CHAPTER V

TRANSITION 1921-1925

            The period 1921 to 1925 was one of flux for the Navy amid growing pressure in the national arena for an independent air force.  The creation of the Bureau of Aeronautics in July 1921 concluded the Navy’s official reorganization to accommodate aviation.  That same month the Army and Navy conducted bombing experiments on the captured German battleship Ostfriesland.  When Army bombers destroyed the Ostfriesland, General William Mitchell and other air enthusiasts declared the age of the battleship over and began an active campaign for the creation of an independent air force.  To support their cause, they focused public attention on the whole question of airplanes versus battleships and attempted to turn the military decision into a public referendum.

            Mitchell’s crusade soon turned into an embarrassing public circus.  Despite continued pressure from his superiors to restrict his statements, Mitchell launched public attacks on the Navy’s leadership, many of his own Army commanders, and various members of the Harding and Coolidge administrations.  These attacks increased in frequency and viciousness, aided in part by a series of public embarrassments for naval aviation, including additional bombing tests and the crash of the airship Shenandoah in 1925.  In response to the public pressure generated by Mitchell, Congress eventually convened hearings, the Lampert Hearings, on the question of aviation’s future.  When it became apparent that Congress might side with Mitchell, President Coolidge appointed a committee, known as the Morrow Board, to make its own study of the question.

            This period also saw a considerable change in the Navy’s war plans due to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22.  The resulting treaties limited the Navy’s tonnage in several categories and restricted the United States ability to fortify its Pacific possessions.  Aviation received an unexpected benefit from the treaty as the hulls of two battlecruisers, Lexington and Saratoga, were converted into aircraft carriers.  These two carriers, the first real carriers in the Navy, the Langley being largely an experimental carrier, and both would serve during the Second World War.  The restrictions on tonnage for battleships and the size of their guns also focused more attention on aviation as one of the few areas left for further expansion.

            Interest in experiments with aviation attacks on warships began immediately after the First World War.  As part of war reparations, the United States had received several German warships, survivors of the German High Seas Fleet.  A number of officers, both Army and Navy, suggested that either these warships or American vessels scheduled to be scrapped be used in experiments to determine the impact of bombs dropped from the air.  The Navy particularly wanted to establish how much damage near misses could have on the hulls of its battleships and how best to protect them.[1]

            In November 1920 the Navy chose the Spanish-American War era battleship Indiana for the first set of tests.  Using placed explosives rather than air dropped bombs, the Navy destroyed Indiana.  These tests failed to answer many of the Navy’s questions because of the small size of the initial explosives used and the age of Indiana.  Some officers also questioned the ability of airplanes to deliver bombs with the accuracy of the placed explosives.  Therefore, the Navy endeavored to conduct further experiments, this time with more modern, captured German warships.  The Army was considering the same sort of tests and even requested some obsolete warships from the Navy, so under public and Congressional pressure, the Navy invited Army participation in the experiments.[2]

            At this point considerable debate ensued between the two services, or perhaps more correctly between General Mitchell and the Navy.  The Navy intended for these experiments to be scientific in nature and wanted to insure that they were conducted under strictly controlled conditions.  General Mitchell, the Navy believed, wanted to insure that the vessel was quickly and decisively sunk by aircraft to further his own campaign.  Mitchell, on the other hand, regarded the Navy’s restrictions as deliberate attempts to insure that aviation failed this test of its ability and presented requests for older Navy ships to be used in Army tests as well.  Mitchell’s efforts led Admiral William Moffett, Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, to complain to the Secretary of the Navy in a memo entitled “Publicity Propaganda of General Mitchell Running Contrary to President’s Policy.”[3]

            Final plans for the experiments were completed in May 1921.  These plans involved bombing the battleship Ostfriesland, the submarine U-117, the cruiser Frankfurt, and some destroyers, all of them German ships.  The plans included specific instructions as to the number of planes to be used in each attack and the number and size of bombs to be used.  In addition the Navy would conduct location and attack experiments on the old battleship Iowa.  For these experiments Iowa would be radio controlled and underway at sea.  Because of the expensive radio control equipment the Navy insisted that dummy bombs be dropped on the ship.  The Army refused to participate in the Iowa experiment claiming that the dropping of dummy bombs had no purpose.[4]

