Ships
- USS Franklin (CV-13) Captain from 30 July 1945 · Relieved on 8 June 1946
Henry Henderson Hale was born on 23 July 1907 in Gary, Indiana. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with the class of 1931 and was promoted to lieutenant on 1 July 1939. In the Second World War he became a temporary lieutenant commander on 15 June 1942 and a temporary commander on 1 November 1942.
By the spring of 1945 he was air officer of the Essex-class carrier Franklin. The ship had entered service on 31 January 1944 under James Marshall Shoemaker. Leslie Edward Gehres commanded her when she joined the fast carrier force for strikes on the Japanese home islands ahead of the landings on Okinawa.
On the morning of 19 March 1945, Franklin was operating close to Japan and sending aircraft against targets that included shipping at Kobe. A Japanese plane broke through and dropped bombs that blew into the flight deck and the hangar. Fueled and armed aircraft caught fire, and explosions tore through the ship. Hundreds of men were killed and many more were wounded. Hale took charge of the firefighting and damage-control parties on the flight deck and in the hangar. He received the Navy Cross for that work. The men who stayed aboard kept Franklin afloat, and she later crossed the Pacific and passed through the Panama Canal to New York for repair.
Hale assumed command of Franklin on 30 July 1945, while the carrier was still on the East Coast and the repair work went on. Japan surrendered the next month, and the ship did not return to combat. He was relieved on 8 June 1946. He stayed in the Navy after the war and retired as a captain. Henry Henderson Hale died on 14 November 1990.