Admiral of Air & Water

ARMY & NAVY

During the Army-Navy football game of 1894, the midshipmen set up a wild shout when a Navy player wearing a football helmet trotted out on the field and took his place in the line. In those days football players wore neither numbers nor helmets. So from his conical headgear the midshipmen knew who the player was and that his skull had been injured earlier in the year. "Reeves!" they shouted, "Bull Reeves!" And when Navy won (6-4), the midshipmen gave"Bull" Reeves credit for having saved the game.

Thus Joseph Mason Reeves, native of Tampico, Ill. first displayed gallantry in Naval action. Four years later he was a lieutenant, junior grade, aboard the Oregon when under forced draft that famed warship made her record run from San Francisco around Cape Horn to arrive just in time for the Battle of Santiago. For "eminent and conspicuous conduct in battle" he was advanced four numbers in rank.

By the time of the War he was a captain attached to the office of Naval operations in Washington. In 1919 he went as Naval attache to Rome; in 1921 became Commandant of the Mare Island Navy Yard; in 1924 an instructor at the Naval War College at Newport. From that post he was assigned to the Bureau of Aeronautics at Washington, a circumstance that gave a major twist to his career. Soon after he was sent to San Diego, given the aircraft carrier Langley and made commander of the aircraft squadron of the battle fleet. In that post he was credited with doing a masterful job in whipping the Navy's air force into an effective fighting unit. After a year he was made a rear admiral, but in spite of his rank, dignity and grey beard, he was frequently to be found not only in the cockpit of a plane but also driving his second-hand Ford roadster.

In 1929 this effective if unconventional admiral became a member of the Navy's General Board, its authority on Naval air strategy. A year ago he was made commander of the Battle Force. Last week in the annual shift of Navy posts, he was slated for the post of Commander-in-Chief of the United States Fleet--the Navy's No. 1 officer afloat. Thus for the first time will a trained master of air as well as water tactics become the supreme commander of U. S. sea forces after May 31.

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