            On June 20^th the Navy began the experiments by sinking U-117, which had been responsible for sinking nine Allied ships during the war.  The submarine was sunk in less than twelve minutes, but most experts dismissed this sinking, noting that U-117 was not only immobile but also not an armored warship.  Two days later, the Navy sunk two more submarines, U-140 and U-148, by gunfire.  During the delay between tests two Army pilots, Captain Howard T. Douglas and Lieutenant Maril U. Plumb, were killed in a mid-air collision while practicing bombing an old wreck.  The collision increased national attention and led to further accusations by both sides.  Mitchell attempted to defuse criticism by offering to join the Iowa experiment, but the Navy refused.  This increased the level of public feuding between the two services and led senior Navy officers to caution against even the appearance that the Navy was not cooperating with Mitchell and the Army in the tests.[5] 

The Iowa experiment seemed to validate both sides.  Mitchell expressed delight that the Iowa was found by an Army blimp, and not by Navy flying boats, while the Navy took satisfaction from the fact that only two bombs hit out of eighty dropped.  Two weeks later Mitchell got his chance when the tests turned to the destroyer G-102, a target reserved for Army bombers only.  Three waves of Army aircraft, beginning with fighters and ending with heavy bombers, attacked the German ship.  In Mitchell’s own words,

In less time than it takes to tell it their bombs began churning the water around the destroyer.  They hit close in front of it, behind it, opposite its side and directly in the center.  Columns of water rose for hundreds of feet into the air.  For a few moments the vessel looked as if it was on fire, smoke came out of its funnels and vapors along its decks.  Then it broke completely in two in the middle and sank down out of sight.[6]

Mitchell declared the attack “absolutely conclusive” and claimed that “All our methods and systems for bombing had proven correct.”[7]

            On July 18, the cruiser Frankfurt was the target of a combination of Army, Navy, and Marine aircraft attacking in waves.  The first waves attacked with small, one hundred pound bombs.  After each wave, Navy inspectors boarded the ship to check for damage.  They found that the small bombs had done little structural damage to the ship, although they had killed numerous animals tied on deck to simulate crewmen.  When the Army heavy bombers attacked with six hundred pound bombs the Frankfurt quickly succumbed, despite Navy attempts to stop the attack to inspect damage.  Mitchell noted, “From the time the cruiser Frankfurt received her mortal blow, she sunk rapidly toward the port side, then slid down bow on.  She was soon out of sight and again it was proven that our air bombs could destroy a cruiser as no other weapon could.”[8]

            Mitchell’s actions during the Frankfurt bombing angered the Navy in several ways.  First, the Navy felt that Mitchell and his pilots had deliberately ignored the signal to stop bombing in order to dramatically sink the vessel.  This charge was supported by the Navy’s second complaint, Mitchell’s ongoing effort to deliver film of the bombings to the press at the earliest possible moment.  After the Frankfurt bombing, Mitchell dispatched an aircraft carrying the film of the experiment to New York City.  He wanted to have film of the Frankfurt being sunk by Army bombers showing in theaters as soon as possible. The airplane crashed and another Army pilot was lost, which the Navy saw as another example of Mitchell allowing his personal ambitions to take precedence over his duty.[9]

            Experiments with Ostfriesland itself began on 20 July, despite Navy concern over the weather.   This day also saw an increase in friction between the two services as scheduling difficulties led to the Army bombers making their attacks before the Navy observers were fully prepared.  The next day was even worse and led to a great deal of resentment between the two services and continued controversy for years.  At the center of the controversy was the rules established for bombing experiments, which Mitchell considered overly restrictive and the Navy considered necessary.[10]

