Airpower Leadership on the Front Line

This study analyzes the life and leadership of Lt Gen George H. Brett. MacArthur's first airman in Australia during World War II. Lt Gen George H. Brett was the second son of a prominent librarian from Cleveland Ohio. A 1909 graduate of Virginia Military Institute, he became one of the Army's early aviators and saw service overseas during World War I. An expert in Materiel and supply, he rose through the ranks to be a major general and the Chief of the Air Corps in the days preceding the US entry into World War II. Dispatched by his boss, Maj Gen Henry H. Arnold, to assist the British with American expertise, Brett traveled to England, North Africa, and the Middle East in the days before Pearl Harbor. On 7 December 1941 he was ordered to travel to China for conferences with the British commander, General Archibald P. Wavell.