“How Task Group 22.3 Captured the U-505” by S.M. O’Connor

Under the command of Captain Daniel V. Gallery (1901-1977), U.S. Navy Hunter-Killer Task Group 22.3 captured the U-505 on Sunday, June 4, 1944, south of the Cape Verde Islands (then a Portuguese colony) and 150 miles west of Cape Blanco in French West Africa (now the Islamic Republic of Mauritania) and then towed her approximately 2,500 miles to Naval Operating Base, Bermuda.[1] This was the first time since 1815 that an American warship had captured a man-o-war on the high seas. Hunter/Killer Task Group 22.3 consisted of six ships: the U.S.S. Guadalcanal (CVE-60), the U.S.S. Pillsbury (DE-133), the U.S.S. Chatelain (DE-149), the U.S.S. Flaherty (DE-135), the U.S.S. Pope (DE-134), and U.S.S. Jenks (DE-665). U.S.S. Guadalcanal was a Casablanca-class escort aircraft carrier, also known as a “jeep carrier” or “baby flattop,” built by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company of Vancouver, Washington.[2] She was named after a volcanic island in the Solomon Islands archipelago that the Japanese Imperial Navy had captured in May of 1942 in order to build an airfield that could be used to attack Australia and disrupt contact between the U.S.A. and Australia, as well as to defend earlier conquests. American forces – the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army, and U.S. Coast Guard – won several battles on Guadalcanal and in the waters off the coast of Guadalcanal in 1942 and early ‘43. The U.S.S. Guadalcanal was commissioned at Astoria, Oregon on September 25, 1943 with Captain Gallery in command. The other five ships in the task group were destroyer escorts. The Consolidated Steel Corporation of Orange, Texas built the U.S.S. Chatelain. She was named in honor of Hubert Paul Chatelain (1917-1942), a Gunner’s Mate, First Class, who was killed in action aboard the U.S.S. South Dakota on October 26, 1942, during the Battle of Santa Cruz. The Consolidated Steel Corporation of Orange, Texas built the U.S.S. Flaherty. She was named in honor of Ensign Francis Charles Flaherty (1919-1941) who died aboard the battleship U.S.S. Oklahoma during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He died helping other men escape from the sinking ship. U.S.S. Jenks (DE-665) was one of twenty-seven destroyer escorts and 259 other warships manufactured by the Dravo Corporation at the company’s shipyards in Wilmington, Delaware and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s Neville Island.[3]

Captain Dan Gallery was Commanding Officer of the Guadalcanal.[4] He was an experienced naval aviator and a resident of Chicago and Vienna, Virginia.[5] Lieutenant Commander George W. Cassleman, U.S.N.R., of Joliet, Illinois commanded the U.S.S. Pillsbury; Lieutenant Commander Dudley S. Knox, U.S.N.R., of Washington, D.C. commanded the U.S.S. Chatelain; Lieutenant Commander Edwin H. Headland, Jr., U.S.N., of Henriette, Minnesota commanded the U.S.S. Pope; Lieutenant Commander Means Johnston, Jr., U.S.N., of Greenwood, Mississippi commanded the U.S.S. Flaherty; and Lieutenant Commander, Julius F. Way, U.S.N., of Stonington, Maine commanded the U.S.S. Jenks.[6] Commander Frederick S. Hall, U.S.N., of Wyoming, Ohio, was the destroyer division commander.[7] Lieutenant Norman D. Hodson, U.S.N., of San Bernardino, California, commanded the Guadalcanal‘s aircraft squadron.[8] [The officers with U.S.N. after their names were navy regulars and those with U.S.N.R. after their names were naval reservists.] Gallery’s call sign was “Bluejay,” Knox’s call sign was “Frenchy,” and Hall’s call sign was “Dagwood.”[9]

Captain Gallery was convinced after he had sunk the U-515 that it would be possible to capture a defeated U-boat when she surfaced so the commander and crew could escape.[10] At the departure conference for all commanding officers in Hunter-Killer Task Group 22.3 before they set out, Gallery accordingly had each ship draw up plans for the capture of a U-boat and organize boarding parties.[11] British intelligence had alerted the U.S. Navy to look for a U-boat off French West Africa, and the U-505 evaded the task group for two days. There are some minor variances between the accounts of Hunter-Killer Task Group 22.3 and U-505 as to the events leading up to the capture.

The U.S. Navy learnt that the U-505 was on patrol through signals intelligence, specifically HF/DF (high-frequency direction-finding, also known as Huff-Duff) and decrypted Enigma missives.[12] Commander Kenneth A. Knowles, a 1927 graduate of the Naval Academy, was head of the F-21 (Atlantic) section of F-2, the Combat Intelligence Division of the Operations Division of COMINCH (Commander in Chief, United States Fleet) Headquarters.[13] Knowles had retired for medical reasons, but Admiral (later Fleet Admiral) Ernest J. King (1878-1956), Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, and Chief of Naval Operations, recalled him at the suggestion of Captain Francis S. (“Frog”) Lowe, and Commander Knowles went to England to learn about submarine-tracking from Lieutenant Commander Rodger Winn, the head of the Admiralty’s Submarine Tracking Room.[14] Upon his return to the U.S.A., Knowles created F-21 on the model of the Submarine Tracking Room and deliberately kept his staff small: four male officers, eight W.A.V.E. (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services) officers, a small number of yeomen, and a somewhat larger number of W.A.V.E. enlisted women.[15] F-21 began operations during an Enigma blackout period in 1942 when the Allies were unable to decipher Enigma messages because the Germans had added fourth rotor to Enigma machines, but by December of 1942, the code-breakers at the misleadingly named Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park were able to decrypt the four-rotor Enigma messages from intercepted radio transmissions and send Ultra intelligence to their counterparts in the U.S. Navy.[16] The Americans who received and disbursed the Ultra intelligence were a very small group. Created on December 27, 1942, their group was known as the Secret Room, and, later F-211.[17] The leader was Lieutenant John E. Parsons, U.S.N.R.[18] He had the assistance of Lieutenant Junior Grade John V. Boland, U.S.N.R., and Yeoman First Class Samuel P. Livecchi.[19] Beyond these three men, only Knowles and Ensign R.B. Chevalier, who provided relief for Yeoman Livecchi, had regular access to the Secret Room.[20] A secure telephone line connected F-211 with the Enigma section of the Office of Naval Intelligence.[21] Admiral King also established the Tenth Fleet to organize American antisubmarine efforts.[22] Thanks to signals intelligence, the U.S. Navy knew the approximate location of the U-505, but thanks to human intelligence gleaned through interrogations of prisoners-of-war, the boarding parties in Task Group 22.3 had seen drawings of the interiors of various types of U-boats.[23]

