Retired Maj. Gen. Harold H. Bassett died Oct. 4 in San Antonio at age 100. Born in 1907 in Albion, Ill., Basset graduated from West Point in 1929. In the Army Air Corps, he commanded one of the first weather squadrons under the newly formed Air Weather Service in 1937. He was a pilot in the first mass flight of the bombers from the mainland to Hawaii, for which he received a Distinguished Flying Cross. He served in the Weather Service in Washington and Europe during World War II and on the joint staff following the war. He became commander of the Air Force Security Service in 1953 and the Taiwan Defense Command in 1957. He took command of AWS in 1958 and retired a year later.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. still “believes” in his mantra of “Accelerate Change or Lose”—and indicated the doctrinal changes it produced when he was Air Force Chief of Staff played a role in the service’s recent response to Iran’s aerial assault on Israel, he…