One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power (21 page)

On 27 June 1931, Rear Admiral Joseph Reeves' flag was lowered aboard USS
Saratoga
, in his mind ending his days at sea. He was posted to the Pacific Coast Section of the Board of Inspection and Survey, a sure sign that a dreary succession of desk jobs was in his future until retirement.
³⁰
This, though, was not to be the case. Having impressed CNO William V. Pratt, Reeves was selected for an interim assignment. Only three months and a few days after Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president in March 1933, Reeves received a most unexpected letter from him designating Reeves as “Commander of the Battleships, Battle Force with additional duty as Commander Battleships, United States Fleet.” This was an expedient way for Reeves to be promoted to Vice Admiral in Admiral Pratt's plan to subsequently assign an aviator to a position of even higher importance—the four-star rank of Commander, Battle Force.
³¹

That promotion and assignment commenced when Reeves became Commander-in-Chief of the United States Fleet the morning of 15 June 1934—the first aviator to become Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet.
³²
Admiral Reeves' flag was hauled down for the last time aboard USS
Pennsylvania
(BB-38) on 24 June 1936. His final posting for five months before retiring was to be again on the General Board, where he went about ensuring that the Navy's newest battleship, USS
North Carolina
(BB-55)—which was to reach Pearl Harbor four days after the Battle of Midway and was to be so crucial in her anti-aircraft role protecting carriers in the
Battle of the Eastern Solomons and thereafter—met the Navy's needs for impending war with Japan.
³³

The end to Reeves' career in the Navy on 30 November 1936, however, was to be short lived. So important had Admiral Reeves' contribution been to all aspects of carrier aviation that he was recalled to active duty on 20 May 1940 and made one of two members of the Compton Board to consider “the distribution, promotion, and retirement of naval officers assigned to the Staff Corp as well as officers designated for engineering and aeronautical engineering only duty.”
³⁴
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, the Lend-Lease Act was passed on 11 March 1941. The Secretary of the Navy was responsible for all decisions on requests for naval material under its provisions. In April 1941 Secretary Frank Knox delegated his authority under the Act to Admiral Reeves, who exercised it through the remainder of the war.
³⁵
Reeves was assigned to be one of the five members—and one of only two aviators—to be part of the Roberts Commission that was charged with investigating the debacle at Pearl Harbor. Reeves was a vehement critic of both Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Major General Walter C. Short.

Reeves received the Distinguished Service Medal for his wartime service, during which he was advanced to Vice Admiral and then Admiral on the retired list. He retired a second time on 2 April 1947 and died shortly afterward in March of the next year.

From his earliest days at the Naval War College through the toughest days of World War II, it can honestly be said that Admiral Joseph Mason “Bull” Reeves was the mastermind behind U.S. Navy carrier aviation—the father of carrier aviation.

NOTES

    
1
.
  
Thomas C. Hone, Norman Friedman, and Mark D. Mandeles,
American and British Aircraft Carrier Developments 1919–1941
(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999), pp. 20, 31.

    
2
.
  
Mitchell had been returned to his permanent rank of Colonel in 1925 prior to his trial.

    
3
.
  
United States v. War Department: Trial by General Courts Martial in the Case of Colonel William Mitchell, Air Service
, “Opinion of the Board of Review, Taylor, Abbott and Korn, Judge Advocates,” dated 20 January 1926, pp. 9–10. Record Group (hereafter RG) 153, Records of the Office of the Judge Advocate General (Army), Box No. 9214-2, Folder 1, p. 1. National Archives of the United States of America, NA-2, College Park, MD.

    
4
.
  
Admiral William Sowden Sims, USN, had been commander of all U.S. naval forces in European waters after American entry in World War I. He returned from Europe to become the sixteenth President of the U.S. Naval War College from 11 April 1919 to 14 October 1922.

    
5
.
  
Chester W. Nimitz, Fleet Admiral, U.S. Navy. Letter to Vice Admiral Charles Melson, President of the United States Naval War College, dated 19 September 1965, on display in McCarty-Little Hall at the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

    
6
.
  
Register of the Alumni, Graduates and Former Naval Cadets and Midshipmen, United States Naval Academy Alumni Association. Inc., 1845–1985
, 1985 edition. Published by the United States Naval Academy Alumni Association. Also
The Register
, manuscript listing of the U.S. Naval War College Faculty and Graduates, provided by Dr. Evelyn Cherpak, Archivist, U.S. Naval War College. Please note that all listings of graduation dates from the Naval Academy and Naval War College are drawn from these two publications.

    
7
.
  
Joseph M. Reeves, class of 1924 thesis, “Tactics,” Submitted by Captain J. M. Reeves, U.S. Navy, room no. E-11, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI, 1 May 1924. United States Naval War College Archives (hereafter USNWCA), RG 13.

    
8
.
  
Battle of Sable Island Manuscript, Serial No. 71, dated October–November 1923. USNWCA: RG-14/15, 128 pages including accompanying diagrams.

    
9
.
  
Ibid.

  
10
.
  
Gerald J. Kennedy,
United States Naval War College, 1919–1941: An Institutional Response to Naval Preparedness
. U.S. Naval War College Archives. Unpublished manuscript, pp. 57–59. This manuscript provides an excellent narrative of the development of and changes in the curriculum at the Naval War College during the interwar period, as well as of the imprint made by each President of the War College during that period.

  
11
.
  
Harris Laning, Captain, U.S. Navy.
The Naval Battle
. Tactics, Section I, June 1923. USNWCA: RG-4.

