“This officer is an exceptionally able one, enthusiastic, energetic and full of initiative (but) he is fond of publicity, more or less indiscreet as to speech, and rather difficult to control as a subordinate.”
From General John J. Pershing’s 1923 efficiency report on General William Mitchell
The video above is from The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955) with Gary Cooper in the title role.
Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell did not suffer fools gladly. Dismayed that his demands for the development of air power were ignored in the post World War I era, he became increasingly caustic in his comments against his superiors. After the deaths of several airmen in 1925 flying obsolete equipment, he castigated the heads of the Army and Navy for an almost treasonable administration of the national defense. Court-martialed, he was found guilty and suspended from the Army without pay for five years. President Calvin Coolidge amended the judgment so that Mitchell would receive half pay. Mitchell left the Army, his military career at an end.
In 1924 General Pershing, perhaps to keep Mitchell out of harm’s way, sent him out on an inspection tour of the Pacific. In his notes of that tour, later reduced to a 323 page report, Mitchell took a look at the weakness of the US in the Pacific and the rising power of Japan. He predicted war between Japan and the US, and a Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor and Clark Field in the Philippines:
“Japan knows full well that the United States will probably enter the next war with the methods and weapons of the former war…It also knows full well that the defense of the Hawaiian group is based on the island of Oahu and not on the defense of the whole group.”
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“The Japanese bombardment, (would be) 100 (air) ships organized into four squadrons of 25 (air) ships each. The objectives for attack are:
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Ford Island, airdrome, hangers, storehouses and ammunition dumps;
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Navy fuel oil tanks;
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Water supply of Honolulu;
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Water supply of Schofield;
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Schofield Barracks airdrome and troop establishments;
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Naval submarine station;
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City and wharves of Honolulu.”
“Attack will be launched as follows: bombardment, attack to be made on Ford Island at 7:30 a.m.
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“Attack to be made on Clark Field (Philippine Islands) at 10:40 a.m.”
“Japanese pursuit aviation will meet bombardment over Clark Field, proceeding by squadrons, one at 3000 feet to Clark Field from the southeast and with the sun at their back, one at 5000 feet from the north and one at 10,000 feet from the west. Should U.S. pursuit e destroyed or fail to appear, airdrome would be attacked with machineguns.”
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“The (Japanese) air force would then carry out a systematic siege against Corregidor.”
In his hypothetical attack times Mitchell was only 25 minutes off in regard to Pearl Harbor and two hours in regard to Clark Field. Ironically these predictions were used in his court-martial by the prosecution in an attempt to show that Mitchell was an unstable publicity hound. Mitchell died in 1936 and thus did not live to see his unheeded predictions turn into grim prophecy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXzH7ogLa0Y
Now I’m wondering if the Japanese read his report and used it as a blueprint.
“Now I’m wondering if the Japanese read his report and used it as a blueprint.”
Blueprint or not the Japanese had no right to conduct an aggressive invasion on American soil.
The Japanese had little need for a blueprint as they had already perfected the doctrine of massive first attack at the Battle of Tsushima Strait against the Russians in 1905. General Pershing confirmed his tendency to fight the “last war” in WW I with tactics, while successful, were more appropriate to the previous century. General Mitchell had a small group of supporters among the carrier commanders but the Washington staff had little use for anything outside the conventional at the time. Result: Both the Philippines and Hawaii were attacked successfully.
I think this prediction of Mitchell is emblematic of the final fiery stages of his career: extraordinarily perceptive of the vast potentialities of air power, but sometimes overly optimistic (and excessively belligerent in expressing it) in how quickly those potentialities could be realized.
He was obviously on target* (ha!) about the Japanese plans to knock out Clark Air Field, but in error about what they would target at Pearl Harbor: All the things Mitchell lists were very low on the Kido Butai’s target list. Yamamoto’s staff well understood the limitations of their striking forces, and how difficult it would be for them to undertake such a systematic destruction of Pearl Harbor’s infrastructure, so they choose to prioritize knocking out American capital ships and air power on the island instead – and they proved to be quite successful at that.
In any event, Mitchell wasn’t the only American officer to appreciate the risks posed to Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Pacific Fleet’s Fleet Problem 13 in 1932 actually simulated an air attack on the base (it was successful, too). Unfortunately, for many U.S. officers, there was a failure of imagination, and an underestimation of the Japanese: they never really thought it was possible.
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* He was off on some of the attack details, but only in ways shaped by the advance in aviation technology between 1924 and 1941. For example, the first attack wave of bombers struck Clark at 20,000 feet, above the effective range of U.S. AA guns; this would hardly have been feasible, or necessary, in 1924. Billy gets a strong pass here.
“Now I’m wondering if the Japanese read his report and used it as a blueprint.”
If anything was used as a blueprint, it was more likely the British air attack on the Italian naval base at Taranto in November 1940, where they had dispatched Japanese attache officers to do a thorough after-action report, which Yamamoto and his staff read. But Japanese planning ended up being far more ambitious than Taranto, and quite different from Mitchell’s conceptualization, and I think we have to give them credit for a number of points of original thinking.
In any event, it’s not clear whether the IJN ever got hold of Mitchell’s report, but they certainly knew something about Fleet Problem 13, which involved a US Navy exercise “attacking” Pearl Harbor, quite successfully, albeit from a different direction and with a more modest force structure.