Joseph Mason "Bull" Reeves was born on November 20, 1872 in Tampico, Illinois, the second of the five sons of Joseph Cunningham Reeves and Frances (Brewer) Reeves. He was descended on both sides from early seventeenth-century English settlers in Massachusetts. His father, born in Newark, New York, and educated at Ithaca College, served in the Union Army in the Civil War, after which he moved to Illinois and engaged in farming. A scholarly man, he broadened the education of his sons.
Joseph Reeves attended the United States Naval Academy, where he became noted as an athlete. He graduated in 1894 as cadet engineer and during the Spanish-American War distinguished himself in the outstanding engineering performance of the famous battleship Oregon.
Transferred to the line in 1899, he demonstrated remarkable ability in training gun crews. He was on duty at the Naval Academy from 1906 to 1908. His first command, in 1913, was the experimental collier Jupiter, the navy's first ship with electric drive. Reeves commanded the second battleship Maine in World War I, was naval attaché to Italy, and from 1921 to 1923 commanded the battleship North Dakota. Then for two years he was a student and faculty member at the Naval War College, where his study of the principles of war as reflected in the battle of Jutland added a valuable document to naval literature.
The turning point in Reeves's career came in 1925, when at the age of fifty-two he volunteered for duty as an aviation observer and took three months' intensive instruction in flying at Pensacola, Fla. A new rule specified that only naval aviators and naval aviation observers could command aviation units at sea or ashore. In October, Reeves took command of Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet, based at San Diego, California, which included the navy's first flight-deck carrier, Langley (converted in 1921 from the former collier Jupiter).
This force participated little in fleet operations but devoted itself mostly to testing, breaking records, and stunt flying. Reeves observed his new command for six weeks and then bluntly told his officers they knew nothing about the military capabilities of aircraft. Proceeding to revolutionize the force with the methods that had produced his record-breaking gun crews, he shaped these squadrons into the striking arm of the navy. In 1925 Langley had eight aircraft embarked; three years later she was operating thirty-six with 200 landings a day.
She also trained flight crews for the giant carriers Saratoga and Lexington, and when these joined the fleet in 1928, Reeves soon demonstrated that they were naval weapons of great power. In military exercises in 1928 and 1929, he conducted successful mock attacks on Hawaii and on the Panama Canal.
He thus contributed to the evolution of the carrier task force, which was to play so prominent a role in World War II. Reeves during the summer of 1927 was given temporary duty as adviser on aviation at the Geneva Disarmament Conference. The cruiser question, however, dominated the meeting.
In September 1929, before a Senate committee investigating the conference, Washington reporter Drew Pearson stated that while in Geneva he had frequently heard the fluent Reeves express the hope that the conference would fail. With his naval career in jeopardy, Reeves adeptly rebutted the allegation at the next meeting of the committee. Except for one year, Reeves remained in fleet aviation from 1925 to 1931, advancing in rank to rear admiral in 1927.
In 1933 he became commander, Battle Fleet, and then for two years was commander-in-chief, United States Fleet, the first aviation officer to hold this command. He brought to fleet operations a realism never before attained, with emergency transits of the Panama Canal, unscheduled sorties from California bases, tight security measures, and a fleet problem set far in the western Pacific. When he retired in December 1936, the fleet was as ready for war as it could be made in peacetime.
Reeves was recalled to active duty in 1940 and for the next six years served on the lendlease and munition assignment boards. As a member of the Roberts Commission, which investigated the Pearl Harbor disaster, he was severe in his criticism of Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, commander of the Pacific Fleet at the time of the attack.
Reeves died of a heart attack in the Bethesda Naval Hospital at the age of seventy-five. Burial was at the Naval Academy.
Though a battleship officer during his early career, he became known as the "Father of Carrier Aviation" for his role in integrating aircraft carriers into the Fleet as a major part of the Navy's attack capabilities. Reeves earned the following awards and decorations: Naval Aviation Observer Badge, Navy Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, American Campaign Medal.
He believed that the oral word, rather than the written, was the true means of communicating ideas and of making men perform to their utmost.
Tall, bearded, and articulate, Reeves was an impressive man; those who heard him give a speech seldom forgot it.
Reeves married Eleanor Merrken Watkins of New York City on July 1, 1896. They had three children.
