USS Granville S. Hall
USS Granville S. Hall was a Liberty ship built in 1944 in Panama City, Florida. Named for Granville S. Hall, she began life as a civilian cargo ship for the War Shipping Administration, operated by A. L. Burbank & Co.
She spent time in the National Defense Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay, first in 1948 and again in 1952. In May 1953 she was transferred to the U.S. Navy and redesignated YAG-40, used as a miscellaneous auxiliary ship. YAG-40 was fitted with scientific instruments to detect and measure nuclear fallout and could be operated remotely from a sealed hold. She took part in Operation Castle, the U.S. nuclear tests of 1954, and was placed in the San Diego Reserve Fleet in 1957.
Reactivated in 1962, she was commissioned as Granville S. Hall (YAG-40). The ship, along with her sister George Eastman, trained at Pearl Harbor and then served as a floating laboratory and administrative command ship for Project SHAD and Project 112, studying shipboard defenses against chemical and biological threats and conducting radiation tests, including studies of plutonium contamination at Johnston Atoll. She also served as a backup recovery vessel during the Apollo 13 mission.
Granville S. Hall was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in May 1972 and sold for scrapping in March 1972.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 11:12 (CET).