82 years ago today, eight American sailors jumped onto a sinking Nazi submarine in the middle of the Atlantic.

What they pulled out of it changed the war. And the Navy buried the whole story for years.

First, you need to know that U-505 was already cursed. German sailors called her the unluckiest boat in the fleet. In October 1943, during a brutal British depth-charge attack, her own captain shot himself in the head in the control room, in front of his crew. He remains the only submarine commander in history known to have killed himself underwater in combat. His second-in-command calmly took over, rode out the attack, and sailed her home.

Eight months later, her luck ran out completely.

June 4, 1944. Two days before D-Day. Captain Daniel Gallery's hunter-killer group, built around the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal, had been stalking U-boats off West Africa. Gallery had an idea his superiors considered borderline insane: don't sink the next one. Capture it. No US Navy crew had boarded and taken an enemy warship on the high seas since 1815.

The destroyer escort USS Chatelain caught U-505 on sonar and fired a salvo of hedgehog bombs. The U-boat broke the surface 700 yards away. Gunfire raked the conning tower, wounding her captain. He gave the order to abandon ship.

The Germans rushed out so fast they botched the scuttling. The sub was flooding, but her engines were still running. She was circling the battle at six knots, empty, sinking, and very possibly rigged with demolition charges.

So Lt. Albert David and eight men from USS Pillsbury chased her down in a whaleboat, leaped aboard, and climbed down the hatch into a dark, flooding submarine that could explode or go under at any second. They shut the scuttling valves, disarmed the charges, and stopped the flooding.

Down there they found the prize: Enigma cipher machines and roughly 900 pounds of codebooks and charts. Current settings. The keys to the German navy's secret communications.

But here's the catch. The treasure was only valuable if Germany never found out. One leak and Berlin changes every code overnight.

So the Navy ran one of the great cover-ups of the war. The sub was towed 1,700 miles to Bermuda and given a fake American name: USS Nemo. Around 3,000 sailors were sworn to total silence. The 58 captured German crewmen vanished into a POW camp in rural Louisiana, hidden even from the Red Cross. Germany declared U-505 lost with all hands and notified the families. The dead men were alive in Louisiana, and their boat was working for the US Navy.

The secret held until the war ended.

Lt. David received the Medal of Honor, the only one awarded in the Atlantic Fleet in all of WWII.

And the submarine? In 1954, Chicagoans raised $250,000 to bring her home. She was towed across Lake Michigan and dragged through the streets of Chicago to the Museum of Science and Industry.

She's still sitting there right now. You can walk through her.



https://x.com/HiddenHistoryYT/.../2062751923040862673

The U-505 was always a highlight of my childhood visits to the Museum of Science and Industry. Seemed small, even by my juvenile standards.

What a great story, would make a great movie too. I see there is a documentary "Attack and Capture: The Story of U-Boat 505 from 2002" May have to watch it

If I am ever unfortunate enough to be in Chicago I will visit it

quote:

Originally posted by DrDan:
The U-505 was always a highlight of my childhood visits to the Museum of Science and Industry. Seemed small, even by my juvenile standards.

+1

It is the crown piece at the Museum of Science and Industry! For years it was outside behind the museum and subject to the weather and began to fall apart. The Museum finally figured out what a treasure it had and built an underground display auditorium for it, cleaned it up beautifully, and even brought in German engineers who brought the engines back to life! It was always a major highlight for us to visit and tour! If you have any interest in this sort of thing and are in Chicago, put it on your 'to do' list!

^^^ The way it's situated in the museum is spectacular. It's hidden until you round the corner and then all of a sudden it hits you! Majestic!

I remember pictures in the Chicago papers of the U-505 being dragged across Lake Shore Drive, I think using logs as rollers. Took quite a while, but it was done, and the boat was parked outside the Museum of Science and Industry for many years, accessible by tourists through a passageway cut in its hull. I was one of the earliest to visit, when I was around 6 years old, but I still remember details, like how deteriorated the rubber hatch seals were, and how cramped it was inside. I don't think the conning tower was accessible for the tours.

Another submarine, the USS Silversides, was harbored in Chicago, also accessible to tours, later moved to Michigan for restoration. I toured it as a Cub Scout, and vaguely remember the USS Nautilus (nuclear one, not the WWII boat) moored next to it.

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by DrDan:
The U-505 was always a highlight of my childhood visits to the Museum of Science and Industry. Seemed small, even by my juvenile standards.


+1

+2

My first submarine model I made was of the
U-505.

Took the grandsons for a tour of the Cod in cleveland years ago. Amazing they could function in such close quarters. Im not claustrophobic, but think i would have my limits.

In the early 60s I was in that boat taking a tour of it
I have never forgotten that tour and the rest of that trip

Drake Hotel
Museum
First Lobster
First Plane flight
I was 8 years old

I toured this boat in my childhood and again about 15 years ago. I am a navy vet and can't imagine serving aboard something this small and cramped. The DLG(N) I was aboard was small enough.
Mike

+++ to all who toured her and yes, so cramped and tiny but what a thing to experience as a kid.

Brave search indicates "The U-505 had a standard complement of 48 crewmen, though this number increased to 56–59 during its final patrol. At the time of its capture by the US Navy on June 4, 1944, there were 59 men on board; one was killed during the initial attack, and the remaining 58 were taken prisoner."

We went through it when it was outside, probably close to 50 years ago. Still remember how cramped it was, I'm not all that wide and had to angle slightly sideways to walk through the engine room.

I remember back in the 1950's going on grade school field trips and visiting the Museum of Science and Industry.
I always enjoyed this Chicago museum more than all the others. The highlight was the Submarine and all the artifacts that were displayed around the sub. The weapons were my favorite behind the Sub itself.

I remember the total silence everybody had when touring the inside of the Sub.I have not visited the Sub since those years and wonder if the reverence/silence is still displayed as people pass through it.
I contributed the reverence as respect. Most everybody I knew parents had fought in WW2 and had heard there parents tales of the War.This instilled respect I thought from all who passed through her.

U-505 and the Pioneer Zephyr, the first streamliner, are two of my childhood memories from the Museum of Science and Industry.

U-505 was amazingly cramped inside. Two sailors meeting would struggle to pass each other.

The Pioneer Zephyr was a radical advance for passenger trains.

I took the kids to see it last time we were in Chicago based on you guys great suggestion. Its a highlight even now amongst the things we've seen.

One of my favorite Fat Electrician videos or "lessons."



Although I will admit when I heard "unluckest u-boat," my brain started at this one:



I will never forget the phrase, "Never German Engineer Your Way Out Of Common Sense."

Visited the sub as a child during my one and only visit to relatives in Chicago.

If I’m not mistaken, the capture of U-505 was loosely mirrored in Stephenson’s excellent Cryptonomicon (the fictional U-553) during which Bobby Shaftoe recovered an Enigma machine and code book from the grounded and sinking sub.