  
12
.
  
Thomas Wildenberg,
All the Factors of Victory: Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves and the Origins of Carrier Airpower
(Washington, DC: Brassey's, 2003), p. 109.

  
13
.
  
Joseph M. Reeves, Captain, U.S. Navy.
Comparison of Blue-Red [U.S.-British] Capital Ship Strength
. 1491/9-24 XTYG 1924 160, Blue-Red Tactical Exercise I, Capital Ships Major Gunfire Only (DECL IAW DOD Memo of 3 May 1972, Subj.: DECL of WW II Records), USNWC Newport, RI, September 1924, p. 8. USNWCA: RG-13.

  
14
.
  
Adolphus Andrews Jr., “Admiral with Wings: The Career of Joseph Mason Reeves.” Unpublished bachelor's thesis, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University, 1943, U.S. Naval Academy Nimitz Library microfilm collection, p. 55.

  
15
.
  
Ibid., p.58.

  
16
.
  
Ibid., p. 55.

  
17
.
  
Ibid, pp. 55–56.

  
18
.
  
Joseph M. Reeves, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy, “Commander Aircraft Squadrons battle fleet letter dated April 7, 1926, to Aircraft Squadrons battle fleet, subject employment schedule, For Study and Practical Development of Aircraft Tactics, during Concentration Period from 12 June to 11 September 1926, serial 1199,” p. 3.

  
19
.
  
Wildenberg,
All the Factors of Victory
, p. 142.

  
20
.
  
Adolphus, “Admiral with Wings,” pp. 57–58.

  
21
.
  
Wildenberg,
All the Factors of Victory
, pp. 142–43.

  
22
.
  
Andrews, “Admiral with Wings,” pp 76–77.

  
23
.
  
Ibid.

  
24
.
  
For more information on Fleet Problem VII and other Fleet Problems, consult chapter 7, this volume, by Dr. Al Nofi.

  
25
.
  
Wildenberg,
All the Factors of Victory
, p. 200.

  
26
.
  
Ibid., p. 258. Admiral Reeves worked primarily on improvement of battleships while assigned to the General Board for the last five months of his first term of active service prior to his retirement. During this time his main focus was on improvements to USS
Pennsylvania
(BB-55).

  
27
.
  
For more information on Fleet Problem VII and other Fleet Problems, consult chapter 7, this volume, by Dr. Al Nofi. While twenty-two Fleet Problems were initially scheduled, the twenty-second and last Fleet Problem was cancelled due to the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

  
28
.
  
Wildenberg,
All the Factors of Victory
, p. 200–201. This book by Wildenberg is an outstanding consideration of the entire career of Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves.

  
29
.
  
Ibid., p. 212.

  
30
.
  
Ibid., p. 224.

  
31
.
  
Ibid., pp. 224–26.

  
32
.
  
Ibid., pp. 230, 235.

  
33
.
  
Ibid., pp. 224–25.

  
34
.
  
Ibid., p. 259.

  
35
.
  
Ibid., p. 261.

CHAPTER 7

Aviation in the Interwar Fleet Maneuvers, 1919–1940

Albert A. Nofi

B
etween the world wars, the U.S. Navy conducted twenty-one “Fleet Problems,” free maneuvers in which enormous forces “fought” on an oceanic scale to secure specific tactical, operational, and even strategic objectives.
¹
Together with occasional Grand Joint Army and Navy Exercises (GJE) and many smaller maneuvers, the Fleet Problems shaped the Navy's understanding of the complexities of transoceanic operations and refined its mastery of the tools of sea power, while introducing innovative technologies and doctrines and honing the skills of those who would command and staff the fleet in wartime—creating the integrated “naval force” that successfully prosecuted the Pacific War.
²

The Fleet Problems were critical to new developments in all naval warfare areas—offensive and defense operations, amphibious warfare, coast defense, surface tactics, convoying, mine warfare, submarine and anti-submarine operations, communications, intelligence, underway replenishment, cryptology, special operations, and more, even fleet postal services—but it was the evolution of naval aviation from a minor auxiliary to the backbone of the naval force that was the most important legacy.

The Fleet Problems provided experience in all types of naval air operations under more or less wartime conditions, helping aviators and the fleet's senior leadership better understand the capabilities and limitations of naval aviation in all types of missions, strike, reconnaissance and patrol, land attack, fleet defense, and more. The simple need to operate under realistic warlike conditions provided invaluable experience to the aviators and the leadership of the fleet. Perhaps equally important, however, was the careful management of aviation's role in the problems by the more
air-minded officers so that they were able to instill across the Navy an appreciation and understanding of the capabilities and limitations of air power as an instrument of naval warfare as it evolved over the years.

While not neglecting other forms of naval aviation—battleship and cruiser floatplanes, flying boats, land-based aircraft, rigid airships—this essay will focus on the Fleet Problems and the evolution of carrier aviation, the backbone of naval air power.

PATTERNS, 1923–1941

In an invaluable analysis of air power and the development of the fleet battle doctrine between the world wars, Mark Allen Campbell observed that the participation of carriers in the Fleet Problems unfolded in four phases.
³

•
    
Fleet Problems I–II (1923–1924). Surrogates provided some useful ideas about the potential of carrier operations.

•
    
Fleet Problems III–VIII (1924–1928). USS
Langley
(CV-1) permitted more realistic experimentation and provided experience in carrier operations, despite limitations as an improvised experimental vessel.