            On the 21^st the bombing experiments were supposed to start at 8:00 A. M. but the Army planes again arrived early over the anchored ship with a curt message from Mitchell insisting that “they not be interfered with by naval aircraft.”  The rules called for dropping the eleven hundred pound bombs one at a time and the first one made a direct impact on Ostfriesland.  At this point the Navy control ship Shawmut, anchored nearby, called for a halt to the bombing so that damage could be assessed, but the Army planes continued to drop their bombs.  After this, accounts vary as Navy sources insist Mitchell radioed that he would decide when to stop the attack and Army sources insist the attack was simply too far along to stop.  Either way, the Army bombers dropped five more eleven hundred pound bombs, three of which hit, and later seven two thousand pound bombs.[11]

            This continued pounding finally sank the great ship, turning her turtle shortly after noon.  Mitchell described the sight thus:

When a death blow has been dealt by a bomb to a vessel, there is no mistaking it.  Water can be seen to come up under both sides of the ship, she trembles all over, as if her nerve center had been shattered, and she usually rises in the water, sometimes clear, with her bow or stern.  In a minute the Ostfriesland was on her side;  in two minutes she was sliding down by the stern and turning over at the same time;  in three minutes she was bottom-side up, looking like a gigantic whale, the water oozing out of her seams as she prepared to go down to the bottom gradually she went down stern first.  In a minute more only the tip of her beak showed above the water.  It looked as if her stern had touched the bottom of the sea as she stood there straight up in a hundred fathoms of water to bid a last farewell to all her sister battleships around her.[12]

            The conclusion of the tests did little to end the controversy over aviation’s future or the animosity between Mitchell and the Navy.  The Navy asserted that Mitchell’s violations of the rules of the experiments rendered the test invalid.  Because of the speed at which Ostfriesland sunk they had not been able to obtain the necessary information.  The Navy further accused Mitchell of destroying the Ostfriesland in such spectacular fashion intentionally in order to sway public opinion.  Mitchell charged that the Navy structured the experiments for maximum hindrance of aviation.  He further charged that the Navy conducted the experiments so far out to sea, at the one hundred fathom line, in order to force the Army planes to fly a greater distance and perhaps crash.[13]

            Both sides also drew different conclusions from the experiments and attempted to convince the public of the validity of their interpretation.  The Navy pointed out that because the Navy had not wanted to risk damage to expensive radio control equipment, the Ostfriesland had been stationary throughout the attacks, a state unlikely to be duplicated during wartime.  The Navy also noted that Ostfriesland had not been able to fight back and that a crew would have been able to perform damage control and perhaps keep the ship afloat.  The Army bombers had known exactly where to find Ostfriesland and been able to achieve exceptional coordination.  The Navy concluded that under wartime conditions Ostfriesland would have survived.[14]

            Moffett joined in the Navy public relations campaign insisting that despite appearances the era of the battleship had not ended.  He and other naval officers instead pushed for a balanced fleet, one in which aviation would play in integral role and complement the battle fleet rather than replacing it.  The development of carrier aviation became crucial for this goal.  Despite recognition of the need to build or convert a carrier as early as1918, the General Board had waited until after the war to request funds for a carrier.  The collier Jupiter was selected for conversion to a carrier and work started in March 1920.[15]

            Launched on 20 March 1922 the Langley, renamed in honor of Samuel Pierpont Langley, displaced thirteen thousand tons with a top speed of fourteen knots.  Lieutenant Commander V. C. Griffin made the first take off from Langley, while Lieutenant Commander George Chevalier had the honor of the first landing.  Langley became a floating test base for the Navy, as all the equipment and procedures for operating a carrier had to be developed and tested.  On 18 November, Commander Keith Whiting became the first person to catapult off the Langley.  Until the launching of the Lexington and the Saratoga in 1927, the Langley remained as the Navy’s only carrier, and almost all of the Navy’s experience with carrier operations came from experiments done on the Langley.[16]

