USS Reeves CG 24 – History of the U.S. Navy's Guided Missile Cruiser & Navy Decals

USS Reeves CG 24 – History, Service Record & Navy Decals

The USS Reeves (CG-24) was the ninth and final ship of the Leahy class of guided missile cruisers — the U.S. Navy's first purpose-built guided missile cruiser class — serving the Pacific Fleet through three decades of Cold War service. Named for Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves, USN — one of the most consequential figures in the history of American naval aviation, widely recognized as the “Father of Naval Aviation Tactics” and the officer most responsible for transforming the aircraft carrier from an experimental curiosity into the centerpiece of American naval power.

Joseph Mason Reeves came to naval aviation late in his career — he was already a senior captain when he earned his aviation observer's wings at age 52, making him one of the oldest officers ever to qualify for carrier duty. But what he lacked in youth he more than compensated for in vision, intellect, and drive. As Commander Aircraft Squadrons, Battle Fleet, beginning in 1925, Reeves took command of USS Langley — the Navy's first aircraft carrier — and immediately began the systematic development of carrier tactics, flight deck operations, and naval aviation doctrine that would define American carrier warfare for the next two decades.

Reeves pushed his pilots and aircraft to the absolute limits of what was possible, developing the concepts of massed deckload strikes, high-tempo flight operations, and carrier task force tactics that would become the foundation of American carrier warfare in World War II. He dramatically increased the number of aircraft that could be operated from a carrier, developed the procedures for rapid rearming and refueling that made sustained carrier air operations possible, and proved through fleet exercises that carriers — not battleships — were the decisive instrument of naval power. When the Navy received its first purpose-built carriers — USS Lexington and USS Saratoga — it was Reeves's doctrine and tactics that governed how they were used. The carrier admirals of World War II — Halsey, Mitscher, Spruance — built their operational concepts on the foundation that Reeves had laid in the 1920s and 1930s. Without Joseph Mason Reeves, the carrier revolution that won the Pacific War might have taken years longer to mature — and USS Reeves honored that foundational legacy of naval aviation vision throughout her distinguished Cold War career.

Keel, Launch & Commissioning

Reeves's keel was laid down on July 1, 1960, at the Puget Sound Bridge and Dredging Company in Seattle, Washington. She was launched on May 12, 1962, and commissioned into the U.S. Navy on May 15, 1964, as the ninth and final ship of the Leahy class under hull designation CG-24 (originally designated DLG-24, reclassified as CG-24 in 1975).

Class & Design

USS Reeves was the last of nine Leahy-class guided missile cruisers — the Navy's first purpose-built guided missile cruiser class, designed to provide area air defense for carrier strike groups. At approximately 533 feet in length and displacing approximately 8,200 tons fully loaded, she carried the twin-arm Terrier surface-to-air missile systems fore and aft — the signature “Double-End Terrier” configuration of the Leahy class — along with the ASROC anti-submarine rocket system and torpedo tubes. Like her sisters, she was later upgraded with the Standard Missile system and Harpoon anti-ship missiles, maintaining her effectiveness as a modern surface combatant through the Cold War's final decades.

As the final ship of the class, Reeves represented the fully mature expression of the Leahy-class design — incorporating the operational experience accumulated by her eight sisters — and completed the first generation of purpose-built American guided missile cruisers that had begun with USS Leahy CG-16. Fittingly, the ship named for the father of American carrier aviation tactics served her entire career as a carrier battle group escort — protecting the carriers whose doctrine her namesake had written.

Cold War Pacific Fleet Service

Commissioned in May 1964, USS Reeves was assigned to the Pacific Fleet, homeported at Long Beach, California, and deploying repeatedly to the Western Pacific throughout her Cold War career. She served as an escort for Pacific Fleet carrier battle groups and conducted the full range of Cold War Pacific operations — including Vietnam War deployments to the Western Pacific and Gulf of Tonkin during the most intensive period of American naval involvement in Southeast Asia, and the sustained forward presence operations that maintained American naval supremacy across the Pacific throughout the Cold War.

Later in her career, Reeves was homeported at Yokosuka, Japan — the Navy's most important forward base in the Western Pacific — where she served as a forward-deployed Pacific Fleet surface combatant, providing the persistent American naval presence in the Western Pacific that was a cornerstone of American security commitments to Japan and the broader Asia-Pacific region. Her Yokosuka homeport placed her at the geographic center of American naval power in Asia — a fitting station for the ship named for the man who had built the naval aviation doctrine that made the Pacific War's carrier campaigns possible.

Decommissioning

USS Reeves was decommissioned on February 28, 1994, after nearly 30 years of commissioned service — completing the operational history of the Leahy class and closing the chapter on the Navy's first generation of purpose-built guided missile cruisers.

Legacy

For the sailors who served aboard Reeves — the missile technicians, sonar operators, electronics warfare specialists, and surface warfare professionals who kept this Pacific Fleet guided missile cruiser operational and ready through nearly 30 years of Cold War service — she represents a career of exceptional dedication to American naval power in the Pacific. As the last ship of the Leahy class — the class that established the guided missile cruiser as the backbone of carrier battle group defense — USS Reeves completed the legacy of the Navy's first guided missile cruiser generation. Named for the officer who wrote the doctrine that made carrier aviation the decisive force in American naval warfare, USS Reeves spent her career defending the carriers that vindicated everything Joseph Mason Reeves had fought to prove — a perfect tribute to the father of American carrier aviation tactics.

Shop USS Reeves CG 24 Navy Gifts & Decals

Honor your service or give a meaningful gift to a USS Reeves veteran with our full line of USS Reeves CG 24 products:

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All products ship from the USA. Custom options available — contact us for details.