Professor Eric C. Rust judged, in the “Introduction” to Hunt and Kill: U-505 and the U-boat War in the Atlantic, “No reader can possibly be deceived into believing the Allies were destined to win the war on account of sheer superiority in numbers, industrial capacity, and motivation. The bloodletting associated with the U-boats’ assault on the United States’ and Canada’s Eastern Seaboard as well as the Caribbean in 1942 should cure anyone of such delusions. But numbers, economic potential, and the consistent application of human ingenuity to the necessities of combat did favor the Allied effort from the start and only grew more pronounced as the war grew old. Foremost among such endeavors must rank the extraordinary accomplishment of codebreakers at Bletchley Park in Britain who, with help from their American associates in Dayton, Ohio, broke the German Enigma cipher – known as the Ultra Secret to the Allies – which most German naval leaders in their unfathomable hubris deemed perfectly secure until the very end of the conflict. Still, reading the enemy’s mail is one thing; making him pay for it in tangible ways in quite another. And here again readers will discern that history is ultimately predicated on the performance and character of individuals, in this case Commander Knowles and Captain Gallery of the U.S. Navy whose mutual trust, friendship, and singleness of purpose made a decisive difference. Sometimes historians point to independent chains of causation to account for historical events whose outcomes they have trouble understanding and explaining, typically dismissing them as products of contingency or chance beyond plausible solution. No such excuse can apply to the Allied detection and capture of U-505. While the boat may have made its way home to Lorient with the greatest of luck in a counter-factual scenario, the indisputable reality remains successful codebreaking, HF/DF vigilance, relentless aerial surveillance, and the dogged determination of a hunter-killer task force commander and his men, doomed the boat days before its final encounter with destiny.”[24]

The Chatelain was the first ship in the task group to make sonar contact with the U-505.[25] Commander Dudley S. Knox alerted Gallery over the radio, “Frenchy to Bluejay – I have a possible sound contact!”[26]

There were two U-505 crewmembers who spent all of their service in the Unterseebootswaffe aboard the U-505 and wrote narrative histories: Hans Joachim Decker and Hans Jacob Göbeler. In his article “404 Days! The War Patrol Life of the German U-505,” published in United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Decker stated, “A few minutes after 1100 that morning, as we glided slowly northward running submerged, something strange happened. From over our heads came a scraping sound, as if someone were dragging a cable along the deck above. It stopped, then started again. This was bewildering. We didn’t have too long to think about it, however, because within moments our soundman picked up propeller noises; not just one, but three. They were all around us. ‘Battle stations, torpedo,’ cried Lange. ‘Periscope depth, and make it slow, Chief; maybe we’re in the middle of a convoy.’ We never got there, because Lange ordered us deep as a series of little sharp explosions rocked us. These were not depth charges, but the dreaded ‘hedgehogs,’ little rocket-like devices, which, exploding only on contact as they did, had spelled death for many of our U-boats. At fifty meters we were hit with another attack. These were depth charges this time, and they were close aboard. U-505 shuddered violently, the lights went out, and amid the din we heard the most dreaded of noises to submariners: water rushing in. Sure enough, someone shouted, ‘Ruptured hull in the control room.’ And in the engine room the flashlights played on streams of oil and water from broken pipe lines.”[27]

Göbeler recalled in his memoir Steel Boat, Iron Hearts that on the fateful day that Task Group 22.3 captured the U-505 the U-boat was running low on oxygen so all of the crewmen not on duty were confined to their bunks.[28] “I laid there in my stinking bunk, whispering prayers from the little black Bible my mother had given me when I joined the Kriegsmarine.”[29] The U-505 soundman heard the approach of ships, but could not identify them because one of his two hydrophones was malfunctioning.[30] Oberleutnant zur See Harald Lange was notified of this while he ate lunch and went up to the conning tower.[31] As the U-505 approached periscope depth, he ordered torpedo battle stations.[32] Lange expected with his periscope he would see a convoy he could attack.[33] With his surface periscope, he saw three Allied destroyers, a large mass in the distance that might be an aircraft carrier, and a fighter plane, so he dove, but the first explosions rocked the U-boat before he reached a safe depth.[34]

Gallery later explained if Lange had chosen to dive deeply immediately, the first depth charges dropped by the destroyer escorts in undisturbed water would likely find their mark and under tons of pressure when the explosions occurred near the U-boat, her hull would be crushed.[35] Instead, it was better for Lange to keep the U-505 at a shallow depth, try to ride out the initial “storm of explosions” and then take a deep dive in disturbed water.[36]

Since this time he was caught near the surface during the day, the two Wildcat fighter plane pilots in the air – Lieutenant Wolffe W. Roberts, U.S.N.R., of Lewiston, Idaho and Ensign J. W. Cadle, Jr., U.S.N.R., of Dixon, Illinois – were able to see the U-boat, running at a depth of approximately thirty feet beneath the surface.[37] They shot at it to mark its position, and to the submariners aboard the U-505, the sound of the bullets hitting the water overheard was “like a cable dragging across their hull.”[38] Out of desperation, Lange fired decoys and an acoustic torpedo aimed at nothing.[39] Four of the five destroyer escorts in the task group closed in on the U-boat. The fifth backed away to protect the flagship of Gallery’s task force, the escort carrier U.S.S. Guadalcanal. Even before pilots Roberts and Cadle spotted the U-505, Captain Gallery alerted the screen commander, Commander F.S. Hall, to take two destroyer escorts and assist Knox.[40] “Bluejay to Dagwood – take two DE’s and assist Frenchy. I’ll maneuver to keep clear.”[41] The first to arrive was the destroyer escort U.S.S. Chatelain, which dropped a combination of depth charges and hedgehogs over the U-505.[42] The Guadalcanal avoided the only torpedo the U-505 fired.[43]

