Radio Failure: An Airpower Conspiracy

By Mgen Lee Downer Usaf

America's airpower visionary, General Billy Mitchell, is in trouble. Through the genre of a retro pulp fiction adventure, this story follows two young pursuit pilots, veterans of air combat in World War I, as they try to thwart foreign agents from stealing American aircraft radio technology. Aided by a spirited, female barnstorming pilot, they follow the murderous fugitives to the Rio Grande River. Set during the early 1920s, the most vulnerable period in Air Force history, this insidious conspiracy threatens to discredit the efforts of America's Father of Airpower. Billy Mitchell's attempt to build an Air Force was under attack from all quarters. The idea of an independent aviation service, equal to America's legacy defense arms since 1776, was considered preposterous. He, his activists and advocates suffering indignities and setbacks from politicians, lobbyists, and old school senior military officers, are now also threatened by desperate German industrial pirates. Radio Failure-An Airpower Conspiracy is a fictional story woven around real people and actual events during American military aviation's formative years. Paul Ward Beck, a main character and foil for the plot, is real, as are a few of the facts surrounding his tragic untimely death. However, everything else about Beck and his life is pure fiction. The other characters in the plot lines are fictional, emulating the early men I call Activists and Practitioners, representing the founding fathers of the USAF: men like Eaker, Spatz, Kenney, and Doolittle, who pushed forward the airpower vision by taking airplanes faster, higher, further, and demonstrating aviation capabilities to every city and town across America. They also represent the many dedicated but unheralded people in the Air Service who believed in Mitchell, and did their part to make his vision a reality. During the next decade, the Activists and Practitioners surrounding Mitchell became the cadre of leaders who successfully led the US Army Air Forces into WWII, paving the way for the establishment of the United States Air Force in 1947.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1534751033
• ISBN13: 9781534751033
• Release Date: March 2016
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 532 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.2" x 6.0"