The Tenth Air Force was activated at Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio, on 12 February 1942. It was assigned to the newly created China-Burma-India theater. In early March, just at the close of Allied resistance in the Netherlands East Indies, General Brereton flew to India with instructions to organize an American air force in the India-Burma area. He had been preceded by Col. Francis M. Brady and was accompanied by a handful of AAF personnel who would form a nucleus for the new air force. Six heavy bombers were flown up from Java, and orders were issued for all planes and crews en route to the Netherlands East Indies by the African ferry route to hold in India. Three transport vessels had departed Fremantle, Australia on 22 February on their way across the Indian Ocean with the ground echelon of two squadrons of the 7th Bombardment Group (H), the 51st Air Base Group, personnel of the 51st Pursuit Group, and ten P-40's. , and General Brereton formally assumed command on 5 March. Such were the meager beginnings of an organization forced to operate at the end of a longer supply line than that of any other existing American air force, over distances within its theater that exceeded considerably those embraced by the bounds of the United States, and in an area possessed of few of the industrial facilities upon which air power is directly dependent.

"The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume I "Plans & Early Operations January 1939 to August 1942",Chapter 14: Commitments to China", pgs 484-513.
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It was the third extraordinarily difficult assignment which had fallen to the lot of General Brereton in the initial stages of the war with Japan. Formerly commander of the Far East Air Force in the Philippines and more recently of American air units operating in the Netherlands East Indies, he was now to command an air force based in India with a mission for the support of China. Key decisions would involve consideration of the interests, not always identical, of two major allies. Once again he had to improvise an organization in the face of a rapidly advancing enemy whose conquest of Burma, which held the key to any plan for the immediate assistance of China, would be completed before the Tenth could be given the means to fight. Lacking personnel, planes, and other equipment that make up an air force, Brereton would not even command the major American air unit operating within the theater. For ere the famed American Volunteer Group (AVG) had been inducted into the AAF in July, General Brereton was transferred, with such striking force as the Tenth possessed, to the Middle East.

AVG

Tenth
("The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume IV "The Pacific: Guadalcanal to Saipan, August 1942 to July 1944", Section IV: CHINA-BURMA-INDIA, Chapter 12: The Tenth Air Force", pgs 405-434.)