            Historians suggest that the underlying cause of the First World War was the rivalry between Great Britain and Germany, as evidenced by their naval arms race.  At the conclusion of that war, Great Britain faced the possibility of two new competitors to her naval dominance, the United States and Japan.  By 1921 Great Britain still maintained the advantage over her two rivals with 1,753,539 tons in naval vessels of all types compared to the United States’ 1,302,441 and Japan’s 641,852.  However, both the United States and Japan were building or had authorized considerably more tonnage than Great Britain, 747,007 tons for the United States and 706,888 tons for Japan versus 182,950 tons for Great Britain.  Great Britain’s financial situation prohibited her matching the building programs of Japan and the United States, so interest began in reaching an arrangement to insure at least parity between the United States and Great Britain.[17]

            Great Britain’s interest coincided with a change in administration in the United States where Republican President Warren G. Harding and a Republican controlled Congress, along with many Democrats in Congress, were more interested in reducing the budget than in completing Woodrow Wilson’s “Navy Second To None” building program.  That program, delayed during the war, had already cost the United States $187,349,000 and it was estimated that it would take another $305,503,000 to complete.  Informal talks between the two countries suggested that an agreement could be reached if they could find a way to curb the Japanese program as well.  This move was thought possible because of the extreme cost of Japan’s naval program which was consuming an estimated 32 percent of the Japanese budget, compared to the 12 percent of its budget being spent by the United States.[18]

            Interest in the conference expanded in both numbers and scope as a total of nine nations, the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, France, China, Belgium, Portugal, and the Netherlands, attended and various Far Eastern concerns were added to the agenda.  While the other nation’s interests focused on the Far East, the United States remained firmly committed to naval arms limitations.  After much consulting with the Navy, American Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes opened the conference with a startling proposal.  He presented a plan based on four principles:

(1)  That all capital building programs, either actual or proposed, should be abandoned;

(2)  That further reduction should be made through the scrapping of certain of the older ships;

(3)  That in general, regard should be had to the existing naval strength of the powers concerned;

(4) That the capital ship tonnage should be used as the measurement of strength for navies and a proportionate allowance of auxiliary craft prescribed.[19]

            Hughes then continued by outlining the specific reductions proposed by the United States for the three major nations.  For the United States, he proposed stopping construction on fifteen capital ships and scrapping fifteen older ones, for a total of 845,740 tons.  Great Britain was to halt construction on four Hood class battlecruisers and scrap nineteen other vessels for a total of 583,375 tons.  Japan would not start construction on eight ships already authorized and would scrap seventeen more, for a total of 448,928 tons.  This proposal would leave the United States with eighteen capital ships totaling 500,650 tons, Great Britain with twenty-two ships of 604,450 tons, and finally the Japanese with ten ships of 299,700 tons.  Hughes also proposed that no new capital ships be laid down for ten years and that an upper limit on tonnage would be established with the United States and Great Britain getting 500,000 tons and the Japanese 300,000.  This would later become known as the 5-5-3 ratio.[20]

            The Japanese preferred a 10-7 ratio but were willing to accept the lower ratio with certain conditions.  They also wanted to be able to complete the battleship Mutsu, in part they argued because it had been partially funded by the pennies of schoolchildren, and more importantly an agreement on limiting fortification of Pacific bases.  The United States agreed to limit its fortification of Guam and the Philippines and in return received permission to convert two of its uncompleted battlecruiser hulls, Lexington and Saratoga, into aircraft carriers.[21]

            The naval arms limitation portion of the conference concluded with the signing of the Five Power Treaty.  This treaty established the 5-5-3 capital ship ratio between the United States, Great Britain, and Japan, or 500,000, 500,000, and 300,000 tons respectively, and included the lesser powers Italy and France at a 1.75 ratio each, or 175,000 tons each.  Ratios for other ship classes including aircraft carriers and submarines were established with size limits for each type.  No battleship was to exceed 35,000 tons, no cruiser 10,000 tons, and no aircraft carrier 27,000 tons.  No battleship could be built with larger than 16 inch gun and cruisers and aircraft carriers were limited to 8 inch guns.  The ten year moratorium on new ship building was enacted, as were the limits on fortification of bases in the Pacific.  The treaty also included exceptions such as the Mutsu, Lexington, and Saratoga.[22]

