- 2 days ago
In June 1944, American sailors did something they had not attempted in 129 years — they captured a German U-boat at sea. Led by Lieutenant Albert David and Captain Daniel Gallery, a small boarding party risked drowning inside a sinking submarine to seize its secrets. What they found inside helped shift the Battle of the Atlantic at a critical moment before D-Day.
When U-505 surfaced crippled in the Atlantic, U.S. Navy doctrine said to sink her immediately. Instead, eight men climbed aboard a vessel rigged to flood and explode. Inside were Enigma cipher machines, current codebooks, patrol charts, and advanced acoustic torpedoes.
The capture remained secret for nearly a year. Germany never learned its naval codes had been compromised. Convoys were rerouted. Countermeasures were developed. Supply lines stayed open as Allied armies landed in Normandy.
Today, U-505 survives in Chicago — the only enemy warship captured at sea by the United States Navy since 1815.
When U-505 surfaced crippled in the Atlantic, U.S. Navy doctrine said to sink her immediately. Instead, eight men climbed aboard a vessel rigged to flood and explode. Inside were Enigma cipher machines, current codebooks, patrol charts, and advanced acoustic torpedoes.
The capture remained secret for nearly a year. Germany never learned its naval codes had been compromised. Convoys were rerouted. Countermeasures were developed. Supply lines stayed open as Allied armies landed in Normandy.
Today, U-505 survives in Chicago — the only enemy warship captured at sea by the United States Navy since 1815.
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LearningTranscript
00:00Water was already rising past his boots.
00:02Lieutenant Albert David dropped through the conning tower hatch into darkness,
00:06lit only by red emergency lamps.
00:08The submarine lurched beneath him,
00:11steel groaning as it circled helplessly in the Atlantic swell.
00:15Somewhere below, seawater rushed through open valves.
00:18Pipes hissed, metal clanged, the deck tilted under his feet.
00:22The Germans had done their job well.
00:24Before abandoning ship, they had opened the sea valves
00:27and set demolition charges throughout the hull.
00:30The submarine was supposed to sink.
00:32It was supposed to take its secrets to the bottom of the ocean.
00:35David had never been inside a German U-boat before.
00:38No American sailor had, not in living memory.
00:41He did not know the layout.
00:43He did not know where the charges were placed.
00:45He did not know how much time remained.
00:47He only knew one thing.
00:49If this boat went down, he and his men would go down with it.
00:53And if they somehow managed to save it,
00:55what they might find inside could change.
00:58The war.
00:59Above him, the Atlantic rolled gray and indifferent.
01:03Around him, a captured enemy submarine was dying.
01:06And for the first time in 129 years,
01:09the United States Navy was about to attempt something
01:12it had forgotten how to do.
01:14Capture it alive.
01:16Two months earlier, the Navy had done what it always did.
01:20On April 9th, 1944, a German submarine, U-515,
01:26surfaced under relentless depth charge attack in the mid-Atlantic.
01:30For hours, American destroyer escorts had pounded her from below.
01:34When she finally broke the surface, crippled and smoking,
01:38the response was immediate and automatic.
01:40Open fire.
01:41Machine guns raked the conning tower.
01:44Shells slammed into steel.
01:46Aircraft strafed the deck.
01:47Within minutes, the submarine slid backward into the ocean and vanished.
01:5244 German sailors were pulled from the water.
01:54It was a textbook success.
01:56For 10 months, Lieutenant Commander George Castleman of USS Pillsbury
02:00had hunted submarines across the Atlantic.
02:03Dozens of attacks.
02:04Countless sonar contacts.
02:07Zero captures.
02:08That was not a failure.
02:10It was doctrine.
02:12American destroyer escorts were not built to seize enemy vessels.
02:15They were built to find them and kill them before torpedoes found them first.
02:20Every second a submarine remained afloat was another second it could strike.
02:25Sink it.
02:26Move on.
02:27But Captain Daniel Gallery, commanding the escort carrier,
02:31USS Guadalcanal, and the entire hunter-killer group,
02:34watched U-515 differently.
02:37For nearly 10 minutes, the submarine had floated on the surface before slipping under.
02:4210 full minutes.
02:44In that time, Gallery realized something unsettling.
02:48They had destroyed the enemy exactly as they had been trained to do.
02:51But what if destruction wasn't always the victory?
02:54Inside a German U-boat were code books, cipher machines, patrol charts, torpedo designs,
03:01intelligence that Allied cryptographers had been trying to piece together for years at
03:05enormous cost.
03:06And yet no one in the United States Navy had seriously considered boarding a submarine at
03:12sea.
03:13The last time American sailors had captured an enemy warship on the open ocean was in 1815.
03:19The War of 1812.
03:22A different navy.
03:24A different century.
03:25There were no procedures for such a thing.
03:27No manuals.
03:28No drills.
03:29No precedent.
03:30Just a simple, brutal reality.
03:33German submarine crews were trained to scuttle their boats within minutes,
03:36open the sea valves, set demolition charges, destroy the code books,
03:41let the Atlantic erase everything.
