The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell

The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell is a 1955 film directed by Otto Preminger. It stars Gary Cooper as Billy Mitchell, Charles Bickford, Ralph Bellamy, Rod Steiger and Elizabeth Montgomery in her film debut. Brigadier General William Mitchell tries to prove the worth of the Air Service as an independent service by sinking a battleship under restrictive conditions agreed to by Army and Navy. He disobeys their orders to limit the attack to bombs under 1,000 pounds and instead loads 2,000 pounders. With these, he proves his aircraft can sink the ex-German World War I battleship, Ostfriesland,... previously considered unsinkable. But his superiors are outraged. Politically vocal, he is demoted to colonel and sent to a ground unit in Texas. A high-profile air disaster occurs in which his close friend Zachary Lansdowne is killed, the crash of the dirigible USS Shenandoah. This is followed by a second disaster in which six planes, poorly maintained because of lack of funds, flying from a base on the California coast to Fort Huachuca, Arizona crash. Mitchell at this points calls a press conference in which he makes harsh criticisms of the Army. He is then court-martialed.
more