            The effect of the treaty was to encourage the Navy to develop aviation, particularly carrier aviation.  The fortification limitations and Congressional decisions restricted the Navy’s ability to establish aviation bases in the Pacific.  This meant that if the fleet needed to fight in that part of the world it would have to take its airplanes with it.  The Navy also found itself with two new carriers, both twice the size and speed of Langley, under construction.  Furthermore, while the Navy’s battleship tonnage was fixed for at least ten years, it had considerable room for building under the carrier tonnage limits.  Langley had been declared an experimental vessel and hence did not count against the limit, Lexington and Saratoga were each 33,000 tons leaving 69,000 tons available under the 135,000 thousand ton treaty limit allowed the United States and Great Britain, with 81,000 tons for Japan, and 54,000 tons for France and Italy.[23]

            This growing attention on aviation coincided with General Mitchell and the air enthusiasts’ increasing pressure for an independent air force.  Following the Ostfriesland tests, Mitchell had been frustrated in his attempts to carry out further tests.  It was not until 1923 that the Navy released two more battleships, the old Virginia and New Jersey, to Mitchell and the Army.  The destruction of Virginia and New Jersey provided little scientific information but rather demonstrated once again that aircraft could easily destroy old and immobile warships.  Both sides again attempted to sway public opinion, Mitchell insisting that airplanes had again demonstrated their superiority and the Navy pointing out that the ships were old and not up to modern standards.[24]

            President Harding’s death in June 1923 placed Calvin Coolidge in the White House.  Mitchell found President Coolidge less supportive of aviation than his predecessor Harding.  According to observers, Mitchell’s attempts to sway President Coolidge proved futile as he tended to irritate the President more than anything else.  Mitchell’s frustration with the progress of aviation—he felt that aviation was losing ground rather than gaining—led him to take his case directly to the American public and to Congress.  These attempts increased not only in frequency but also in intensity despite numerous attempts by Army and other authorities to restrain him.[25]

            Mitchell attacked both the Navy leadership and senior officers in his own service.  He repeatedly insisted that aviation, particularly land based heavy bombers, were the future of warfare and could replace not only battleships but perhaps even armies.  In response to the Washington Naval Conference he wrote an article entitled “Exploding Disarmament Bunk:  Why Have Treaties About Battleships When Airplanes Can Destroy Them?”  It was not necessarily the content of the article, self-evident from the title, that angered both services but the public arena in which the opinion had been expressed.  Mitchell never chose to constrain his comments to internal memos but instead routinely made his arguments public.[26]

            The War Department instructed Mitchell on several occasions to curtail this activity, and even forbade him from publishing anything without official permission.  Mitchell circumvented this order in 1924, publishing a series of articles in the Saturday Evening Post which would later be published in book form as Winged Defense. Mitchell obtained permission for these articles from President Coolidge without the knowledge of Secretary of War John W. Weeks, greatly angering the Secretary.  Mitchell charged that the Navy intentionally skewed the results of bombing tests and had misled Congress and the public in other matters as well.  These allegations, and the need to respond to them, led to further official interest.[27]

            Both the Army and the Navy established boards, the Lassiter and Eberle Boards respectively, which reached different conclusions about the future of aviation.  The Lassiter report called for reassigning many of the Navy’s aviation responsibilities to the Army, particularly procurement.  The Navy, not surprisingly, rejected such plans as completely unacceptable.  The Eberle report, not released until 1925, called for aviation’s continued place in the Navy and insisted that the Navy needed to control naval aviation.  The effect of these two boards was overtaken by two more important and more thorough investigations, one by a special House Committee and the other by a select committee appointed by President Coolidge.[28]

            From 1921 to 1924 the question of naval aviation’s future remained in limbo.  The increasing public debate finally forced Congress to come to a decision.  It became imperative that Congress establish the future bureaucratic structure of aviation in the United States.  Over the past decade and a half, the Army Air Corps and Navy Bureau of Aeronautics evolved but never solidified and drew criticism constantly.  By the mid 1920s many members of the public, military, and Congress had lost faith in both bodies and demanded their replacement by an independent air service.  The fate of the aviation industry also rested in Congress’ hands.  Unless Congress acted to provide stability to the industry, it would never fully develop and might flounder.

