All the Factors of Victory: Adm. Joseph Reeves and the Origins of Carrier Airpower

ALL

THE

FACTORS

OF

VICTORY

ALL

THE

FACTORS

OF

VICTORY

Adm. Joseph

Mason Reeves and

the Origins of

Carrier Airpower

THOMAS WILDENBERG

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

© 2003 by Thomas Wildenberg

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2018.

978-1-68247-299-6 (paperback)

978-1-68247-300-9 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Wildenberg, Thomas, date.

All the factors of victory : Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves and the origins of carrier airpower / Thomas Wildenberg.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-57488-375-5 (alk. paper)

1. Reeves, Joseph Mason, 1872–1948. 2. United States. Navy—Officers—Biography. 3. Admirals—United States—Biography. 4. United States. Navy—Aviation—History—20th century. I. Title.

 V63.R44 W55 2003

359.9’435’0973—dc21

2002008502

ISBN 1-57488-486-7 (paperback)

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Printed in the United States of America.

26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First printing

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prologue

  1  An Auspicious Beginning

  2  To Sea

  3  The Race for the Cristobal Colón

  4  From Engineer to Line Officer

  5  On the Asiatic Station

  6  Ordnance Expert and Rising Star

  7  First Command

  8  A Captain’s Responsibility

  9  War College Tactician

10  A Thousand and One Questions

11  Reeves’s School of Aviation

12  Flag Rank

13  Aviation’s Important Work

14  The First Carrier Task Force

15  Washington Politics

16  Carrier Commander

17  Fleet Command

18  Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet

19  Wartime Duty

Epilogue

Abbreviations to Notes

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

Photos

Saratoga recovering planes from her torpedo squadron

Main gate at the U.S. Naval Academy, ca. September 1890

USNA Class of 1894 intramural football team

U.S. Naval Academy rowing team, 1893

Cadets cavorting on the training ship Essex

The protected cruiser Cincinnati

The San Francisco dressed up with the Italian flag

The Oregon leaving San Francisco for Cuba

Prize crew from the Oregon headed for the beached Cristobal Colón

Chess set liberated by Reeves

The presidential yacht Sylph at the Washington Navy Yard

The Kearsarge

Practice launch of a torpedo

The Wisconsin

The Ohio

Reeves as an instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy

The New Hampshire

The Connecticut

U.S. Navy Coaling Depot, Tiburon, California, ca. 1909

The collier Jupiter, the U.S. Navy’s first turboelectric-powered ship

The Vicksburg outfitted with a full barkentine sailing rig

Reeves reading orders assigning him command of the Oregon

The Maine

The officers and crew of the North Dakota

The Class of 1924 at the Naval War College

The Langley

Langley’s complement of fourteen airplanes

Reeves and Admiral Moffett watching flight operations from the Langley’s catwalk

Members of the Conference for the Limitations of Naval Armament on the SS Leviathan

