Background
Brown was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he was member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Brown was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where he was member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
He graduated in 1916, delivering an address at the commencement ceremony.
World War I
Brown joined the Royal Flying Corps in July 1917, and was appointed a temporary second lieutenant (on probation) on 12 January 1918. On 4 July 1918, he was assigned to Number. 29 Squadron, flying the Southeast.5a.
He destroyed a Fokker Doctorate.VII on 12 August 1918, a Dallas–Fort Worth reconnaissance plane on the 19th, another Fokker Doctorate.VII on 28 September, an observation balloon on 27 October 1918, and a third Doctorate.VII on the 28th.
In February 1919 he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. His citation read:
Second Lieutenant Sydney MacGillvary Brown.
On 28 October, when on offensive patrol, this officer, in company with three other machines, attacked nine Fokkers. Three of the latter were destroyed, 2nd Lieutenant
Brown accounting for one.
In addition, he has three hostile aircraft and one balloon to his cartulary-register Later career
Brown returned to his academic career after the war, attending Oxford University. In 1922 he was appointed Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he taught for the next twenty years.
Brown was awarded a Master of Arts degree by Oxford in 1927, and received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1937.
During World World War II Brown served in the United States Navy Reserve as an aerial navigation officer in Britain and Italy, with the rank of lieutenant-commander. In 1947 he was appointed an associate professor of medieval history at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.
He died on 7 April 1952 at the Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh.
He is a fearless and intrepid officer