Concluding that decisive action was imperative, Congress convened the Lampert Committee and charged it with investigating all aspects of the aircraft industry and recommending a structure for future aviation.  Many believed that an independent air force was the only logical result from the Lampert committee hearings.  As a secondary goal, the committee hearings were to investigate the accusations of wartime profiteering by the aircraft industry which continued to circulate.  Rumors of an aircraft trust which had absorbed almost a billion dollars of appropriations during the war while delivering very few combat aircraft to the front had led many Congressmen to view the aircraft manufacturers with a jaundiced eye and to refuse to provide support for the industry.

            When the 1^st session of the 68^th Congress convened in March 1924, it met under the specter of scandal that had hung over the Harding Administration.  Determined to put the government’s house in order, Congressmen proposed the launching of over 30 investigations into a variety of topics.  In this atmosphere House Resolution 192 passed without serious opposition on 24 March 1924.  It created the Select Committee of Inquiry Into Operations of the United States Air Services. Though reluctant to vote against the formation of what was popularly called the Lampert Committee, many Democrats feared the inquiry was a partisan attempt to discredit President Woodrow Wilson’s conduct of the war.  Representative Edward W. Pou(D-NC) commented that “In the Republican House that marked the close of the Woodrow Wilson Administration eighty-nine ‘smelling’ committees were turned loose on the Democratic officialdom, no irregularities were revealed.”[29]  Representative Betrand H. Snell(R-NY), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, downplayed suggestions of partianship and declared the committee a fact finding mission designed “...to get information that will prove constructive in the development of our Air Service.”[30]

            The Chairman of the Committee, Florian Lampert had served a relatively undistinguished career in the U.S. House of Representatives.  In the Republican landslide of November 1918, Lampert was elected both to fill out the term of James R. Davison in the 65^th Congress and to his own term in the 66^th Congress as the representative of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  Shortly after taking his seat, Lampert became Chairman of the Committee on Election of the President, Vice President, and Representatives for the 66^th Congress, a minor committee normally filled by freshmen Congressmen. Following his reelection in 1920 and 1922, he served on the Committee on Patents for the 67^th and 68^th Congresses. 

            Joining Lampert on the Select Committee were Representatives Albert H. Vestal(R-IN), Randolph Perkins(R-NJ), Charles L. Faust(R-MO), Frank R. Reid(R-IL), Clarence F. Lea(D-CA), Anning S. Prall(D-NY), Patrick O’Sullivan(D-CT), and William N. Rogers(D-NH).  Vestal, Perkins, and Reid, all Republicans, emerged as the most vocal spokesmen of the bipartisan committee.  Reid later served as defense counsel for General William Mitchell during his court martial.  Supporting the committee were Chief Consulting Investigator J. Frederick Richarardson and Alexander Fisher as an investigator and statistician.[31]

            Not one of the members of the Select Committee had established himself as a preeminent member of Congress.  The committee makeup probably resulted from two factors.  First, the number of investigations authorized at the time occupied many of the Representatives.  Second, the aviation inquiry simply did not attract the attention of the other investigations, which included the conduct of the wartime Shipping Board and irregularities in the Treasury Department.  Therefore, despite the Select Committee’s considerable importance to the military and the aviation industry, it probably ranked low on the list of priorities for most House members.