The capture of the U-505 would later be chronicled as Incident Number 6313 in the records of the United States Navy’s Tenth Fleet,[44] and according to that record, at 11:09 GCT the U.S.S. Chatelain registered sonar contact with the U-505 at a range of approximately 800 yards.[45] At 11:16, hedgehogs were dropped with no effect. Contact was lost with the U-505 at fifty yards, indicating to the American sailors that the U-boat presented a shallow target. The Chatelain regained contact with the U-boat and went on the attack again. Fighter plane pilots from the Guadalcanal sighted the U-505 running near the surface and indicated her position with bursts of machine gun fire. The result of fourteen depth charges being dropped at 11:21 was the appearance of an oil slick on the ocean’s surface. The U-505 surfaced at 11:23. The Chatelain, Jenks, Pillsbury, and two fighter planes opened fire on the German submarine. Lieutenant Commander Dudley S. Knox, Commanding Officer of the Chatelain, fired one torpedo at the U-boat, missing 50 to 100 yards ahead of the boat.[46] The submariners were observed abandoning ship and Gallery ordered the task group to cease fire. While the Chatelain and Jenks recovered the submariners from the water, the Pillsbury dispatched a boarding party that prevented the U-boat from sinking. The Guadalcanal took the boat under tow to Bermuda.

As some of the Germans recounted, Lange was 500 feet beneath the surface by the time the first hedgehogs exploded, but the explosions rocked the boat nevertheless, damaging the electric steering and knocking out the lights.[47] The mess tables, crockery, etc. fell on the submariners.[48] The rudders were jammed in place so the helmsman was forced to tell Lange they were struck going in counterclockwise circles.[49] One of the dive planes was jammed, too, so at first they could not stop diving. They were able to fix the problem with the dive plane, but not the rudders.

The Aft Torpedo Room was taking in water.[50] The men in the Aft Torpedo Room scrambled out, into the Electric Motor Room, closed the water-tight hatch behind them, and ran in to the Control Room, yelling, “Water is coming in!”[51] At this point, the submariners thought their pressure hull had split open in back.[52]

Lange ordered his men to blow the air tanks so they could resurface, abandon ship, and scuttle (sink) her to keep her out of American hands.[53] Using compressed air to blow out the ballast water, they were able to return to the surface, but they were still stuck going in circles.[54]

The U-505 broke the surface, stuck going in circles at a speed of six knots.[55] They were also leaking fuel. Lange later recounted that when they surfaced he could see four destroyers and were being shot at with .50 caliber rounds and anti-aircraft guns.[56] He was shot in both knees and legs while in the Conning Tower.[57] Lange, following protocol, was the first man out.[58] However, the crewmen panicked because both of the Wildcat fighter planes strafed the U-boat and three of the destroyer escorts shot at her as well, with the result that Lange and Executive Officer Paul Meyer were wounded, and radioman Gottfried Fisher was killed.[59] [According to Gallery, a 40 mm shell exploded beside Lange, which is what caused knocked “him unconscious with severe wounds in the face and legs.”[60]] Meyer received a scalp wound.[61] Gallery commented that Fisher was “a ‘plank owner’ who had put the boat in commission.”[62] [Note that Pharmacist’s Mate Otto Dietz identified the single German submariner to have been killed was “an antiaircraft gunner”[63] and when Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery wrote Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea: The Daring Capture of the U-505, he identified the man as “Gunner’s Mate Fisher.”[64]] Fischer was one of a handful of U-505 crewmen who were married.[65] Unfortunately, that means when the wives of his comrades received the good news that they were actually alive in 1945, she was the lone wife of a U-505 crewman who received confirmation she was a widow.

Lange recounted in the “Statement of Commanding Officer of U-505” while aboard the Guadalcanal on June 15, 1944, “My chief officer, who came after me onto the bridge, lay on the starboard side with blood streaming over his face. Then I gave a course order to starboard in order to make the aft part of the conning tower lee at the destroyer to get my crew out of the boat safely. I lost consciousness for I don’t know how long, but when I awoke again a lot of my men were on the deck and I made an effort to raise myself and haul myself aft. By the explosion of a shell I was blown from the first antiaircraft deck down onto the main deck; the explosion hit near the starboard machine gun.”[66]

I saw a lot of my men running on the main deck, getting pipe boats (individual life boats) clear. In a conscious moment, I gave notice to the chief that I was still on the main deck. How I got over the side I don’t know exactly, but I suppose by another explosion. Despite my injuries I somehow managed to keep afloat until two members of my group brought me a pipe boat and hoisted me into it; my lifejacket had been punctured by shrapnel and was no good. During all this time I could not see much because in the first seconds of the fight I had been hit in the face and eye with splinters of wood blasted from the deck; my right eyelid was pierced with a splinter. [67]

According to Gallery, the last few men who evacuated the U-505 inflated the rubber lifeboats there were stored on deck and threw them in the water and two of Lange’s men pulled him into a lifeboat.[68] Thus, Lange and fifty-seven of his fifty-eight men survived to become (secret) P.O.W.s.[69]

In his article “404 Days! The War Patrol Life of the German U-505,” Hans Joachim Decker, a U-505 machinist who later became the U-505’s maintenance man at the Museum of Science and Industry, stated, “In the confusion and near-panic that followed as the last of us scrambled up the conning tower ladder to the bridge, no one thought of opening the vents to sink the boat. Some water was coming in all right, and Holdenreid, one of our engineers, tried unsuccessfully to open a sea valve that would have sent U-505 to the bottom post-haste.”[70]

Only one of the Germans made a serious attempt to sink the boat, taking the cap off the sea strainer in the Control Room. Hans Göbeler took credit for this act in his memoir, Steel Boat, Iron Hearts.

