With the 58-man German crew in custody, Capt. Heavier depth charges cracked the hull of the stunned U-boat, forcing it to surface and its crew to abandon ship. The Germans fired a torpedo (that missed) before a circle of small depth charges exploded around it. When a spotter plane from the aircraft carrier Guadalcanal found it running on the surface a few miles from the task force, battle was joined. On June 4, decoded messages alerted Gallery’s group that the U-505 was close by. That done, the second team would close any sea valves and disarm any explosives. The first would grab an Enigma machine and any related documents. Using information provided by the rescued German sailors, Gallery ordered the training of two boarding parties to send should opportunity arise. The Enigma machine taken when the U-505 was captured, June 1944 (Credit: Derek Bruff/flickr) Thanks to intercepted Enigma messages, the Americans were able to determine general U-boat positions, but exact locations were radioed using a second-generation Enigma machine not in Allied possession. boarding party might take a Nazi sub relatively intact. Gallery realized that, with proper knowledge and training, a U.S. ![]() That April, Gallery’s group sank a U-boat, but not before a ship pulled alongside the stricken vessel to rescue its sailors who had opened valves to the sea and set timed detonators to scuttle the vessel. Daniel Gallery commanded a sub-hunting task force of five destroyers in the South Atlantic. In the spring of 1944, Chicago native Capt. In fact, it was by way of a decoded Enigma message that the U-505 ended up in Chicago.Ī Navy Captain Plans to Grab a Top Secret Prize The German high command never suspected it had fallen into Allied hands and continued to use the system, albeit with greater levels of complexity that occasionally hampered code breaking, until the end of the war. The Enigma’s capture was equal to the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb as the greatest secret of the war. They recovered several cipher books and an Enigma machine, the crucial top-secret device used by the German military to code, and decode, messages. A successful use of the new weapon allowed British sailors to board an incapacitated U-boat before it sank off Greenland. Smaller, lighter, and launched in circular clusters, it was more effective in disabling a target. The first was a new kind of depth charge. Through 1941, the losses in such attacks were staggering.īut that year, two developments helped change the equation in Britain’s favor. Some engaged battleships, while others torpedoed cargo vessels. When one spotted a convoy it radioed coded messages to others close by that would then gather in a so-called Wolfpack. To trap convoys guarded by warships, German subs operated in a north/south picket line across the mid-Atlantic shipping lanes. Once America entered the conflict, U-boats roamed just off the East Coast and into the Gulf of Mexico. They were instead fast, highly maneuverable surface craft designed to submerge for relatively brief periods (8 to 12 hours) at fairly shallow depths. ![]() Germany, as it did during World War I, sent a fleet of U-boats to destroy them.Ĭontrary to popular belief, U-boats were not deep-diving stealth weapons. was quick to offer Britain a lifeline of cargo ship convoys. ![]() It was estimated that the nation needed one million tons of supplies every week to sustain its fight against Nazi Germany. ![]() Watch Submarines: The Invisible Weapon on Magellan TV:Īfter war was declared in 1939, Great Britain had to import raw materials for the vast majority of its manufactured products and many consumer goods. I was more interested, however, in the boat’s details – bunks hung directly above torpedoes, for example – than how it ended up in the museum’s back yard.īut the U-505’s story is as gripping as any tale to come out of World War II, part of a little-remembered aspect of a world at war in which the entire Atlantic Ocean, from North America to Africa, Greenland to Brazil, was a battleground where the eventual Allied victory in Europe was decided. Taken on the high seas off Africa in 1944, the U-505 was the first enemy vessel captured whole and brought to port by the U.S. And one highlight of each visit was a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry to make my way through the tight confines of a real-life Nazi submarine, the U–505. When I was a boy, a highlight of every summer was visiting family in Chicago. Capturing the German U-boat intact (with its Enigma machine) was hard rolling it in one piece across 800 yards of Chicago real estate ten years later was harder.
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