Reeves was the first officer wearing wings to be promoted to flag rank

Langley at Pearl Harbor, May 1928

Reeves on board the Saratoga after her arrival in San Diego

Reeves with members of his staff watching the formation flyover at North Island

Reeves with Secretary of the Navy Curtis Wilbur and Capt. Arthur B. Cook

Reeves inspecting Boeing’s new F4B

On board the Lexington during quarterly inspection of the ship

Italo Balbo with Reeves, December 1928

Reeves on board ComAirBatFlt’s personal aircraft circling the Lexington

The Royal Party of King Neptune with Reeves and Halligan

Reeves observing the crossing-the-line ceremonies on the Saratoga

Pollywogs being initiated into King Neptune’s realm on Saratoga’s flight deck

Charles Lindbergh’s visit to Saratoga

Reeves reading orders assigning him command of the Battle Force

Change of command ceremonies on board Pennsylvania

Reeves with his two sons

Nineteen Admirals of the Fleet

Admiral Leahy being congratulated by Admiral Reeves

Neptunus Rex pinning a medal during crossing-the-line ceremonies

Punch, Reeves’s Boston terrier

Reeves being rowed ashore after being relieved as commander-in-chief, U.S. Fleet

Reeves waving to the crowd with his grandson and son

Figure

  9.1  Fighting Strength—Red vs. Blue

Tables

  9.1  Material Superiority of Red (British) Fleet

13.1  Changes in the Aeronautical Organization of the Battle Fleet, 1928–29

PREFACE

When the military talks of heroes, those who come to mind first are its illustrious warriors or energetic innovators—men such Douglas MacArthur, Curtis LeMay, or William A. Moffett. These are the leaders who were victorious in war, achieved fame and glory in battle, or died a noble death in the service of their country. They are men whose names are frequently passed down from one generation to another in an effort to instill courage and bravery in the young men and women who have yet to be tested in combat. Yet for every wartime medal winner, many unsung peacetime heroes have been forgotten over time. These are the men (and women) whose achievements and leadership provide the foundation for the nation’s victory in future wars. Joseph Mason Reeves was such a man.

Admiral Reeves did more to shape the future role of U.S. carrier aviation than any other flag officer before World War II. His Thousand and One Questions fostered the development of a host of innovative doctrines and tactics that laid the foundations for practically all of the modern tenets of carrier doctrine still followed by the U.S. Navy. He was the first U.S. naval officer to employ the aircraft carrier as an offensive weapons platform that could be used to mount long-range attacks on an enemy’s coast. Most importantly of all, Reeves deftly fashioned an offensive role for carrier aviation that did not threaten the supremacy of the battleship, thereby ensuring that the resources needed to further the development of carrier-borne airpower would continue to be allocated during the lean years of the Depression.

Reeves, who has rightly been called the father of carrier warfare, holds the distinction of being the first U.S. naval officer qualified in aviation promoted to flag rank (Moffett obtained the wings of a naval observer after he became an admiral). He was the first officer in the U.S. Navy to bear the title of carrier commander, U.S. Fleet, and the first flying officer appointed commander-in-chief, U.S. Fleet. Despite these outstanding achievements, Reeves remains the forgotten man of naval aviation; his accomplishments have been largely overlooked by both historians and military men alike.

As is frequently the case in the military profession, the only deeds that seem to get fully entered into the record are those of war. In his entire fifty-two-year naval career Reeves participated in only one battle, the Battle of Santiago in 1898. And although he was cited for his performance on the Oregon that day, he was one of several junior officers commended whose valor was overshadowed by such brighter luminaries as George Dewey and William Sampson. As for his accomplishments in carrier aviation, fleet records do not exist for the years when Reeves transformed the Battle Fleet’s nascent carrier air force from a small auxiliary command into a powerful aerial strike force. The lack of such data has hampered historians from properly evaluating Reeves’s powerful role in affecting this transformation and his efforts to gain carrier aviation’s acceptance within the U.S. Fleet.

Reeves’s personality contributed to the paucity of information about his achievements. Though he was a brilliant speaker who loved to lecture, Reeves had little faith in the written word. He left few writings and no personal papers. But for a man of one generation to be remembered by another, he must either do something worth recording or write something worth reading. Neither the magnitude of Reeves’s accomplishments nor his role in winning aviation’s acceptance in the fleet were appreciated during his lifetime. Except for Adolphus Andrews Jr., the son of Reeves’s former chief of staff, no one took the time or trouble to interview Reeves about his achievements while he was still alive.¹

According to a member of the Reeves family, Andrews visited Reeves on a regular basis during the early part of World War II to collect information on the admiral’s career for an undergraduate senior thesis for Princeton University. Andrews’s thesis, which he completed in 1943, bears the fitting title Admiral with Wings. It is the closest thing we have to a memoir of Reeves’s duty in the Navy. The lack of notes and any substantiating documentation suggests that Andrews based it exclusively on the information obtained from Reeves during weekend visits to the admiral’s lodgings in the Brighton Hotel in Washington, D.C. Reeves liked to drink Manhattans during these afternoon soirees and thought nothing of reclining on his couch with drink in hand as he related the tales of his experiences at sea.