Most of us control room mates stayed at our posts to make sure the scuttling order was carried out. We kept looking around for Hauser, our Chief Engineering Officer, because we needed to know if he had set the demolition charges… We quickly learned the Raccoon had already jumped overboard. Wonderful, we thought, he was busy saving his own worthless neck instead of carrying out his final and most important duty aboard our boat…[71]

Unfortunately, for security reasons, only the skipper, the Executive Officer and the Chief Engineering Officer knew how to set the timer for the demolition charges. Since all three of them were already wounded or had evacuated the boat, it was obvious it was going to be up to us enlisted men to devise another plan for scuttling U-505… Engineering Petty Officer Holdenreid assumed control… He ordered us to open up the diving tanks once the rest of the crew was safely overboard. That would give us 30 seconds to get out of the boat before she slipped under the waves.[72]

We waited for the last of the men to evacuate the compartment… The very second they were clear, we tried to open the valves to let water into the tanks. All went well except for forward main diving tanks #6 and #7. Something was preventing the relief valves on those big tanks from opening. We tried again and again to open those damned valves, but with no luck. We even tried to push the controls by hand, but the operating shafts had been bent by the force of the depth charges and wouldn’t budge… We finally gave up and made a dash for the conning tower ladder, hopeful that the holes in the hull would flood the boat with enough water to send her down.[73]

I had already started climbing the ladder to the conning tower when I suddenly remembered the sea strainer located on the desk close to my duty station. The sea strainer is a filter mechanism for the main pump, with a bucket-shaped removable sieve set inside a 12-inch steel housing. Acting on impulse, I ran back and unlocked the four clamps and removed the heavy steel cover of the sea strainer. A dinner plate-sized stream of water started gurgling out of the main pump line into the boat. As the water flowed back toward the stern, I felt this would be enough to sink our beloved U-505.[74]

Then, in a move that I would regret for the rest of my life, I tossed the sea strainer cover down onto the deck plates in the corner of the control room. If I had thrown the strainer cover down into the bilge where no one could reach it, U-505 would have had a very different ending.[75]

After the American sailors witnessed about fifty German submariners get in the waters, Commander Hall ordered the ships to “Cease firing” at 11:26 a.m.[76] All the ships in the task group launched whale boats with boarding parties but Lt. David’s was the first to arrive.[77]

Lieutenant, Junior Grade, Albert Leroy David (1902-1945), U.S.N., of San Diego, California, the Assistant Engineering and Electrical Officer of the Pillsbury, commanded a whale boat the Pillsbury lowered into the water with a boarding party of eight enlisted men, with whom he pulled alongside the runaway U-boat.[78] They leapt aboard, and with tommy guns (Thompson submachine guns) and hand grenades at the ready they stormed down the conning tower hatch, ready to fight German submariners they expected to encounter.[79] Instead, the only German they found aboard the U-505 was a dead man, Gottfried Fisher.[80] [Born in Maryville, Missouri, David enlisted in the U.S. Navy in September of 1919, went through Basic Training at Naval Training Station, San Francisco, California, and received orders to serve aboard the U.S.S. Arkansas. In June of 1921, he re-enlisted and served aboard the U.S.S. Rochester. He subsequently transferred to the U.S.S. Preston, the U.S.S. Delaware, the U.S.S. Utah, and the U.S.S. Texas. In May of 1925, he re-enlisted and subsequently served aboard the U.S.S. Trenton, the U.S.S. Cincinnati, and the U.S.S. Salt Lake City. He re-enlisted in May of 1931 and received orders to serve aboard the U.S.S. Dobbin, where he remained until August of 1939, when the U.S. Navy transferred him to the Fleet Reserve. Within a matter of weeks, he was recalled to active duty in September of 1939 due to the outbreak of the Second Great World war in Europe. In May of 1945, David received a temporary promotion to warrant officer rank of Machinist and orders to the Submarine Repair Unit in San Diego, California. The next month, he was temporarily promoted to Ensign. He underwent diesel engineer’s training at the Naval Training School on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin, after which he received orders to report to the Naval Training Station at the Naval Operating Bae, Norfolk, Virginia. He subsequently received orders to report to Orange, Texas to help fit-out and serve aboard the U.S.S. Pillsbury. In May of 1943, he received a temporary promotion to Lieutenant, Junior Grade.] The U.S. Navy later identified the eight enlisted men whom Lt. David led aboard the U-505: Arthur William Knispel, Torpedoman, Second Class, U.S.N.R., of Newark, New Jersey; Stanley Edward Wdowiak, Radioman, Second Class, U.S.N.R., of Brooklyn, New York City, New York; Chester Anthony Mocarski, Gunner’s Mate, First Class, U.S.N.R., of Brooklyn, New York City, New York; Wayne McVeigh Pickles, Jr., Boatswain’s Mate, Second Class, U.S.N., of San Antonio, Texas; George William Jacobson, Chief Motor Machinist’s Mate, U.S.N.R., of Portland, Oregon; Zenon Benedict Lukosius, Motor Machinist’s Mate, First Class, U.S.N., of Riverdale, Illinois; William Roland Riendeau, Electrician’s Mate, Second Class, of Providence, Rhode Island; and Gordon Fritz Hohne, Signalman, Second Class, U.S.N.R., of Worcester, Massachusetts.[81] The three crewmen of the whaleboat were Philip Norman Trusheim, Coxswain, U.S.N., of Costa Mesa, California; Robert Rosco Jenkins, Motor Machinist Mate, Third Class, U.S.N.R., of Gypsy, West Virginia; and James Ernest Beaver, Jr., Seaman, First Class, U.S.N.R., of Atco, Georgia.[82]

Figure 1 Credit: U.S. Navy, Naval History and Heritage Command and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Caption: Captain Daniel V. Gallery, U.S.N., and Lieutenant Junior Grade Albert David, U.S.N. photographed aboard the U.S.S. Guadalcanal (CVE-60) in June of 1944. Lt. David was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for having led the boarding party that stormed aboard the U-505.

