Billy Mitchell's War with the Navy: The Interwar Rivalry Over Air Power, by Thomas Wildenberg

When Billy Mitchell returned from WWI, he brought with him the deep-seated belief that air power had made navies obsolete.

However, in the years following WWI, the U.S. Congress was far more interested in disarmament and isolationist policies than in funding national defense.

For the military services this meant lean budgets and skeleton operating forces. Billy Mitchell's War with the Navy recounts the intense political struggle between the Army and Navy air arms for the limited resources needed to define and establish the role of aviation within their respective services in the period between the two world wars.

 The book concludes with a description of the events surrounding the Air Corps' abysmal performance at Pearl Harbor and Midway followed by a critical assessment of how the development of aviation was pursued by the Army and the Navy after WWII.

“This is a very readable and well-researched account of Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell's campaign to consolidate all American airpower within an independent air force. This story has been the subject of a number of books and articles and even a 1955 movie starring Gary Cooper, but never has it been told so well.” - Journal of America's Military Past