Ships
- USS John Hood (DD-655) Captain from 10 December 1944
Allan Lorentz Reed was born in the Philippines on 21 May 1908. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the Class of 1931 and spent the peacetime years in the fleet, reaching lieutenant on 30 June 1938. The expansion of the Navy after the United States entered the Second World War brought him temporary promotion to lieutenant commander on 15 June 1942 and to commander on 1 November 1942.
The Fletcher-class destroyer John Hood was built by the Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation at Chickasaw, Alabama, and commissioned on 7 June 1944 with Thomas James Thornhill as her first commanding officer. After shakedown in the Caribbean she crossed to the Pacific in August, called at Mare Island, and reached Adak in the Aleutians in September. There she joined Destroyer Squadron 57 in Rear Admiral John L. McCrea's Task Force 92, the North Pacific Force that watched the northern approaches for the rest of the war.
Reed assumed command of John Hood on 10 December 1944. Through the last winter and summer of the fighting the destroyer stayed with that Aleutian force, screening, patrolling the chain, and taking part in the force's strikes against the Kuril Islands. The ship's wartime service in those waters earned her one battle star. After Japan surrendered, John Hood moved from combat patrols into the occupation of Japan while Reed was still in command. He left the ship on 10 February 1946.
He was advanced to the temporary rank of captain on 1 July 1949 and continued in the Navy until he retired as a rear admiral. From June 1964 to June 1966 he served as chief of staff of the Defense Intelligence Agency. In that post he directed the agency's planning and the coordination of its daily work, and he took a leading part in organizing the Defense Attaché System and in standing up the board that set standards for intelligence positions. The Navy awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal for that service.