Billy Mitchell
William “Billy” Mitchell was born on December 29, 1879 in Nice, France, and grew up in Wisconsin, where his father was a U.S. senator. He enlisted in the Army at 18 in 1898 and later spent four years in Alaska helping to build a military telegraph system. In World War I he commanded all American air combat units in France, and in September 1918 he planned and led nearly 1,500 Allied aircraft in the air phase of the Battle of Saint-Mihiel. He was made a temporary brigadier general in October of that year.
After the war, Mitchell argued that air power would become the main force in future wars and that it should be an independent service. To prove that bombers could sink battleships, he organized a series of tests in 1921, and the former German battleship Ostfriesland went down on July 21. His open criticism of Army and Navy leaders cost him his general’s rank in 1925, and he was court-martialed that year after accusing them of an almost treasonable handling of national defense. He was found guilty on December 17, 1925, and resigned on February 1, 1926. Mitchell died on February 19, 1936.
Many of his ideas were vindicated after his death. The North American B-25 Mitchell bomber was named for him, the first American military aircraft to carry a person’s name, and so was the airport in his home city of Milwaukee. He was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 1946. In 1999 his portrait appeared on a U.S. 55-cent stamp. It met an airmail rate and the two-ounce first-class rate, but it was not marked or issued as an airmail stamp.
Note
This is still a fairly new album page for me. It takes time to get definitive stamps, especially deviations. I have had trouble finding the missing two set of four holiday stamps here. Most dealers don’t seem to try to stock definitive deviations. When I do find what I’m missing on a dealer’s site, they have only one or two stamps I need. This isn’t enough to make it worthwhile to pay the minimum shipping charge.
Contains 10 spots: own 4 – 4 unused, 0 used.
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
✓ |
3274 |
33¢ (jan 1999) |
|||
✓ |
3275 |
55¢ (jan 1999) |
|||
✓ |
3363a |
33¢ (oct 1999) |
|||
✓ |
3355 |
Madonna & Child |
33¢ (oct 1999) |
||
3363b |
33¢ (oct 1999) |
||||
2998a |
60¢ (jan 1999) |
||||
3367a |
33¢ (oct 1999) |
||||
3330 |
55¢ (jul 1999) |
||||
C134 |
40¢ (jul 1999) |
||||
C133 |
48¢ (may 1999) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