It was Zenon Lukosius (1918-2006) who found the sea strainer cap on a floor plate in the water and darkness and put it back on.[83] If he had not found it and been able to put it back on, the U-505 would have been lost.[84] The U-boat was so low in the water, swells of water that crashed over her washed down the conning tower hatch.[85] Lt. David ordered the man he had left on deck to close the conning tower hatch to keep more seawater from falling into the U-boat, which would have sunk her.[86] At this point the electrical motors continued to work and the sub was still going in circles at a speed of six knots.[87]

Commander Earl Trosino (1906-2002), of Springfield, Pennsylvania, led a larger boarding party from the Guadalcanal that reinforced Lt. David’s.[88] Trosino was the Chief Engineering Officer of the Guadalcanal.[89] Initially, Trosino could not open the conning tower hatch due to a vacuum and he plucked a German submariner from the water who showed him there was a valve that allowed air into the pressure hull, which equalized pressure and enabled Trosino to open the hatch, at which point he put the German submariner back in the water.[90] Trosino spent much time down in the bilges under the floor plates closing valves.[91]

030205-N-0000X-001 Washington Navy Yard (Feb. 5, 2002) — A boarding party from the USS *Pillsbury* (DE 133) works to secure a tow line to the newly captured German U-boat U-505 on June 4, 1944. U.S. Navy photo. (RELEASED)

Figure 2 Credit: Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Caption: A boarding party from the U.S.S. Pillsbury (DE-133) works to secure a tow line to the newly-captured German submarine U-505 on Sunday, Jun 4, 1944. Note the large American flag flying from the U-boat’s periscope. This was one of two periscopes aboard the U-505. The U.S. Navy removed this one and installed it in the Navy’s old Arctic Submarine Laboratory in Point Loma, California. In 2003, the Naval Historical Center transferred it to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where the U-505 had been on display since 1954.

Gunner Burr located thirteen of the fourteen five-pound dynamite charges against the hull while Trosino was closing valves.[92] The fourteenth demolition charge was finally located three weeks later when the U-505 was in Bermuda.[93] The Germans were so certain the U-505 was doomed they had not bothered to set the charges.[94] Captain Gallery, who was an ordinance expert as well as a pilot, disarmed a suspected booby trap in a fuse box above the water-tight hatch of the U-505’s Aft Torpedo Room.[95] While he was busy inside the U-boat, men he had left on deck had painted “Can Do Junior” in red letters on the conning tower.[96]

Initially, the U-505 was to be towed by the Pillsbury, but when the ship pulled alongside the U-boat, the forward dive plane on the U-505’s starboard side tore a hole in the ship’s hull and broke off in the Pillsbury’s engine room.[97] Consequently, the Guadalcanal, towed the U-505 most of the way to Bermuda.[98] To protect Commander Casselman of the Pillsbury against a possible future charge of incompetence by a board of investigation for having failed to account for the dive planes, Gallery wrote, “This is for your files regarding damage done to your ship this cruise. This damage was done executing my orders and I assume responsibility.”[99]

While the U-boat was in transit, F.S. Low, Chief of Staff, Tenth Fleet, wrote a memo dated Tuesday, June 6, 1944 to Commander Tenth Fleet in which he advised that if the U-505 arrived in Bermuda, she should be given a cover name, either “Ark” or “Nemo.”[100] Presumably, this was if the Germans were to intercept transmissions about the U-505, they would not know they were hearing about the U-505. Nemo is Latin for no-one. Captain Nemo was the pseudonym of the character Prince Dakkar, captain of the submarine Nautilus, who appeared in two 19^th Century science fiction novels and one fantasy play written by French author Jules Verne (1828-1905): Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, published in 1870; The Mysterious Island, published in 1874; and Journey Through the Impossible, published in 1882. In the Latin translation of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus (whom the Romans called Ulysses) called himself Nemo when the man-eating cyclops Polyphemus asked him to identify himself. Consequently, after Ulysses got him drunk and blinded him with a stake in the eye, Polyphemus called out to his brothers for help with a shout that Nemo had hurt him, and they responded he should pray.

Commander Earl Trosino (who later became a rear admiral like Captain Gallery) assumed command of the U-505, and figured out how to keep the boat afloat as she was towed to Bermuda with the help of a U-505 submariner of Polish descent who agreed to help, Felix Ewald (sometimes identified as Edward Felix). Coxswain Leon Bednarczyk spoke in Polish to Maschingefreiter (Apprentice Machinist) Felix Ewald, and Captain Gallery later nominated Bednarczyk for a Silver Star for the role he played in saving the U-505 as a Polish interpreter.[101] [According to Frank DeNardo, Signalman, Second Class, he seconded Master of Arms Leon Bednarczyk’s suspicion that one of the German P.O.W.s was a Pole, encouraged Bednarczyk to address the submariner in Polish, and held Bednarczyk’s sidearm while he questioned the man and then escorted him to the wardroom to speak with Captain Gallery.[102] DeNardo further stated that Captain Gallery promised Felix he would receive a good education if he cooperated.[103]] Unlike the others P.O.W.s, Ewald was not formally interrogated by Gallery; Trosino; Commander Johnson, the Executive Officer; and Dr. Monat, the ship’s physician and German translator.[104]

Gallery later noted in a memo dated March 4, 1948 that Ewald told him he was neither a German nor a Nazi, had been conscripted into the Kriegsmarine, and was willing to help the Americans keep the U-505 afloat.[105] Ewald was temporarily kept with the other submariners, who noticed Bednarczyk would visit Ewald and speak with him in Polish even when Bednarczyk was off-duty.[106] The following day, Bednarczyk conveyed Ewald somewhere and when Ewald left, he took his few possessions (American-issued toiletries) with him in a handkerchief.[107] They did not see him again and they could see shortly thereafter that the U-505 was riding higher in the water.[108] Three days after the capture of the U-505, they were told he was dead, which they found suspicious because he had been in good health.[109]

In the 1948 memo to the U.S. State Department, Gallery note, “While the U-505 was being towed to Bermuda, Ewald went aboard the submarine about a dozen times with salvage parties in their efforts to keep the submarine afloat. Without this expert advice and direction from Ewald, I am convinced that the submarine would have sunk.”[110] For the first two days, Trosino spoke with Ewald (via Bednarczyk), but on the third day, Gallery gave Trosino permission to take Ewald and Bednarczyk (as his guard and interpreter) aboard the U-505 after Trosino told Gallery he trusted Ewald “with my life” and assured him Bednarczyk and others would accompany them.[111] Ewald helped trace lines, adjust valves, clear debris, and set up the pumps to work.[112] He wore a U.S. Navy dungaree uniform, bunked with the Americans, and ate with them.[113] When Captain Gallery posed for a picture on the U-505’s conning tower with Commander Trosino and Lieutenant David, and the enlisted members of the boarding party arranged bellow them, Ewald sat front and center with Bednarczyk beside him.[114]

