US Air Force General. He is best remembered as the Commanding General of the Allied Air Forces and 5th Air Force in the Southwest Pacific Area, which he held from August 1942 until 1945. During this time, he proved to skeptics the tremendous value of Air Force tactical support of ground and naval forces, demonstrating the new technique of skip bombing with tremendous success. H was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts and attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge, Massachusetts. After his father left his family, he left college and took various jobs before becoming a surveyor for the Quebec Saguenay Railroad. In 1913 his mother died, and he returned to Boston, where he took a job with the engineering firm of Stone & Webster. The following year he joined the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad as a civil engineer and soon formed a partnership, the Beaver Contracting and Engineering Corporation. In June 1917, after the US entered World War I, he enlisted as a flying cadet in the Signal Corps Aviation Section and was commissioned a 1st lieutenant in December 1917 and was immediately sent to Advanced Flying Training School in France. In February 1918, upon successful completion of the course, he was assigned to the 91st Aero Squadron and flew combat missions for the duration of the war, shooting down two enemy planes. After returning to the US, he applied for one of a number of Regular Army commissions offered to reservists after the war and was commissioned as a captain in the Air Service in July 1920. From July to November 1920 he was air detachment commander at Camp Knox (now Fort Knox), Kentucky. He then became a student at the Air Service Engineering School at McCook Field (now closed), near Dayton Ohio and then served as the Air Service Inspector at the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company in Garden City, New York, where he was responsible for the acceptance of the fifty Martin NBS-1 bombers that the Air Service had ordered from Curtis between 1921 and 1923. While there, he was reduced in rank from captain to first lieutenant a common occurrence in the aftermath of World War I when the wartime army was demobilized. In June 1933 he was assigned to the Plans Division of the Office of the Chief of the Air Corps in Washington DC. In March 1935 he was promoted to the temporary rank of lieutenant colonel and in June 1936 he was transferred to the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, teaching tactics to young infantry officers. In September 1938 he accepted an offer to command the 97th Observation Squadron at Mitchell Field, New York and the following year he became Chief of the Production Engineering Section at Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), Ohio. In early 1940 he was sent to France as Assistant Military Attaché for Air, for the purpose of observing Allied air operations during the early stages of World War II. As a result of his observations, he recommended many important changes to Air Corps equipment and tactics, including upgrading armament from .30 caliber to .50 caliber machine guns, and installing leak-proof fuel tanks, but his scathing comparisons of the German Luftwaffe with the US Army Air Corps upset many high-ranking officers, resulting in his being sent back to Wright Field. In January 1941 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and the following month to major general. In March 1942, after the US entered World War II, he was assigned to the West Coast as Commanding General of the 4th Air Force in San Francisco, California, and he instructed pilots on how to fly the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter and A-29 Hudson bomber aircraft. The following July was assigned as Commanding General, Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific, and Commanding General, 5th Air Force, joining General Douglas MacArthur as his top air officer. In October 1942 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and in his position he directed the successful air war against the Japanese forces in the Southwest Pacific during the long haul from Australia to the Philippines, over a period of more than three years. In one of the classic engagements of the war, the Battle of the Bismarck Sea in early March 1943, he planned and directed the attack of B-17 Superfortress bombers which sank 16 Japanese vessels in a convoy, with but minor loss to participating US aircraft. In March 1945 he was promoted to the rank of general. After the end of World War II, he returned to the US and in April 1946 he became the first commander of the newly formed Strategic Air Command (now defunct), as well as the US representative to the United Nations Military Staff Committee. He was encouraged by Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington to join him in the political battle surrounding the establishment of an independent US Air Force, which came to fruition the following year. In October 1948 he became Commander of the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and he retired in this position in September 1951 with 34 years of continuous military service. Among his military decorations and awards include the Distinguished Service Cross (with one oak leaf cluster), the Distinguished Service Medal (with one oak leaf cluster), the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the World War I Victory Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (Australia). He wrote several books about his experiences during World War II, including "General Kenney Reports" (1949), a personal history of the air war he led from 1942 to 1945, "The Saga of Pappy Gunn" (1959), and "Dick Bong: Ace of Aces" (1960), which described the careers of Paul Gunn and Richard Bong, two of the most prominent airmen under his command. In 1954 he became president of the Air Force Association and in 1958 he appeared as the host of the television anthology series "Flight."