Although Admiral with Wings contains a wealth of information and priceless anecdotes, I approached it skeptically. Initially it served as a road map for helping to locate records relating to Reeves’s service in the Navy. By the time I had finished, it had proved to be remarkably accurate (save for a few dates), leading me to accept the veracity of the recollections contained therein. As the reader will discover, I have borrowed generously from the treasure trove of anecdotes preserved in Andrews’s text because they provide invaluable insight into Reeves’s personality.

When I set out to write Admiral Reeves’s biography, I was convinced of his importance to the development of U.S. carrier doctrine and the need to document his role in this critical area of U.S. naval history. As I began to become more and more familiar with his life, I began to see that his contributions to the Navy went far beyond his role in fostering the development of carrier doctrine. As was the case with so many of the exceptional leaders produced by the Navy in the first half of the twentieth century, Reeves was an extremely talented, multifaceted officer whose career stands as a mute tribute to the Navy’s leadership during the interwar years.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project could not have come to fruition without the foresight and generosity of Admiral Dewitt C. Ramsey and his wife, Juanita Gabrial Ramsey, whose endowment of a chair for naval aviation history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum provided the means of completing this work. I was privileged to serve as the museum’s Ramsey Fellow during the 1998–99 academic year and would like to thank the Aeronautics Department for selecting me for this honor.

Producing a work of this nature cannot be done without the help of a great many people. I am obliged to recognize the many friends, colleagues, associates, and archivists who encouraged or assisted me with this project. I would particularly like to thank the following individuals whose services were above and beyond the call of duty. I am especially indebted to Clark Reynolds, Distinguished Professor of History at the College of Charleston, for his meticulous review of the manuscript and his suggestions for making it better. I would also like to thank Bill Trimble, professor of history at Auburn University, and Frank Ulig, editor emeritus of the Naval War College Review, for their efforts along these same lines. Thomas Hone, a long-time scholar of naval aviation, and Rebecca Livingston, of the Old Military and Naval Records Section of National Archives, deserve special thanks for their assistance in locating a number of key documents essential for telling this story in its entirety.

I am grateful to my good friends Ed Miller, Hal Andrews, and Anne Gustafson for their continued support and encouragement. I would like to thank retired naval aviator Bob Wood and his lovely wife, Eileen Reeves Wood, for their assistance and unabashed pleasure in bringing to light the career of their illustrious relative, whom they knew as Uncle Mason.

Prologue

An Epic in the History of Aviation

HENRY A. WILEY

Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet

Saratoga’s bow cut through the black water, her stern leaving a luminescent trail in her wake as she moved through the darkness in the early hours of 26 January 1929. The big ship was steaming north in the tranquil waters of the Gulf of Panama at twenty-six knots. Seventy planes stood silently on her 888-foot flight deck waiting for the signal to take off. On her flag bridge, standing in the cool night air, stood Rear Adm. Joseph Mason Reeves, the commander of the Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet.

For the past four years he had worked diligently to transform the Navy’s nascent air force from a small collection of rudimentary aircraft operating from the experimental Langley (CV-1) into a potent strike force operating from two sister ships, Lexington (CV-2) and Saratoga (CV-3), the most modern aircraft carriers in the world. The battle cruiser design that had given birth to these powerful ships made them the fastest and largest warships in the fleet. Now, as the commander of the Black Fleet’s air force in Fleet Problem IX, Reeves was about to launch an aerial offensive that would revolutionize the way warfare was conducted at sea.

