<text id=00he0406><title>Sinking the Ostfriesland</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Sinking the Ostfriesland</hdr><body>
<p>On 21 July, six Martin MB-2s and one Handley Page O/400, each carrying the special 2,000-lb (907-kg) bombs that Ordnance had rushed through the development and production cycle, took to the air accompanied by other MB-2s carrying 1,000-lb (454-kg) bombs. These latter planes formed the first wave of the attack, dropped five bombs and were waved off. An argument followed over the rules while the MB-2s circled, waiting with the 2,000-pounders. The issue was resolved, and the olive drab biplanes swung into a column at 2,500 ft (762 m). The first bomb was dropped at 12:18 pm, and the sixth at 12:31 pm. At 12:40 pm the <hi format=ital>Ostfriesland</hi> vanished below the surface, leaving a widening ring of bubbles and debris as it plunged toward the bottom. The Handley Page, denied a drop before the sinking, made its pass and dropped its single one-tonner in the center of the roiling water.
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<p>After that, anything was anti-climax. "We don't sink battleships; we loop them!" scrawled one enthusiastic flier on a hangar wall back at Langley. The tests continued and the Army pilots sank the obsolete battleship USS <hi format=ital>Alabama</hi>. The major tenet of Mitchell's crusade had been demonstrated, finally, in those tests off the Virginia shore.
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<p>The tests, conclusive as they might have appeared to be, didn't change anything. The advocates of bombardment had made their point; the Army and Navy remained unconvinced and continued to regard air power as just another way to help surface forces win their battles.
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<p>More tests were conducted in 1923, and they proved the same points once again. Mitchell spoke, wrote and crusaded, growing more impatient, more abrasive and more reckless. He was exiled, in effect, and sent to San Antonio to keep him out of the public eye.
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<p>Then, on 5 September 1925, the USS <hi format=ital>Shenandoah</hi>, a giant dirigible operated by the Navy, crashed in a line squall over Ohio. Fourteen of the 43 crewmen were killed, and Mitchell used their deaths as the reason for releasing a statement to the press blasting both the Army and the Navy. He blamed the accident, and others before it, on the "...incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense by the war and navy departments."
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<p>It was the last straw. Orders for the court martial of Brigadier General William Mitchell, USAS, were cut that weekend and announced on 7 September. He was tried, found guilty and suspended from the Army, forfeiting half his pay and allowances. He died on 19 February 1936, never to see the ultimate proof of his concepts in the great strategic bomber raids of World War II.
