American engineer, (b. Aug. 4, 1914, New York, N.Y.—d. Jan. 15, 2006, Torrance, Calif.), was considered by many of his peers to have been the father of the U.S. Air Force’s Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). As an Army Air Corps (predecessor of the U.S. Air Force) officer during World War II, Hall was assigned to an intelligence-gathering unit to study the Nazi V-2 rocket program. Though he worked in the 1950s on developing liquid-fuel engines for missiles such as the Atlas, Hall became an early proponent of solid-fuel technology. His work led to development of the Polaris and Titan ICBMs, as well as the Minuteman; for this he was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1960.
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