Commander Trosino disconnected the diesel engines from the electric motors in order that the propellers would turn the shafts as the U-boat was under tow.[115] Ensign Fred Middaugh of Los Angeles traced out the U-505’s electric wiring and set the main switches to charge batteries with the result that when the Guadalcanal towed the U-505 at high speed, the electric motors turned over and acted as electric generators that recharged the U-boat’s batteries.[116] Consequently, the salvage parties were able to operate the U-505’s electric machinery and engage her own pumps and air compressors.[117] In Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea, Admiral Gallery related that for Trosino’s accomplishment Gallery had recommended he receive the Navy Cross, but instead when they returned to Norfolk, “All he got was a Legion of Merit.”[118]

Commander Colby George Rucker, who had experience with both submarines and towing operations, was dispatched aboard the U.S.S. Humboldt to join Task Force 22.3.[119] “According to Trosino,” Gallery’s biographers C. Herbert Gilliland and Robert Shenk explained, “the successful work that [Hitler’s U-boat War author] Clay Blair credits to Rucker was already in hand when Rucker arrived, and after Trosino showed Rucker what had been done, Rucker simply agreed, ‘That’s what I would have done,’ and left the ship.”[120]

Figure 3 Credit: Naval Historical Foundation and Naval History and Heritage Command Caption: This is a halftone reproduction of a photograph taken soon after the U-505’s capture on Sunday, June 4, 1944, copied from the U.S.S. Guadalcanal (CVE-60) Memory Log, page 28. U.S. Naval Officers shown on the conning tower are, from right to left, Commander earl Trosino, U.S.N.R.; Captain Daniel V. Gallery, Jr., Commanding Officer of the Guadalcanal; and Lieutenant Junior Grade Albert L. David, U.S.N. Note the American flag flying above the German Navy ensign. The U-505 was the first enemy warship to be captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy since 1815.

Aboard the Guadalcanal, Hans Göbeler later recalled, the German prisoners-of-war showered with seawater to rid them of the diesel fuel that had leaked from the ruptured fuel tanks.[121] The crew was then split in two halves, and his half was imprisoned in “a large cage-like compartment located right below the flight deck. The compartment was adjacent to the carrier’s engine exhausts and the heat radiating on us was truly frightful. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, we each lost 20 or 30 pounds from sweating. One American sailor eventually took pity on us and moved a fan so that it blew cool air toward us. An officer came by and angrily ordered it to be pointed away from us. Once the officer left, though, the good seaman turned the fan back toward us. It just goes to show that there are always some people who remembered that one’s enemy is still a human being.”[122]

As he towed the U-boat to Bermuda, Capt. Gallery spoke with Lt. Lange, whose injuries had warranted his placement in the Guadalcanal’s infirmary.[123] Lange did not believe his boat had been captured until Gallery had a picture of Lange’s family retrieved from the desk in the skipper’s quarters forward of the boat’s control room.[124] At that point, Lange became inconsolable. Gallery wrote, “I tried to cheer him up by pointing out that Germany was losing the war and that a new regime would replace the Nazis. He kept shaking his head and saying, ‘No matter what happens, I will be punished.’”[125]

On the order of Admiral R.E. Ingersoll, U.S.N., Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, the Fleet Tug Abnaki relieved the Guadalcanal.[126] [The Charleston Shipbuilding & Drydock Company laid down the Abnaki (ATF-96) on November 28, 1942 at Charleston, South Carolina. She launched on April 22, 1943. Mrs. James Mayon Jones was the sponsor. The Abnaki was commissioned on November 25, 1943 at Charleston Navy Yard. Lt. Dewey Walley was the Commanding Officer.] The Guadalcanal rendezvoused with the oiler Kennebec, the deep sea tug boat Abnaki, and destroyer escort U.S.S. Durik (DE-6666) on Friday, June 9, 1944 to bring the U-505 the rest of the way to U.S. Naval Operating Base, Bermuda, where it arrived on June 19^th.[127] The Kennebec refueled Task Group 22.3.[128] The aforementioned Commander C.G. Rucker, a qualified submarine commander, arrived from Casablanca via the Humboldt, on June 7^th to inspect the U-505 and give advice to salvage parties about lightening the U-boat, pumping her bilges, and blowing her ballast tanks.[129] Captain Gallery reported that by the evening of June 8^th, the U-505 “was at fully surfaced trim.”[130] He dispatched the Jenks to Bermuda at 9:32 a.m. on Friday, June 9, 1944 “with 10 sacks of officer messenger mail and the submarine’s coding machines.”[131]

Frank DeNardo later recounted that he assisted Max Allen, the sail maker aboard the Guadalcanal, make a German Man of war Flag that American sailors flew under the American Flag to signal she was a captured enemy vessel.[132] The salvage parties had been unable to locate the real German flag, hence the substitution.[133] Many years later, at the reunion in Denver, Allen told DeNardo after the real German flag was finally recovered, it ended up in the U.S. Naval Academy, while the substitute flag Allen and DeNardo had made ended up at the Smithsonian Institution.[134]

When Captain Gallery told his 300 (mostly young) men they could not speak about the capture of the U-505, he also ordered his men to surrender any souvenirs they had taken off the U-505 to the Executive Officer.[135] [Note that Hans Göbeler reported the day Task Group 22.3 captured the U-505, an American sailor stole his Saint Christopher medal to keep as a souvenir.[136]] Soon, the latter’s office was full of lugers, cameras, flashlights, officers’ caps, German cigarettes, and the like.[137] Everything was carefully labeled before it was shipped off to the Office of Naval Intelligence.[138] Gallery promised his men they would get the stuff back when the war was over. He later commented, “Most of us, including me, were naïve enough to believe this! But nobody ever saw their souvenirs again. After peace broke out the Washington bureaucrats absconded with them.”[139]

According to Dr. Edward Harris, Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum, on the evening of Monday, June 19, 1944, at a dinner party held at the Colonial Secretary’s residence, the Governor of Bermuda pressed the commandant of the U.S. Naval Operating Base to pay wharfage fees for his ships to the corporations (incorporated governments) of St. George’s and Hamilton, arguing the towns were not bound by agreements made by the British Home Government or the central government of Bermuda.[140] The commandant told the governor no such payments would be forthcoming.[141] One of the repairs the U-505 underwent in Bermuda was the replacement of the starboard side forward dive plane.[142]