From his lofty perch on the flag bridge Reeves surveyed the four squadrons of aircraft that had been spotted on the flight deck. Their mission that morning was to deliver a simulated bombing attack on the locks of the Panama Canal. First in line for takeoff were seventeen F3B light bombers of Lt. Cdr. Arthur C. Davis’s Bombing Squadron 2 (VB-2). Since none of Davis’s planes was equipped with radio, this flight, plus those that would follow, would be accompanied by a single radio-equipped O2U aircraft that would provide liaison with the carrier. Next were eighteen F3Bs of Fighting Squadron 2 (VF-2), followed by fourteen F2Bs of Fighting Squadron 1 (VF-1), both under the command of Lt. Cdr. Homer C. Wick. Last in line were the seventeen T4M heavy bombers of Torpedo Squadron 2 (VT-2) plus three more liaison planes, all commanded by Lt. Cdr. Harold R. Bogusch. A second detachment of light bombers headed by Lt. Cdr. Virgil C. Griffin waited below deck. They would be brought up to the flight deck as soon as those already on deck had departed.¹

Standing on the flag bridge next to Admiral Reeves was his highly regarded chief of staff, Cdr. Eugene E. Wilson. As the Saratoga steamed north towards the aircrafts’ launching point, Wilson contemplated the risk of the peacetime operation they were about to undertake. Never before had so many carrier planes been launched at one time. And no aerial operation of this magnitude had ever been attempted in the pre-dawn darkness, although the full moon and clear skies made visibility excellent for night flying. As Wilson would later explain, letting the other fellow take the risks was on old game in the peacetime Navy, but Bull Reeves had never played that game. Nevertheless, some ambitious officer was always waiting in the wings to take over if a commander fouled up.²

As Saratoga steamed closer to the launching point, Wilson approached Admiral Reeves intent on expressing his concerns about the operation they were about to begin.

Sir, he began, there’s a lot of brass hats watching us tonight, and there’d be many a dry eye tomorrow if you should slip.

I know, Reeves replied, but a commander who stops to appraise the impact of a military decision upon his personal fortunes has no right to be entrusted with a command. Those words tell us a great deal about the man who was about to create a revolution in military affairs—a man who valued duty, loyalty, and hard work above all else.

The mock surprise attack Reeves was about to orchestrate would demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt the value of carrier-borne aircraft and their ability to strike unexpectedly at ranges far beyond those of the big guns that formed the backbone of every major Navy in the world.

After a while dark figures began stirring among the parked aircraft. Moments later the roar of engines broke the peaceful rhythms of the night as one by one the radial engine on each plane sprang to life. Their blue exhaust flames bathed the flight deck in eerie shades of azure light as the Saratoga turned into the wind for launching.

The first plane lifted off the deck at 4:30 a.m. with Lieutenant Commander Davis at the controls. Once in the air, he circled in the moonlit sky, waiting for the rest of his squadron to be launched. Taking off in rapid succession, pilots of VB-2 formed up on their leader, who set a course to the Panama Canal that would take them over San Jose Island some seventy miles distant. The island, halfway between the carrier and mainland, served as a navigation checkpoint to insure they were on the right course as they flew over the featureless ocean. As the planes moved off, the faint blue of their exhausts faded away and tiny running lights on the wings disappeared into the night.³

Lieutenant Commander Wick, skipper of VF-1, had already taken off and was in the process of linking up with the fighter detachment that would escort the heavy bombers to follow. After gathering his flock, Wick turned right and headed back to the carrier, which he had trouble sighting in the moonlight. He had less trouble locating the bombers, whose running lights made prominent impressions in the dark sky. Wick was able to execute the rendezvous without a great deal of difficulty thanks to the Aldis signal lamps carried by the heavy bombers. After rendezvousing, the three squadrons headed in formation towards the Panama Canal on a course of 010 degrees.

Saratoga changed course to the northwest, heading for a point twenty-two miles south of the Perlas Islands. Reeves’s boss, Adm. William V. Pratt, established this as the rendezvous point for the battleships that would cover the flattop during the operation’s recovery phase. As the sky began to lighten, four battleships suddenly appeared on the horizon dead ahead. At first, men standing on Saratoga’s bridge believed them to be the battleships of Division Five, the covering force expected to protect the ship as she drew near the coast of Panama to recover her returning aircraft. As the range between the two forces closed, it became apparent that the approaching ships belonged to the enemy Blue force. The friendly battlewagons that should have been there had been delayed by a navigation error that left the Saratoga exposed to the enemy during this crucial period. The big carrier now headed directly into the teeth of her enemies. Under actual war conditions the ship would have used her powerful engines to turn away and sprint to safety, though in doing so she would have deserted the returning planes. With no place to land, they would have had to ditch in the open sea, hoping to be rescued by friendly destroyers sent to pick them up. But this was not wartime, and Reeves continued on course to safeguard the planes already in the air. This brought Saratoga directly under the guns of the opposing battleships, which opened simulated fire at close range. In less then five minutes, the umpire on board declared her theoretically sunk.⁴

