Ships
- USS Lamson (DD-367) Captain, 16 June 1938 – 1 April 1940
Byron Hall Hanlon was born in Rocklin, California, on 27 September 1899. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1921 and served until 1958, rising at the end of his career to admiral on the retired list. He and Lady Brown Hanlon had a son, Kevin, born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on 25 December 1926. Kevin graduated from the Naval Academy in 1948, following his father and his maternal grandfather, Guy Warner Brown of the class of 1879.
On 16 June 1938 Lieutenant Commander Hanlon became captain of the Mahan-class destroyer Lamson. The ship had been commissioned at Bath on 21 October 1936 under Hubert Esterly Paddock, and Hanlon was her third commanding officer, relieving Neil Kittrell Dietrich. Through the rest of 1938 and 1939 Lamson worked with the Pacific Fleet from San Diego, and in March 1939 she was at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, with Destroyer Division Three. On 21 March Hanlon was photographed there with the division commander, Ernest G. Small, and the captains of Drayton, Flusser, and Mahan. On 5 October 1939 Lamson sailed for Pearl Harbor, which became her base, and Hanlon kept command through that change of station. He turned the ship over on 1 April 1940 to Perley Earl Pendleton.
He was promoted to commander on 1 July 1941 and to temporary captain on 20 June 1942. From 11 November 1944 to 5 June 1945 he commanded the Underwater Demolition Teams of the Amphibious Forces, United States Pacific Fleet, the swimmers sent in ahead of a landing to find and clear beach obstacles.
On 17 February 1945, during the pre-invasion assault on Iwo Jima, he led the Naval Underwater Demolitions Group in to the beaches. Japanese artillery and mortar fire sank one of the twelve supporting gunboats and seriously damaged ten more. Hanlon kept the demolition teams and their gunboats working to within a thousand yards of shore for the reconnaissance and clearance the landing required. He received the Navy Cross for that day, and the Legion of Merit with Combat V for his command of the teams across the whole period from November 1944 to June 1945.
On 15 June 1945 he took command of the battleship North Carolina. He had her through the last weeks of the Pacific war and the first months after Japan’s surrender, and he left the ship on 1 February 1946.
Shore commands followed. From 1946 to 1948 he commanded the Naval Powder Factory at Indian Head, Maryland. In 1950 he briefly commanded the Naval Ordnance Laboratory at White Oak, Maryland, and from 1950 to 1952 he was superintendent of the Naval Gun Factory in Washington. As a rear admiral he received a second Legion of Merit, an Army award in the form of a bronze oak leaf cluster, for service from 25 August 1952 to 26 February 1953, and the Army Distinguished Service Medal for service from 1 January 1953 to 23 April 1954. He also received the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. His later flag duty included command of amphibious forces in the Atlantic. He was promoted to vice admiral on 1 November 1957, retired in October 1958, and was advanced to admiral on the retired list. Hanlon died in Charleston, South Carolina, on 9 January 1977, after a long illness. He was seventy-seven.