Ships
- USS Hailey (DD-556) Captain from 27 April 1951
Joseph E. Reedy, a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy, took command of the destroyer Hailey on 27 April 1951. That was the day the ship was recommissioned at San Diego after more than five years laid up in reserve. Hailey (DD-556) was a Fletcher-class destroyer, and Reedy was the officer who brought her back to active service.
The ship had been built at Seattle by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation. She was launched on 9 March 1943 and commissioned on 30 September 1943, with Parke H. Brady as her first commanding officer. She was named for Joshua Hailey, a privateer captain of the War of 1812. In the Pacific she screened fast carrier groups, including strikes on Formosa, and in 1945 she served with the fast carrier force through the Okinawa campaign and operations against the Japanese home islands. She returned to the United States in July 1945, was decommissioned at San Diego on 27 January 1946, and entered the reserve fleet. The ship received six battle stars for that wartime service.
Reedy's tour began with the ship and a new crew. After recommissioning, Hailey trained off San Diego, then passed through the Panama Canal toward the Atlantic. She underwent overhaul and modernization at the Norfolk Navy Yard from December 1951 to February 1952, and afterward took up duty based at Newport, Rhode Island, with the Atlantic forces that operated with the Sixth Fleet.
He remained in command into 1952. Harvey Wright Hall, Jr. was the next commanding officer, and that tour ran into 1953. In that span Hailey left Newport on 6 September 1952, crossed again by way of the Canal Zone, and spent four months in Korean waters with Fast Carrier Task Force 77. She joined the blockade and gave close gunfire support to troops ashore, then sailed from Sasebo on 5 February 1953 for the East Coast. The ship later received two battle stars for Korean service.
Hailey stayed an Atlantic destroyer after that cruise. From 8 September 1954 to 14 September 1959 she made four deployments to the Mediterranean with the Sixth Fleet. Between those cruises she served as plane guard for the light carrier Monterey while aviation cadets trained off Pensacola, and she drilled in antisubmarine work and destroyer tactics. The Navy decommissioned her at Portsmouth, Virginia, on 3 November 1960. On 20 July 1961 she was loaned to Brazil, where she served as Pernambuco (D-30).