The Saratoga’s encounter with the big guns of the enemy battleships had been preceded the day before by a similar encounter by her sister ship, Lexington. The Lexington, attached to the Blue force for the fleet problem, had been under orders to harass Black’s battleships. Operating without a destroyer screen, she had run into a rain squall; upon emerging, she was surprised to find herself within gun range of a division of Black battleships. Brought under heavy fire, the Lexington was ruled severely damaged.

These unexpected encounters with the fleet’s dreadnoughts hindered the development of carrier tactics for the next decade, as the battleship admirals, fearful of losing their only carriers, would insist that they remain tied to the Battle Fleet. When the Saratoga departed San Diego at the beginning of the problem, she carried nearly 60 percent of the Navy’s carrier pilots and approximately one-third of the aircraft available for operations afloat. As Adm. Henry A. Wiley, the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Fleet, later pointed out, the Navy could ill afford to concentrate such a wealth of personnel and material in one vessel during time of war. In the years to come, those in command of the Battle Fleet would insist on keeping the unarmored flattops within the protection range of their big guns while lobbying for the acquisition of smaller carriers whose individual loss would be less critical than that of the larger ships.

Although the Saratoga was technically out of action after her encounter with the Blue battleship, she was allowed to continue to launch aircraft in order to complete the exercise. This gave the pilots, aircrews, and deck personnel the opportunity to gain the additional experience that was one of the main purposes of conducting these fleet problems.

At 6:58 a.m. Saratoga turned into the wind once again and began launching aircraft, sending thirteen planes of Griffin’s detachment into the air. This third wave of attackers was made up of eight O2Us from Scouting Squadron 2 (VS-2) and five from VS-1. Although classified as a scouts, each plane could be loaded with up to three hundred pounds of bombs and used as light bombers, as was the case for this mission. Reeves had intended to launch this detachment earlier, but the O2U was a new type of aircraft that had arrived just fifteen days before the ship departed San Diego. Lack of experience with the new planes caused unexpected delays that held up their takeoff until after sunrise. By then the first wave launched from the Saratoga had already reached its targets and engaged the enemy.⁵

After passing San Jose Island, Davis ordered his squadron to begin climbing to the high-altitude approach that would put them out of sight as they crossed the coastline on their way to attack the Pedro Miguel and Miraflores Locks. They had timed their approach to coincide with first light. Visibility at that point would be sufficient for them to see the land below, but not enough for them to be picked up by the Army pursuit planes from the Canal Zone that they spotted on patrol ten thousand feet below. As Davis later reported, The moment for the attack could hardly have been more favorable. After passing to the east of Panama City, the squadron split up into two divisions, each heading for a different canal lock. As they approached their targets, the planes began a steep power glide. This maneuver served a dual purpose: it increased their speed, making it more difficult for the Army planes to intercept them, and brought Bombing Squadron 2 down to nine thousand feet, the optimum altitude from which to begin their dive-bombing attack. At 6:38 a.m. the leading sections of each division reversed course and pushed over, commencing a criss-cross strafing attack on the two locks.⁶

After completing its unopposed attacks, the squadron reformed for the return flight to base. En route to the carrier the first division dropped out of the formation and attacked Fort Clayton and Albrook Field, which the planes strafed at low altitude before rejoining the squadron. Within minutes, however, it was attacked by a large number of Army planes. One section engaged the Army planes while the other two sections circled at five thousand feet. The superior performance of the Navy’s air-cooled fighters, apparent during the ensuing melee, enabled the Navy pilots to hang on the tails of the Army planes without difficulty. After twenty minutes of dog fighting, they broke off the engagement and headed back to the Saratoga, which now had eighty-three planes airborne, the most ever put in the air at one time by a single aircraft carrier.

