After an 89-year hiatus, the Air Force brought back a historic air race meant to prepare F-22 pilots and ground crews for future conflict while competing for bragging rights.
The Mitchell Trophy Air Race saw three squadrons from the 1st Fighter Wing send two F-22 fighters each from Langley Air Force Base, Va. to Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Mich., where one pilot from each team had refuel and inspect their team’s jets while the second pilot ran 1.6 miles through below-freezing temperatures and winds up to 30 mph on their way to the Selfridge Military Air Museum to sign the guest register, which has been signed by “former presidents, high-ranking military officials and aviation heroes dating back to 1987,” the public affairs office for the Selfridge-based 127th Wing wrote in a press release.
The pilots had to find the museum on their own, then run back to the flight line and jet back to Virginia, where the trophy waited. The contest was a far cry from its humble beginnings in October 1922, when pilots of the 1st Pursuit Group, progentior of the 1st Fighter Wing and based at Selfridge at the time, flew five laps around a 20-mile course marked with pylons in six open-cockpit biplanes.
Named after 1st. Lt. John Lendrum Mitchell Jr., a 1st Pursuit Group pilot who died in a flying accident in France during World War I, the Mitchell Trophy Air Race was held 12 times between 1922 and 1936, with five editions at Selfridge.
“His brother, Col. Billy Mitchell, introduced the trophy to commemorate his brother’s legacy and promote airpower innovation,” wrote the 1st Fighter Wing in its press release about the event.
“The competition was fierce, and winning the race was one of the greatest honors a pilot could achieve,” added Joshua Lashley, the 1st Fighter Wing historian.
An F-22 Raptor aircraft, assigned to the 94th Fighter Squadron, departs Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Michigan, Mar. 6, 2025. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Tech. Sgt. Drew Schumann
Save for brief appearances at other bases in 1960, 1962, and 1998, the contest was for the most part abandoned until this year, when planners sought a new way to get Airmen ready for Agile Combat Employment (ACE). Using ACE, Airmen disperse to smaller air bases to complicate targeting for near-peer adversaries such as Russia and China.
“This is about replacing the logistical challenges we will face in a peer conflict, where our ability to move, adapt and fight in the face of numerous maintenance, support, weather and intelligence challenges, may very well determine mission success,” Col. Brandon Tellez, 1st Fighter Wing commander, said in a release.
The Mitchell race is not the first yesteryear tradition to get a recent refresh. In 2023, Air Combat Command brought back the William Tell Air-to-Air Weapons Meet, where fighter squadrons, maintainers, weapons loaders, intelligence analysts, and command and control experts from across the Air Force competed to be the best in the business in the world’s best Air Force.
“One of the feedback comments from one of the surveys was, ‘If William Tell ’25 doesn’t come back, there’s going to be a mutiny,’” Capt. Roberto ‘Super’ Mercado, an F-35 pilot from the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Fighter Wing, told Air & Space Forces Magazine at the time.
The three teams in the Mitchell race represented the 27th, 71st, and 94th Fighter Squadrons, also known as the “Fightin Eagles,” the “Ironmen,” and the “Hat-in-the-Ring,” respectively.
The pilots and crews didn’t receive the mission until the morning of the race on March 6, wrote the 127th Wing, though the race writ large had been announced on social media in the weeks prior. The ground crews had to hustle to launch and arm the jets, which forced maintainers and pilots to work together “under realistic, stressful conditions,” wrote the 1st Fighter Wing.
After landing at Selfridge, it took about 30 minutes for the first pilot to sign the guest register, which was Capt. Marbro of the 27th Fighter Squadron. The two releases referred to the pilots by their rank and callsign for security reasons.
The second pilot to reach the museum, Lt. Col. Devil, commander of the 94th Fighter Squadron, took the time to shake the hands of 20 bystanders there before returning to his jet, the Selfridge released noted.
A spokesperson for the 127th Wing declined to share how fast the F-22s flew to Michigan and back, citing security reasons, but the wing’s release said the jets made the whole trip, including ground time at Selfridge, in less than five hours. That’s much faster than the 1922 race, where the winner Lt. Donald Stace flew 100 miles at 148 miles per hour, the wing noted.
Despite his hand-shaking at the museum, Devil and his teammate, Capt. Rizz won the race for the 94th Fighter Squadron and the 94th Fighter Generation Squadron. While only one team could win the trophy, all seemed to enjoy the experience.
“We saw a level of excitement from Airmen that we don’t normally see, and competitors executed new tactics that we could implement in the future and possibly make us faster and more lethal fight,” said Lashley, the 1st Fighter Wing historian. “This is the benefit of true competition.”
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