In response to the criticism Billy Mitchell had leveled at the Navy, the Chief of Naval Operations had scheduled a number of western flights in the _Shenandoah_ for public relations purposes. Prominent people and news writers had already been taken on junkets, but the expedition scheduled for late August and early September seemed correlated with the country fairs all over the West—and just at the peak of thunderstorm activity. If there was one thing a lighter-than-air pilot disliked, it was thunderstorms—and for good reason. But the pilots had not dared make public confession of their fear, lest they betray a weakness of lighter-than-air that might retard its development. And so they gritted their teeth and tried to suppress the jitters that kept them all on edge. And now, as the _Shenandoah_ departed on her fateful cruise, all of us in BUAERO followed her with anxious hearts. Suddenly a telegram sent from a town in Ohio by one of her crew brought shocking news of one of the greatest disasters in history. Turbulent currents of a line squall had sheared the girders of the great silver ship and split her into three sections. Parts had been free-ballooned to safety, but many of the crew had lost their lives, among them Edgar Sheppard. The ship had broken under his feet; in falling he had seized a girder and held on, 6,000 feet in the air. One of his men, hanging on precariously nearby, had called to him. When Shep extended the helping hand, his own girder failed and he fell to his death. There had been no parachutes. The whole Bureau was stunned. And then lightning struck in another place. From down in San Antonio, Texas, where Brig. Gen. William G. Mitchell, USA, had been exiled to keep him quiet, newspaper headlines trumpeted charges at both the Army and Navy—charges of “treasonable neglect.” The front-page news struck the public like a clap of thunder, and the battle for the separate air force was on in earnest. In BUAERO the whole staff rallied around Admiral Moffett, and embers that had so long smoldered now flamed. CHAPTER SEVEN Calvin Coolidge’s Town Meeting Billy Mitchell, handsome, dynamic, fast on the draw, and breathing the spirit of the offensive, personified the knight of the air of World War I. An outstanding pilot, a bold horseman, a soldier’s soldier, a courageous crusader, he was the newsman’s dream of dramatic copy. And now he assumed the lead in public opinion with the same _sang froid_ he had displayed flying Number One of the First American Air Force on its first flight over the St. Mihiel Salient. With a fine sense of timing, he did that thing which every American longs to do—he told off his superiors in no uncertain terms, and with such sheer audacity that he almost got away with it. The public supported him from the start; it looked like a sure thing for his independent air force. Save for certain strategic errors, he would have won in a glide.