Ships
- USS Enterprise (CV-6) Captain from 14 December 1944 · Relieved on 25 September 1945
Grover Budd Hartley Hall was born on 28 January 1900 in Franklinville, New York. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy on 6 June 1919 with the Class of 1920. He rose to lieutenant commander in 1936, commander in 1941, and captain in June 1942.
Early in the war he commanded the training carrier Charger (CVE-30) on the East Coast, where his hard-driving methods earned him the nickname "Dynamite." He took over Enterprise in December 1944 and drilled her hard in Hawaiian waters. One sailor said, "Captain Hall drove that ship like a Model A Ford."
On 20 March 1945 dive bombers hit and set her afire. Through raging fires, exploding ammunition and dense smoke around the bridge, Hall directed damage control while keeping her guns firing at the attackers, and he won the Navy Cross. He kept command through the end of the war, and Enterprise was still his when Japan surrendered.
Hall retired a rear admiral and died in San Diego on 3 March 1987, at 87. Reliable sources found so far say little about his early life or his postwar career.