Again, Mitchell

ARMY & NAVY

"Today the Navy lives princpally on hot air, manufactured ar spread by their Washington lobby --ONETIME COL. WILLIAM MITCHEL "What's the use of getting into an argument with a man who, on the face of it, doesn't know what he is talking about, and, if he did, couldn't tell the truth about it?" --ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE NAVY THEODORE DOUGLAS ROBINSON. This exchange of acrimonious accusations last week marked the return to the public ear of onetime Col. William Mitchell, deposed assistant chief of the Army Air Service (TIME, Nov. 2, 1925, e seq.). It has long been Mr Mitchell's conviction that airplane development has made battleships obsolete, that Navy men have retarded aviation progress lest the fleets of the future should be exclusively fleets of the air. During last month's Army-Navy war game off the coast of New England (TIME, May 30), Mr Mitchell sniffed at the folly of continuing to base military strategy on the operations of "archaic" warships, but his observations were not widely published. Last week, however, the failure of Col. Charles A. Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis to function properly when the aviator attempted to fly in it from Washington to Manhattan, prompted Mr. Mitchell to further criticisms. After maintaining that the Spirit of St. Louis suffered exposure to corrosive salt air while being transported home on the U. S. cruiser Memphis ("there was no excuse for not keeping this plane safe and dry"), Mr. Mitchell added that the plane was under naval care at Washington. Calling the plane's inability to take Colonel Lindbergh to New York the "one failure in the Spirit of St. Louis's performance," Mr. Mitchell added: "and it was caused by the organization in this country which has always impeded and held up aviation--the Navy." Navy officials refused to discuss the Mitchell attack, except for Assistant Secretary Robinson's remark, quoted above. Colonel Lindbergh, however, said: "It [the defect found in the Spirit of St. have been caused by carelessness on anyone's part. ... I wish particularly to compliment the naval air station at Anacostia on the high character of its personnel and to express my sincere appreciation for the prompt and efficient manner in which they cared for my plane." Undeterred, Mr. Mitchell next issued a blanket charge of naval incompetence in aviation matters. He maintained that:

The Navy, after having contributed nothing to Commander Richard E. Byrd's flight to the North Pole (TIME, May 17, 1926) later "picked him as a means of propaganda in the same way they have attempted to pick up Lindbergh."

After the late Commander John Rodger's flight to the Hawaiian Islands (TIME, Sept. 14, 1925), the Navy brought him "over his own protest" to Washington, D. C., "for propaganda purposes," and allowed him to keep on flying though the condition of his eyes made him unfit for active service. "This resulted in this gallant officer's death in Philadelphia in a stall of his plane."

And, finally, "this same incompetence has resulted in the Navy killing 16 men in about 35 days around Norfolk. No amount of propaganda will hush this up in the minds of the families of those whose lives have been so uselessly lost."