It was only when U.S. Navy Task Group 22.3 captured the U-505 that the Allies obtained a copy of the Chart-Cipher Addressbuch (Address Book).[143] The BdU and U-boats used the Chart-Cipher Address Book to disguise grid positions in radio transmissions.[144] [In 1939, Admiral Karl Dönitz’s title changed to Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (Commander of the Submarines), or BdU for short.[145] This abbreviation, BdU, was used for both his title and office.[146]] Copies of this book were published on saltwater-soluble paper, so if the U-505 had been properly scuttled, her copy would have been destroyed.[147]

On Monday, May 7, 1945, the War in Europe ended, and on Wednesday, May 16, 1945, the U.S. Government revealed that the U-505 had been captured.[148] Captain Gallery stated, “I consider this capture to be proof for posterity of the versatility and courage of the present day American sailor. All ships in this task group were less than a year old and 80 percent of the officers and men were serving in their first seagoing ship. All hands did their stuff like veteran sea dogs, and airplane mechanics became submarine experts in a hurry, when the chips were down. I’m sure John Paul Jones and his men were proud of these lads and of the day’s work when the U.S. colors went up on the U-505.”[149]

Admiral R.E. Ingersoll, U.S.N., Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, cited the Task Group as follows: “For outstanding performance during anti-submarine operations in the eastern Atlantic on June 4, 1944, when the Task Group attacked, boarded and captured the German Submarine U-505.”[150]

“Setting out on an anti-submarine sweep with the stated purpose of capturing and bringing back to the United States a German submarine, all units of the Task Group worked incessantly throughout the cruise to prepare themselves for the accomplishment of this exceedingly difficult purpose. Locating a single U-boat after a long period of fruitless searches, the entire Task Group participated in further intensive search and hold down operations which terminated in the sighting of the submerged submarine by an airplane. An extremely accurate initial depth charge attack by the USS CHATELAIN forced the U-boat to the surface where it was subjected to the combined automatic weapons fire of three destroyer escorts and two aircraft. This anti-personnel attack completely achieved its pre-conceived objective in forcing the entire enemy crew to abandon ship while inflicting relatively minor material damage on the submarine.[151]

Completely unmindful of the dangers involved all units of the Task Group then proceeded to carry out their assigned duties in accomplishing the actual capture. The USS PILLSBURY, badly damaged in a series of attempts to go alongside the erratically maneuvering submarine in order to transfer a mass boarding and repair party, was forced to withdraw and to transfer necessary personnel by small boat. Undeterred by the apparent sinking condition of the U-boat, the danger of explosions of demolition and scuttling charges, and the probability of enemy gunfire, the small boarding party plunged through the conning tower hatch, did everything in its power to keep the submarine afloat and removed valuable papers and documents. Succeeding, and more fully equipped, salvage parties, faced with dangers similar to those which confronted the first group to enter the submarine, performed seemingly impossible tasks in keeping the U-boat afloat until it could be taken in tow by the USS GUADALCANAL. After three days of ceaseless labor the captured U-boat was seaworthy and able to withstand, with constant care, the vigors of a twenty-four hundred mile tow to its destination.[152]

The Task Group’s brilliant achievement in disabling, capturing, and towing to a United States base a modern enemy man-of-war taken in combat on the high seas is a feat unprecedented in individual and group bravery, execution, and accomplishment in the Naval History of the United States.”[153]

Admiral Ingersoll awarded Lt. David with a Navy Cross and Capt. Gallery a Distinguished Service Medal.[154] The announcement was made by Admiral Jonas Ingram, Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, according to a telegram of the period.[155]

Figure 4 Credit: Courtesy of the U.S. Navy and the Institutional Archives, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: We can tell we are looking at the U-505 moving under her own power after she had been captured by the U.S. Navy in this picture because she is identified as the U-505 on her conning tower in a way she would not have been whilst in the service of the Kriegsmarine.

Having spent eleven months undetected in the Great Sound, on May 20, 1945, the U-505/U.S.S. Nemo departed Bermuda for the Philadelphia Navy Yard,[156] where she would be used to promote the sale of war bonds while the U.S. was still at war with the Japanese Empire. Later, the U-505/USS Nemo would travel from Philadelphia to New York City for the same purpose. The U-505/USS Nemo was inspected again while at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The U.S. Navy tentatively identified the armor protecting the bridge up on the conning tower as 14mm (.55”) thick Wsho/Mo steel.

In June of 1944, Albert David received a promotion from Lieutenant, Junior Grade, to Lieutenant. President Harry S. Truman awarded Lieutenant Albert Love David the Medal of Honor, but it was not conferred before Lt. David’s death at Norfolk, Virginia, on September 17, 1945, so it became a posthumous award. He is buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery at San Diego. Vice Admiral A.S. Carlton presented it to Lt. David’s widow, Lynda Mae David, at Ross Auditorium of the Great Lakes Naval Air Station.[157] According to the Naval Historical Center, President Harry S. Truman presented it to her in a ceremony at the White House on October 5, 1945.[158]

The citation reads, “For extraordinary heroism, distinguished service, and devotion above and beyond the call of duty while attached to the U.S.S. Pillsbury during the capture of an enemy German submarine off French West Africa, 4 June, 1944. Taking a vigorous part in the skillfully coordinated attack on the German U-505 which climaxed a prolonged search by the Task Group, Lieutenant (then, Lieutenant Junior Grade,) David boldly led a party from the Pillsbury in boarding the hostile submarine as it circled erratically at 5 or 6 knots on the surface. Fully aware that the U-boat might momentarily sink or blow up by exploding demolition and scuttling charges, he braved the added danger of enemy gunfire to plunge through the conning tower hatch and, with his small party, exerted every effort to keep the ship afloat and to assist the succeeding and more fully equipped salvage parties in making the U-505 seaworthy for the long tow across the Atlantic to a United States port. By his valiant service during the first successful boarding and capture of an enemy man-o-war on the high seas by the United States Navy since 1815, Lieutenant David contributed materially to the effectiveness of our Battle of the Atlantic and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