While the first wave tangled with the Army planes, the second strike group had yet to make landfall, its progress hindered by the slow speed of the heavy bomb-carrying T4Ms that formed the nucleus of the main strike group. Although the Army defenders should have been alerted by now, the second wave arrived over the locks undetected. At 8:00 a.m. the T4Ms began their level bomb runs at an altitude of 11,600 feet. With no enemy planes in sight the escorting fighters were free to dive-bomb the locks, which they began to do as soon as the heavy bombers had passed over the target.⁷

One hour and fifty minutes later, Griffin’s force, less three planes from VS-1, which had engaged enemy fighters on the way to the target, arrived over the Miraflores Locks. They saw no Army aircraft and promptly commenced their bomb runs—the third bombing attack made that day against the locks on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal.⁸

Admiral Reeves initially planned to use Langley, his other carrier, to conduct a separate attack on the installations at the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal at the same time Saratoga’s planes attacked the locks on the Pacific side. But when engine trouble forced Langley from the exercise, the seaplane tender Aroostook (CM-3) took her place. At dawn, the tender hoisted out a single Sikorsky PS-2 amphibian that took off to simulate the two squadrons that would have flown from Langley had that ship been available. To insure that the ship would not be detected, the lone aircraft was launched as far from shore as possible, a distance that prohibited a return trip based on the characteristics of the planes that would have flown from the Langley.

Crossing the Isthmus of Panama in the early light of dawn, the PS-2 proceeded along the coast towards the installations on the Atlantic side of the canal. Like her counterparts at the other end of the canal, the amphibian arrived undetected and conducted simulated bombing runs on the Gatun Dam and spillway. Unable to return to the ship, the pilot, as ordered, landed at Coco Solo and destroyed his plane (simulated) before surrendering to the amazed Army forces that surrounded the plane after it landed. The attack on the dam and the plane’s unexpected landing caught the defending forces completely by surprise and were highly embarrassing to the Army. No one bothered to inform them that the lone PS-2 was supposed to represent two squadrons of aircraft, for had the attack come from the Langley it would have been executed by twenty-four light bombers.

Langley’s problems proved to be a blessing in disguise, for it provided Reeves with the excuse for increasing the number of aircraft squadrons on board Saratoga from the four squadrons that had been allocated to six. This fortuitous opportunity enabled him to demonstrate the big carrier’s ability to operate large numbers of aircraft. The attack on the Panama Canal went off with game-board precision; the Army defenders were caught by surprise, and the simulated bombings were conducted without interference. Except for one plane, which ran out of gas as it entered the landing pattern and ditched alongside, all of Saratoga’s aircraft were successfully recovered.

The magnitude of the aerial operations conducted off Saratoga’s flight deck and their impact on naval thinking in the biplane era is difficult to appreciate in an age when the average person thinks nothing of boarding an airplane for travel to some distant city hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. In Reeves’s time the sciences of aeronautics and aerial navigation were still in the early stages of development. Though Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic in 1927 had demonstrated the feasibility of long-range flights over the ocean, flying beyond the sight of land was still considered to be a risky undertaking, especially at night when the pilot faced the additional hazards of poor visibility and vertigo.

The rudimentary carrier aircraft of the day had little more than a magnetic compass for navigation and, because of weight and performance considerations, no radios. In order to communicate with the Saratoga, each detachment was accompanied by a two-seat liaison plane equipped with a radio operated by the second crewmember, who had to rely on Morse code for sending and receiving information. Despite the lack of sophisticated navigation gear or individual radios, each detachment, including the two launched in darkness, was able to rendezvous over the carrier, proceed to the target some 140 miles away, engage the enemy, and then find its way back to the ship without losing a single aircraft.