            From October 1924 to late February 1925, the committee conducted hearings across the United States;  the relevant portions of this testimony are detailed in next two chapters.  Military officers from both services, industry representatives, and other interested parties appeared before the committee.  The committee selected the witnesses by a variety of methods, some such as General Mitchell or Admiral Moffett were obvious choices, others were recommended during testimony before the committee, and still others petitioned the committee for the chance to appear.  This led to an eclectic mix of witnesses, including bankers, minor inventors, and even businessmen associated with the railroad and shipping industries.  The committee largely gave the witnesses a free reign during their testimony allowing them to testify at great length and often on ancillary subjects. In addition, a number of the witnesses appeared multiple times, notably General Mitchell and Curtiss president Charles M. Keys.[32]

            After hearing from 150 witnesses, the Lampert Committee concluded its hearings on 21 February 1925 amid controversy.  At the conclusion of testimony by J. A. Roche, an engineer at McCook Field, Representative Prall introduced a motion to close the hearings.  Reid objected and instead introduced a counter-proposal to not only continue the hearings but also to recall General Mitchell yet again.  This move coincided with an earlier motion introduced by Reid to order the Navy to release the old battleship North Carolina for yet another Army bombing experiment.  Both of Reid’s motions failed, and at 4:20 P.M. the committee adjourned to an executive session.[33]         

            The sudden halt to the investigation—a number of witnesses had already been planned for the following week—raised questions among Congressmen and the press.  Representatives Lea and Prall explained that the committee had run out of funding and that members did not feel they would be able to obtain further funds from Congress without prolonged debate.  Out of an initial appropriation of $25,000 the committee retained a balance of only $900, which Lee and Prall insisted was necessary to publish the hearings.  They emphasized that the committee had already conducted the most extensive investigation into aviation ever, and that no additional hearings were really necessary.[34] 

            The end of the hearings, however, coincided with the circulation among Congress members, particularly of the House Rules and Naval Affairs Committees, of an anonymous letter which criticized the work of the Select Committee.  Postmarked from Washington D.C., it was alleged to represent the view of the Coolidge administration.  The letter charged that the committee had exceeded its authority and scope under the original resolution, H.R. 192.  Therefore, the letter continued, any further requests for funds should be rejected by the House because the committee had become the tool of Mitchell and his supporters.  The letter charged that: 

The proceedings of the committee have, on numerous occasions, disclosed the absence of an honest effort to hear fairly what witnesses have wanted to say, especially when witnesses have disagreed with General Mitchell’s views, on which certain members of the committee had been sold before the investigation had got fairly under way.  The committee has created ‘sensations’ by bringing out facts in distorted manner so as to deliberately create false impression, and, by browbeating tactics, preventing witnesses from explaining circumstances and related facts.[35]

            The letter went on to accuse individual committee members of having “played to the gallery” and of allowing Mitchell to make his claims without cross-examination.  The committee was also chastised for retaining inventor James V. Martin as an expert witness despite the numerous attacks on his credibility.  Rather than reviewing the state of the American aviation program, the anonymous writer declared that:  “From the attitude of individual members of the committee it appears that the proponents of a unified air force seized upon the creation of this committee as an opportunity to agitate openly the question of a separate air service.”  Therefore, the letter concluded, the House should order the committee to conclude its investigation and present its report.[36]

            Even with the close of the hearings, the committee’s work was not yet finished.  Committee members began work on preparing the published accounts of the hearings, including sifting through hundreds of pages of additional submitted material.  They also were also invited to observe Army tests of anti-aircraft fire, the effectiveness of which had received considerable attention during the hearings.  Finally, the committee members began preparing their final report, which would be submitted when the new Congress convened in December.[37]

            The course of the Lampert Committee Hearings greatly concerned the Coolidge administration.  Despite the open opposition of the President and both the Secretary of War John Weeks and the Secretary of the Navy Curtiss Wilbur to the creation of an independent air service, indications were that the committee’s report would recommend just such a course.  Anxiety increased further because of two incidents which impacted naval aviation during the summer and early fall of 1925. 

