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WASHINGTON TIMES
THE NATIONAL DAILY

WASHINGTON, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1925.

U.S. ISLES AT MERCY OF FOE, COURT TOLD

MITCHELL CHARGES UPHELD AGAIN

Veteran Major Flier Bares Conditions in Hawaii - Defense Scores Victory

By WILLIAM K. HUTCHINSON

America's great island possessions in the Pacific are virtually at the mercy of enemy fleet, Major Gerald C. Brant, veteran aviator attached to the army general staff, testified today at the court martial of Colonel William Mitchell. 

Brant substantiated Mitchell's sensational charges that the island defenses would be inadequate in time of war against an enemy fleet, supported by enemy airplanes. He even declared Mitchell had called this condition to the War Department's attention but the flying colonel's recommendations were brushed aside as "personal opinions."

Earlier Mitchell scored a victory when he ordered subpoenas issued for thirty-six defense witnesses, after Congressman Frank R. Reid (Rep.) of Illinois, declared it was his purpose to "prove all of Mitchell's charged as an absolute defense" against his court material. 

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Mitchell's Charged Proved By Experts

Col. William Mitchell, now being court-martialed for baring the defects of the army and navy air services, has so far proved through qualified experts - mostly taken from the War Department itself - and also through official documents, that -

1 America's air force is far below authorized peacetime strength, lacks supplies and is dangerously near to being destroyed. 
2 Seventy-five per cent of all the planes in military service are seven years old, built during the world war and of antiquated models, unfit for war use. 
3 The Pacific Coast is defenseless so far as army aviation is concerned, having not a single combat unit located on the West Coast. 

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COL. WILLIAM MITCHELL

4 Twenty-seven percent of all fatal air crashes since the war were due to defective equipment, with a cost of about 140 lives.
5 America is without an effective aviation reserve force, because the air reserve is a "paper" organization, untrained, without airplanes and virtually unorganized. 
6 Of the 6,000 world war veterans enrolled as reserve pilots, only 500 would be useful in war time because of lack of training, each man getting an average of only 45 minutes flying a year.
7 The national guard air units in fifteen States are equipped with dangerous, obsolete planes, utterly unfit for use in time of war. 
8 Anti-aircraft fire is a joke to trained aviators, recent tests at Fortress Monroe showing but one hit in 1,000 rounds of fire.