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In the year 1921, Newton D. Baker (US Secretary of War during WWI) laughed at the pilot Billy Mitchell when he proposed a demonstration of how planes could sink battleships. The Navy was very reluctant, and did their own trials, but after being demonstrated that their trials had been fixed so that the bombs planes used were actually sand-bombs, Congress finally approved the trial under the codename "Project B". The trials made by Billy Mitchell's group (named 1st Provisional Air Brigade) were a success, even sinking the battleship Ostfriesland, considered unsinkable. However, when the War Department tried to endorse the establishment of an independent Air Force named "General Headquarters Air Force", the Navy objected and the plan was retired. Billy Mitchell ended up at a base in Texas and, after criticising the Navy for the loss of the dirigible Shenandoah, he was court-martialed and left the Navy. He would posthumously be given the Congressional Gold Medal for his foresight.

WI GHAF went forward and made the Air Force an independent group apart from the Navy, with Mitchell as the Air Marshal in a position akin to that of a Field Marshal?
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