Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Early Intelligence Organization
Two of the early leaders of the air component of the U.S. Army, Maj. Gen. Mason M.
Patrick (left), Chief of the Air Service in the 1920s, and, standing beside him, his gifted
and troublesome subordinate, Brig. Gen. William Mitchell. General Mitchell’s court
martial in 1925 became a national showcase for the new, progressive ideas of the
Army’s air arm. As Col. Carl A. Spaatz said of his own testimony at the trial, “They
can’t do anything to you when you’re under oath and tell them answers to their
question.”
Disarmament negotiations were in progress, General Patrick sent Mitchell, with
his aide, Lt. Clayton Bissell, and aeronautical engineer Alfred Verville, on an
inspection trip to France, Italy, Germany, Holland, and England during the
winter of 1921-1922. Mitchell was apparently pleasantly received on his trip,
but soon after his visit to Paris and London, the British and French governments
began to pose demands for technical information in exchange for what they had
given him. Some of the questions went beyond limited technical matters. The
French, for example, wanted to know American military opinion regarding
“giant or very powerful” military aircraft and multiengine planes.”
By 1925 the duty tours of the Air Service air attaches assigned to postwar
European capitals at the end of the war were close to completion. At this
juncture, the Air Service Engineering Division recommended that all air
attach& be graduates of the Air Service Engineering School and that they be
brought back to the United States at least once a year to remain current on
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