Ships
- USS Kidd (DD-661) Captain, 28 August 1944 – 11 April 1945
Harry Grimshaw Moore was born in Statesboro, Georgia, on 18 February 1909. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1932 and was commissioned in the Navy. He was promoted to lieutenant on 1 November 1939, to temporary lieutenant commander on 15 June 1942, and to temporary commander on 18 November 1942.
On 28 August 1944 he took command of the Fletcher-class destroyer Kidd (DD-661) at Pearl Harbor, relieving Allan Barkhurst Roby. The ship had already served through the Gilberts, the Marshalls, and the Marianas. Under Moore she went back to sea for the return to the Philippines.
In October and November 1944 Kidd screened the amphibious forces and served as a fire-support ship during the landings on Leyte. Moore remained in command through the Western Pacific campaign that followed, and by April 1945 the destroyer was assigned to a radar-picket unit covering a larger task group off Okinawa.
On 11 April 1945 Japanese suicide planes attacked the picket ships. Kidd helped shoot several of them down before one aircraft crashed into her, setting severe fires. Thirty-eight men were killed and fifty-five were wounded. Moore was badly burned and otherwise injured. He kept direction of the damage control and the firefighting, and the ship was soon able to steam toward the rear under her own power.
His injuries closed his command that day. The executive officer, Burdick Heinkel Brittin, also wounded in the attack, took temporary command on 11 April. Richard Layfield Kenney relieved him on 12 April, and Fred Marshall Bush took command on 29 April. For his conduct on 11 April, Moore received the Silver Star. The award, recommended by the commander of the First Carrier Task Force and dated 16 September 1945, recognized the way he held a shattered destroyer together until she could withdraw.
After the war he took command of the destroyer Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (DD-850) on 15 December 1945. He retired from the Navy as a captain. Moore died in Gainesville, Georgia, on 28 August 1979, at the age of seventy.