First, the Navy attempted to fly non-stop from California to Hawaii in August 1925.  During the attempt Commander John Rodgers and his crew were lost at sea for nearly ten days before being found while the Navy carried out a full search for them.  Second, while the Navy was involved in the search for Rodgers and his crew, the Navy airship Shenandoah was lost on an unrelated mission.   Shenandoah was officially supposed to be testing new mooring masts installed near Dearborn, Michigan, but allegations existed that the ship was actually on a publicity tour over the state fairs in the area.  Either way, on 3 September heavy weather over Ohio tore the ship apart, killing fourteen crewmen.[38]

            General Mitchell leap upon both incidences as examples of Navy incompetence.  In a public interview, he charged that “these accidents are the direct result of incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration by the War and Navy Departments.”  He continued, “All aviation policies, schemes and systems are controlled and directed by non-fliers who know practically nothing about it.”  Finally, he acknowledged that his remarks would probably result in severe disciplinary action but claimed that he had to speak out because most airmen had been “bluffed and bulldozed so that they dare not tell the truth in a majority of cases.”[39]

            The loss of Shenandoah and the still missing Commander Rogers and his crew further heightened the Navy’s concerns over the impeding Lampert Committee report.  Before the Lampert Committee could present its report to Congress, however, the President’s Aircraft Board would conduct its own investigation and present its own report.  Following the crash of Shenandoah, Secretary of the Navy Curtiss Wilbur and acting Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis urged the President to convene an investigative board to address a variety of questions concerning military aviation and to answer the charges of negligence made by General Mitchell.  Davis initiated the proposal at a time when the pending court martial of Mitchell threatened to focus a great deal of attention and potential criticism on the Army.  Wilbur proved less interested in yet another investigation, surprising considering the Lampert committee report was anticipated to call for the creation of an independent air service.  Wilbur relented to Davis’ request only after being approached by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who as an engineer sought a review of aviation by recognized experts.[40]

            To head the Board, Coolidge appointed his long time friend Dwight Morrow.  Morrow was a graduate of Columbia Law School and had begun working for J. P. Morgan & Company in 1914.  During the First World War, he served on the National War Savings Committee and Allied Maritime Transport Council and as an advisor to the Commander of the American Expeditionary Force General John Pershing.  After the war, he was asked to help restore the Cuban economy after it suffered a depression.  Morrow also found himself embroiled in the “Merchants of Death” scandal because of his association with J. P. Morgan.  By 1925, he was firmly established as a Republican business leader with international and diplomatic experience.[41]

Morrow was joined by a panel of experts chosen to insure credibility and a favorable recommendation for the administration.  Two retired flag officers with established views on aviation, Major General James Harbord and Rear Admiral Frank F. Fletcher, represented the military.  From Congress, Coolidge chose Representatives Carl Vinson(D-GA), a member of the Naval Affairs Committee and a friend of William Moffett, the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, James S. Parker(R-NY), Chairman of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, and Senator Hiram Bingham(R-CT), whose views on aviation were known from his testimony before the Lampert Committee.  Coolidge also selected Howard Coffin, chairman of the Aircraft Production Board during the First World War, William F. Durand, member of the N.A.C.A. and president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Arthur C. Denison, judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.[42]

            The Morrow Board initially received praise from aviation enthusiasts, even Mitchell publicly welcomed the inquiry despite its perceived bias.  Beginning on 22 September 1925, the Board conducted a much quicker and and more focused investigation.  Unlike the Lampert Committee, the Morrow Board established strict time limits for speakers and recalled very few witnesses for additional testimony.  The list of potential witnesses was reduced from 150 to 99, most of whom had also testified before the Lampert Committee.[43]

            Before these two bodies, parties interested in nearly every aspect of aviation offered their opinions on the future of the technology.  General Mitchell championed the idea of an independent air service, an idea adamantly opposed by the Coolidge Administration in general and the Navy in particular.  Admiral Moffett organized the Navy’s witnesses to present a unified front in support of the Bureau of Aeronautics as an alternative to an independent air force.  Industry representatives from companies both large and small appeared to urge a variety of reforms and government support for aviation.  The final decision ultimately resided with Congress, which would not reach any conclusions until early 1926 .