39 Days After the Capture, Berlin Was Still Calling U-505

On the evening of 3 June 1944 an American carrier printed a crew list for a captured submarine. Nobody had found one yet. By late the next morning, U-505 was theirs, and it had to stay secret until the war in Europe was over. On 4 June 1944, two days before D-Day, Task Group 22.3, the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal under Capt. Daniel V. Gallery and five destroyer escorts, found U-505 about 150 miles off Cape Blanco, West Africa. About 13 minutes after the first sonar contact, USS Chatelain's depth charges forced the boat up. Nine men from USS Pillsbury under Lt (jg) Albert L. David jumped onto the abandoned, still circling submarine, pulled the wires off the scuttling charges and found seawater pouring through an open strainer: the first boarding and capture of an enemy warship at sea by the U.S. Navy since 1815. The film follows the torpedo Gallery left out of his report, the tow to Bermuda, the 58 prisoners kept apart at Camp Ruston, Louisiana, and Berlin's signal of 13 July: REPORT POSITION IMMEDIATELY. The Navy revealed the capture on 16 May 1945. Photos of other Type IX boats (U-124, U-107, U-123, U-159, U-530) show the type, not U-505; the U-515 photos show her sinking in April 1944. The U-505 cutaway is a schematic. Photos from 1945, 1954 and later postdate the capture. In this film: Capt. Daniel V. Gallery Jr. · Lt (jg) Albert L. David · Zenon B. Lukosius · Cdr. Earl Trosino · Lt Cdr Dudley S. Knox · Oberleutnant zur See Harald Lange · Kapitänleutnant Peter Zschech · Task Group 22.3 · U-505 · USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60) · USS Pillsbury (DE-133) · USS Chatelain (DE-149) · Cape Blanco (Cape Blanc), West Africa · Bermuda · Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago CHAPTERS 0:00 A prize crew for a submarine nobody had found 3:39 The unluckiest boat in the fleet 7:55 The captain who bet his fuel 10:23 Thirteen minutes 15:11 Down the hatch 20:03 The torpedo that is not in the report 22:59 Fifty feet from the torpedo tubes 26:20 Keep your mouth shut 31:58 The medal that came too late 34:17 The U-boat that never went home LINKS TG 22.3 report on the capture (uboatarchive.net) https://uboatarchive.net/U-505A/U-505... Defeating the Sharks (NHHC) https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-b... SOURCES Capture of German Submarine U-505 (CTG 22.3 report, serial 0021) — Capt. D. V. Gallery, Commander Task Group 22.3 (June 1944) USS Chatelain report "Capture of U-505", with Knox–Gallery letters — Lt. Cdr. Dudley S. Knox; D. V. Gallery (1944; 1953) USS Pillsbury Contact and Action Report — Lt. Cdr. George W. Cassleman (8 June 1944) Statement of Commanding Officer of U-505 — Oblt.z.S. Harald Lange (June 1944) War Diary (KTB) of U-505, 25 Dec 1943 – 4 Jun 1944, translated — Harald Lange; OP-20-GI-A (1944) U-505 message traffic (Ultra decrypts, translated) — OP-20-G / U.S. Navy Albert Leroy David, Medal of Honor citation — Congressional Medal of Honor Society Defeating the Sharks: The Capture of U-505 — Naval History and Heritage Command (2019) U-505 — uboat.net (Guðmundur Helgason) CREDITS U.S. Navy, public domain (NARA, NHHC, uboatarchive.net): 80-G-49167, 49168, 49170, 49172, 49176, 49177, 324310, 324313, 324336, 324344, 324351, 227192, 227198, 228417, 266487 (F.B. Larrick), 269035 (N.H. Seehafer), 281810, 383897 · 19-N-72394 · L45-82.05.01 · UA 466.01 · NH 106567, 86271, 10585, 105854 · USS Guadalcanal cruise book Public domain: U.S. Army (Bermuda) · U.S. Army Map Service (Lorient & Keroman) · U.S. Office of War Information · NARA poster "Loose lips might sink ships" · NARA 26432939, Harris & Ewing (the medal type, not David's) · NARA 428-NPC-5637 · Burlington Route, Newberry Library NBY 3433 · MSI souvenir booklet · Australian armed forces · Argentine photo, author unknown Bundesarchiv, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, some cropped: Bild 101II-MW-3936-06A, -4222-01A (Dietrich) · -3956-05A, -4386-01 (Meisinger) · -4006-19 (Tölle) · -4260-37 (Kramer) · Bild 146-1981-010-31 Via Wikimedia Commons / Flickr, some cropped: ArnoldReinhold, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Daderot, CC BY-SA 4.0 and CC0 · Paul R. Burley, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Raymond Tambunan, CC BY-SA 3.0 · victorgrigas, crop by Georgfotoart, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Aaron M Kerr, CC BY 2.0 · aaronx, CC BY 2.0 · estate-sale slide, CC0 · maps: Uwe Dedering, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Eric Gaba and NordNordWest, CC BY 3.0 Documents set in the film's layout from U.S. Navy records: Plan of the Day, TG 22.3 report, Lange's statement, OP-20-G decrypts, 1945 press release Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... — tracks: "Aftermath", "Clean Soul", "Deep Haze", "Dreamer", "Lightless Dawn", "Long Note Four", "Long Note One", "Long Note Three", "Long Note Two", "Ossuary 6 - Air", "Unanswered Questions" #U505 #WorldWar2 #NavalHistory