By seizing upon the crash of the great rigid airship _Shenandoah_ as his take-off signal, Mitchell accepted the risk attendant upon hitting the Navy while it was down. And since lighter-than-air craft had become the personal hobby, and public responsibility, of Rear Adm. William A. Moffett, Mitchell made an implacable enemy of a man who, in the public mind, was no less devoted to the cause of aviation than Mitchell himself. And so, when Bill Mitchell sang out, “Tally Ho!” and started his power dive on Billy Moffett’s tail, he suddenly found himself in a dogfight with an opponent quite as wiley as the famous German Baron von Richthofen. Even this was a calculated risk and might not have brought Mitchell down. It was Mitchell’s attack on the Army that made him vulnerable. For while the Army might view with tolerant amusement Mitchell’s assault on the Navy, it could not countenance insubordination in its own ranks; mutiny is inherently an unpardonable sin. Mitchell may have made a fatal error in not resigning his commission before charging his seniors with “treasonable neglect.” By such action he could have martyred himself in the public eye and at the same time avoided the court-martial that finally convicted him without having to let the independent-air-force issue influence the trial. As it was, certain of his seniors, notably the then Chief of Staff, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who would one day use the Air Force to gain victory in the Pacific, seemed at the time fairly to lick their chops as they assembled to convict General Mitchell. Over on the Navy side were many naval aviators who had suffered the same frustrations that had aroused Mitchell to a frenzy against the Army. Feeling themselves hamstrung by naval conservatism, they too believed their only hope for advancing their beloved aviation lay in a new deal all around. But steeped as they all were in the ancient tradition of the West Point-Annapolis football feud, their first reaction was to defend their Navy, and the second was to rally around their chief, Admiral Moffett. For General Mitchell to expect aid from them under the circumstances would have been something like a Hatfield trying to induce a McCoy to join up on a squirrel shoot, while the feudin’ and the fightin’ were at a climax. As it was, Admiral Moffett kept his hotheads in line, including a few who openly favored the separate air force. Meanwhile Mitchell’s quick kick took the Navy high command completely by surprise. And as the political football sailed end over end toward the Navy goal, the only receiver ready was Admiral Moffett. A good open-field runner himself, he was about to take the ball over his shoulder on the dead run and might have sped to a touchdown save that his teammates blocked him out. The Navy strategists decided not to dignify Mitchell with any public recognition; they would just refuse to play.