Years later, when he wrote Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea, Read Admiral Daniel V. Gallery ended up defending the reputation of the officers and crewmen of the U-505 against allegations they had surrendered at sea. He also blamed the U-505’s capture on the suicide of Lange’s predecessor, Peter Zschech.[159] “I am told that various false stories have circulated in Germany that the U-505 surrendered. She did not surrender any more than several hundred other German subs that did the same thing surrendered. If there is any discrimination against her crew in Germany now, it is wrong. In my opinion, the man responsible for her capture was Cszhech. That crew should have been broken up and spread among a dozen U-boats as soon as she came in from the cruise on which Cszhech ratted on his men by committing suicide. Lange inherited an impossible situation. He and his men, like most other U-boat sailors, were conscientious men who did their duty, were worthy opponents who almost beat us in a fair fight, and should be treated as such now.”[160]

Lt. David’s niece, Marian Stoflet later donated a pair of binoculars Lt. David had seized off the U-505 (and managed to hide from Captain Gallery) to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. In 1949, Father John Ireland Gallery, then pastor of St. Cecelia’s Parish Church, which was located at 4515 South Wells Street in Chicago,[161] donated a copy of the 30”-16mm film about the U-505’s capture, Away Borders![162]

In the “Foreword” to Hunt and Kill, one of the most famous U-boat commanders of World War II, Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Erich Topp (1914-2005) stated,[163] “U-505 was found by what was called a Hunter-Killer group. If aircraft or escorts from one found you, there was almost no chance of escape. Under the influence of depth charges, U-505 was heavily damaged and forced to surface. The commanding officer, Oberleutnant zur See Harald Lange, tried to defend his boat with available machine guns against overwhelming odds, bravely I might add, but was hurt severely when struck by a bullet in the knee. His brain was still working, but as I understand the case to be, he did not give orders to sink the boat by activating the prepared explosives, as has been the tradition among submariners. It was his duty no matter the circumstances, and in this he failed. The crew, of course, did what they could to survive. They left the boat probably thinking it was set to sink but somehow no one eliminated the coding and enciphering machines and enigma. The result was the Americans captured U-505 and learned valuable information but it did not, I must say, at that late date in the war change fundamentally their war effort. From our perspective it would have been considered a shocking thing, but of course at the time we knew nothing about this activity and Allied success.”[164]

Professor Eric C. Rust countered, in the “Introduction” to Hunt and Kill, “An argument can be made, as my good friend Admiral Topp reminds us in his Forward to this work, that the capture of U-505, its crew and all its contents came too late to make a real difference in the Battle of the Atlantic. Fair enough. But war is also about symbols, heroes, and yes, trophies. And here the ultimate significance of U-505’s journey comes together for us alive today, from its encounter with Task Group 22.3 off the littoral of Africa, to its lay-over in Bermuda, its long and almost lethal sojourn at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to its final and present-day display off the shores of Lake Michigan in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois. There was nothing in the stars that destined this boat, built proudly and efficiently by the Deutsche Werft in Hamburg in 1941, to end its life as a tourist attraction and curiosity for school children and history enthusiasts in the heartland of its former enemy. By the same token, every indication suggests the Allies earned their triumph fair and square, and they continue to enjoy every right to savor a victory celebrating that eternal and inimitable recipe for victory: brains and grit.”[165]

Figure 5 Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: Captain Daniel V. Gallery commanded Task Group 22.3, which captured the U-505 on Sunday, June 4, 1944. Years later, Admiral Gallery wrote Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea: The Daring Capture of the U-505. In that book, he managed to relate not only how he and his men captured the U-505, but also the service history of the U-505 until that point, as well as how and why the U-505 ended up at the Museum of Science and Industry. Admiral Dan Gallery: The Life and Wit of a Navy Original by C. Herbert Gilliland and Robert Shenk is a biography that reveals things Admiral Gallery was not at liberty to explain, such as the fate of Ewald Felix.

In October of 1968, the Museum of Science and Industry issued a press release announcing a destroyer escort just commissioned into the U.S. Navy at the Bremerton Navy Yard had been named the U.S.S. Albert David (DE-1050).[166] The Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company laid down the Albert David on Tuesday, April 28, 1964. She launched on Saturday, December 19, 1964. Mrs. Lynda Mae David was the sponsor. The Albert David was commissioned at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on Saturday, October 19, 1968. Commander Roy S. Reynolds was the Commanding Officer. The Albert David earned three battle stars during the war with North Vietnam.

Credit: Documentary Tube Caption: This documentary about the capture of the U-505, which seems to have been made by the U.S. Navy, uses footage taken by Task Group 22.3.

Credit: Real Military Flix Caption: This is some of the raw color footage used to make the above documentary.

ENDNOTES

[1] Navy Department, Press Release, May 16, 1945, p. 1

See also Daniel V. Gallery, Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea: The Daring Capture of the U-505. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press (1956, 2001), p. 294

[2] Navy Department, Press Release, May 16, 1945, p. 1

[3] “U-Boat!” Dravo Review, Winter, 1956, p. 10

[4] Navy Department, Press Release, May 16, 1945, p. 1

[5] Navy Department, Press Release, May 16, 1945, p. 1

[6] Navy Department, Press Release, May 16, 1945, p. 1

[7] Navy Department, Press Release, May 16, 1945, p. 1

[8] Navy Department, Press Release, May 16, 1945, p. 1

[9] Gallery, p. 292

[10] “Capture of German Submarine U-505,” report from Commander Task Group 22.3 to Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, CVE60/A16-3, p. 1

[11] Ibid

[12] Mark E. Wise and Jak P. Mallmann Showell, “Deciphering the U-boat War: The Role of Intelligence in the Capture of U-505.” Hunt and Kill: U-505 and the U-boat War in the Atlantic. Edited by Theodore P. Savas. New York City, New York: Savas Beatie (2004), pages 91 and 92

[13] Wise and Showell, pages 92-94

[14] Wise and Showell, pages 93 and 94

[15] Wise and Showell, p. 94

[16] Wise and Showell, p. 94

[17] Wise and Showell, p. 95

[18] Wise and Showell, p. 95

[19] Wise and Showell, p. 95

[20] Wise and Showell, p. 95

[21] Wise and Showell, p. 95

[22] Wise and Showell, p. 94

[23] Wise and Showell, p. 112

[24] Eric C. Rust, “Introduction.” Hunt and Kill: U-505 and the U-boat War in the Atlantic. Edited by Theodore P. Savas. New York City, New York: Savas Beatie (2004), p. xxi

[25] Navy Department, Press Release, May 16, 1945, p. 1