The exercises conducted off Panama provided the Navy with a perfect opportunity to show off the fleet and receive considerable coverage from the press, especially the New York Times, whose special correspondent Louis R. Freeman was a lieutenant commissioned in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. Reeves recognized the important role of public relations and was a great showman when it came to publicizing the achievements of the Navy’s airmen. Freeman’s articles, which appeared daily and as a special Sunday feature while the maneuvers were in progress, brought home to the public the importance of naval aviation. The favorable nature of his reports on the aerial activities of the fleet strengthened public support of naval aviation just as Congress was considering a measure to authorize the addition of another aircraft carrier, which the Navy badly wanted.

The success of the attack on the Panama Canal and other operations conducted from the Saratoga’s flight deck also enhanced Reeves’s standing within the upper echelons of the Navy. It justified the trust that Admiral Pratt, then commander-in-chief of the Battle Fleet, had placed in the plan that Reeves had prepared for the operation. Pratt was so pleased with the outcome that he sent a dispatch to his aircraft commander praising the brilliant work of the Air Force, which Reeves forwarded to his men, adding his own compliments on their fine seamanship and airmanship. To show his personal pride in the accomplishments of Reeves’s command, Pratt flew his flag in the Saratoga during the return voyage to San Diego.⁹

Pratt later proved to be an important patron of Reeves, especially after Pratt became Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) in September 1930. As the senior officer ashore, the CNO exerted considerable influence throughout the entire naval establishment. Pratt helped Reeves further his career and was largely responsible for seeing that Reeves was elevated to fleet command. Fleet Problem IX laid the groundwork for the basis of the carrier doctrine that so successfully served the U.S. Navy for close to three-quarters of a century. Reeves’s decision to maximize the number of aircraft that could be spotted and launched from the flight deck at one time was one of the most important principles that emerged from this record making exercise. Although Reeves had been working on the problem for several years, its real impact was not felt until the Saratoga’s eighty-three-plane raid. The value of putting as many planes in the air as possible may seem obvious today, but its implementation in the early days of carrier aviation required a leader willing to take a certain amount of risk, one who had the foresight and forcefulness to insist, over the objections frequently voiced by some of the airmen, that it be done.

The essential qualities of superior leadership did not come to Reeves by accident, but were developed through a long period of professional growth and advancement in the U.S. Navy. The specialized education, training, and operational experience obtained by Reeves during his long and varied naval career were instrumental in preparing him for this monumental task.

Although Reeves had previously used Langley to conduct aerial raids on installations ashore, the Saratoga’s attack in Fleet Problem IX was the first to demonstrate the tactical potential of the carrier task force. On the previous occasions, the Langley had been tied to the Battle Fleet. In this exercise Admiral Reeves insisted that Saratoga be detached from the Battle Fleet and allowed to complete a wide, southerly detour that would prevent detection by the enemy until it was too late for him to take action. The tactics employed by Admiral Reeves in this problem would serve as a model for the hit-and-run carrier raids conducted by Vice Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. during the early stages of World War II.

Saratoga (CV-3), shown here on 15 March 1929, in the process of recovering planes from her torpedo squadron. Note the crowded flight deck forward where planes already landed have been pushed. Naval History and Heritage Command

The use of the light cruiser Omaha (CL-4) in place of the short-legged destroyers that usually accompanied Saratoga suggested the need for a new type of formation consisting of an aircraft carrier, heavy cruisers, and destroyers. Such a group, according to Admiral Reeves, could utilize its speed to avoid detection, could force its way through the light forces of a scouting line and arrive at a point from which it could launch an air attack which could be stopped only with the greatest difficulty. This formation became the fast carrier task force that was used with great success in World War II.¹⁰

The most important conclusion drawn from the Saratoga’s raid was the impossibility of stopping a determined air attack once it was launched. Unfortunately, in the years to come, this lesson would be forgotten or perhaps overlooked by certain members of the so-called Gun Club—the battleship men who were unwavering in their faith in the supremacy of the big gun. Their preoccupation with re-fighting the Battle of Jutland instead of insuring the security of the fleet contributed greatly to the disaster at Pearl Harbor. The solution Reeves advocated was to stop the aerial attack before it could start, and the only way to do