of her days answering the hundreds of letters that poured in each week -- most from admirers who thought he'd gotten a raw deal. It amused “Blackie” (the nickname Mitchell had given her) that he always dictated letters while walking in wide circles in his office. "The general," as Blackie always called him, had a good command of the language and always seemed to know what he wanted to say. He rarely went back and edited what he had dictated.

Mitchell had wrenched his right shoulder in the plane accident that morning. He had scratches on his hands and face, and a plaster cast was packed on his nose, which was probably broken when his head slammed into the cockpit's forward crash pad. He had sent Betty a quick telegram earlier that morning hoping it would reach her in Detroit before she read about the mishap in the afternoon newspapers. In fact, reporters had already phoned her shortly after his Western Union message arrived, asking her for a comment. "Thank heaven you are safe," she had wired back. Betty had given birth to their first child, Lucy, less than a month earlier. She did not need the extra worry, not with everything else going on in this turbulent year. "I wanted you to know ahead of any news items appearing that nothing had happened to your old man," Mitchell now wrote in the peace and calm of his parlor.