Mitchell's certainty and the 1921 tests

Billy Mitchell's patriotism and aviation advocacy sit beside a methodological problem: he treated his preferred future as certain. That confidence let him regard the end state as justification for bending the means used to reach it. The 1921 tests matter to the US Navy and the Army Air Service, although aircraft had already proved useful at sea before Mitchell's campaign. Torpedo bombers were excluded because their ability to sink ships had already been demonstrated, rather than because the Navy believed aviation was harmless. The dispute concerned how quickly aircraft could move from supporting capital ships to operating as an independent striking system. Mitchell's campaign shows how prediction and institutional persuasion could outrun the evidence.