In December 1938, Sultan, recently promoted to brigadier general, was named commander of the 22nd Infantry Brigade in Hawaii. In April 1941, as a major general, he received command of the 38th Infantry Division. A year later, he took command of VIII Corps. In November 1943, Sultan, now a lieutenant general, was appointed deputy commander of the China-Burma-India Theater (CBI), headed by Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell.
Operating from Delhi, India, Sultan assumed much of Stilwell's administrative and logistical burden, concentrating on getting vitally needed supplies to beleaguered China by air over the Himalayan Mountains (the Hump) and through the construction of a road (known as the Ledo Road, later renamed the Stilwell Road) and a pipeline across northern Burma from Ledo, India, to Wanting, China. Following the recall of Stilwell in October 1944, Sultan became commander of the India-Burma Theater. In this post, he was in charge of all U.S. forces in the theatre, and he personally commanded a combined force of American, British, and Chinese troops that helped drive the Japanese from northern Burma in 1945.
At the end of the war in the summer of 1945, Sultan was named U.S. Army inspector general. A skilled engineer, able administrator, and successful field commander, Sultan died in Washington, D.C., on 14 January 1947.
John Kennedy Ohl
Anders, Leslie. Ledo-Road: General Joseph W. Stilwell's Highway to China. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966.; Romanus, Charles F., and Riley Sunderland. United States Army in World War II: China-Burma-India Theater—Stilwell's Command Problems. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1956.; Romanus, Charles F., and Riley Sunderland. United States Army in World War II: China-Burma-India Theater: Time Runs Out in CBI. Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1958.