{"title":"USS Reeves (CG-24)","description":"\u003ch2\u003eUSS Reeves (CG-24): Nine Stars and the End of the Line\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCommissioned on 15 May 1964, USS Reeves was the last Leahy-class guided missile cruiser, and she earned nine battle stars for Vietnam service, the most of any ship in the class. Named for Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves, who commanded the carriers in fleet exercises of the 1920s and 1930s and pioneered the doctrines that governed carrier aviation in World War II, Reeves carried a name from the birth of carrier warfare into the missile cruiser era. The lineage is direct: Reeves taught the Navy how to use carriers, and CG-24 spent her career protecting them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNine Vietnam battle stars for a ship commissioned in 1964 means Reeves was in the Gulf of Tonkin from the earliest escalation of American involvement through the war's final stages, a decade of rotating deployments that made her one of the most continuously deployed surface combatants of the entire Vietnam era. Carrier task force screening, air defense coverage, surface presence, she performed all of it through all of it, year after year.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Leahy class she concluded was designed for the threat environment of the early 1960s and served into the 1990s. Reeves herself outlasted the Cold War that had defined her mission, serving in Western Pacific deployments into the post-Cold War era before decommissioning on 9 November 1993.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNine battle stars, named for the admiral who taught the Navy how to use carriers, serving as the last of the class that protected carriers with missiles. Tactically Acquired's USS Reeves (CG-24) collection honors the final Leahy-class ship and the sailors who earned nine Vietnam battle stars keeping American carriers combat-effective in Southeast Asian waters.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[],"url":"https:\/\/tacticallyacquired.com\/collections\/uss-reeves-cg-24-merchandise.oembed","provider":"Tactically Acquired","version":"1.0","type":"link"}