03:43Gallery understood the risks.
03:45A boarding party would be stepping onto a sinking vessel rigged to explode,
03:49a steel coffin filling with water.
03:52But he also understood something else.
03:54If even one submarine could be taken intact, the intelligence inside might save thousands of
04:01lives.
04:01So instead of accepting the next sinking as inevitable, he decided the navy would try something
04:07it had not attempted in 129 years.
04:11They would try to bring one back alive.
04:13When Task Group 22.3 returned to Norfolk in late April,
04:17nothing about the harbor suggested that naval history was about to bend.
04:21The official orders for the next patrol still read the same.
04:25Anti-submarine operations.
04:27Hunt.
04:28Detect.
04:29Destroy.
04:30But quietly, without announcement, Captain Gallery gave a different instruction to every destroyer
04:35escort under his command.
04:37Form a boarding party.
04:38On USS Pillsbury, Lieutenant Commander George Castleman selected eight men.
04:44He chose them carefully.
04:46Not the strongest, but the calmest.
04:48Not the loudest, but the most precise.
04:51The officer placed in charge was Lieutenant Junior Grade Albert David.
04:56David was 41 years old.
04:58He had spent 25 years in the navy, beginning as an enlisted sailor and working his way up.
05:03He was the ship's assistant engineering officer, a man who understood valves, pumps, piping systems,
05:09and the anatomy of steel hulls.
05:11If anyone was going to keep a sinking submarine alive, it would have to be someone like him.
05:16There was just one problem.
05:18No one knew how.
05:20There were no American manuals on boarding enemy submarines.
05:23No diagrams beyond grainy intelligence photographs.
05:26No practice hulls.
05:28No instructors.
05:29The navy had spent decades perfecting the art of sinking submarines, not saving them.
05:35David and his men began training on the fantail of Pillsbury as the ship sailed south toward
05:41the Cape Verde Islands.
05:42They practiced lowering a whale boat in seconds.
05:45They rehearsed climbing onto slick railings while the ship was underway.
05:48They memorized the layout of a German Type 9 submarine from reconnaissance sketches.
05:54Control room forward, engine rooms aft, torpedo compartments at either end.
05:59But memorizing a diagram was one thing.
06:02Boarding a wounded submarine circling at five knots in open ocean was another.
06:06They studied German scuttling procedures.
06:09The moment a U-boat surfaced under attack, the captain would order demolition charges armed.
06:14Explosives were placed throughout the hull, in engine spaces, control compartments, torpedo, rooms.
06:22Sea valves would be opened to flood the boat from within.
06:25Codebooks would be destroyed first.
06:27The process could take less than four minutes.
06:31David calculated what that meant.
06:33From the instant the submarine broke the surface, his team would have perhaps three to five minutes to reach it,
06:39climb aboard, enter an unfamiliar interior, locate explosives in near darkness, and close whatever valves were flooding the ship.
06:47Thirty seconds too slow, and the ocean would finish the job.
06:51And there was no guarantee the Germans would be gone.
06:54Some might still be aboard.
06:56Armed, desperate, willing to fight to keep their secrets from capture.
07:00Every day the boarding party drilled.
07:03They carried wrenches, flashlights, and side arms.
07:06That was all the equipment available.
07:07No specialized tools, no protective gear, no bomb disposal suits.
07:13Just training and nerve.
07:15Around them, the Atlantic patrol continued as usual.
07:19Aircraft launched from Guadalcanal.
07:21Sonar operators scanned the depths.
07:24Depth.
07:24Charges stood ready in their racks.
07:27Most of the crew assumed the boarding exercises were theoretical.
07:30An interesting idea.
07:32Unlikely to ever be tested.
07:34Even some of the officers doubted it would work.
07:36German submarines did not surrender intact.
07:39They sank.
07:41And if the opportunity ever came, it would not arrive gently or conveniently.
07:46It would come in chaos.
07:47And they would have only minutes to decide whether history would repeat itself.
07:51Or change.
07:53June 4th, 1944.
07:56The Atlantic was calm enough to be deceptive.
08:00Task Group 22.3 was steaming west of Africa, preparing to turn north toward Casablanca for refueling.
08:07The patrol had been long and uneventful.
08:09Days of empty ocean.
08:11False contacts.
08:12Routine flights.
08:14At 11.09 in the morning, the routine broke.
08:17A sonar operator aboard USS Shatlin leaned closer to his headphones.
08:22Contact.
08:23Bearing 045.
08:25Range 800 yards.
08:27The submarine was moving.
08:29Fast.
08:30And it was heading directly toward the escort.
08:32Carrier.
08:33Guadalcanal.
08:34Within seconds, Shatlin turned hard to starboard and accelerated.
08:39Klaxons sounded.
08:40Men ran to battle stations.
08:42On the carrier's deck, two FM-2 Wildcat fighters were already warming their engines.
08:47They roared into the sky and banked sharply toward the reported bearing.
08:51Beneath the surface, the German submarine, U-505, was running submerged, unaware that she had been detected.
08:59At 11.16, Shatlin dropped her first pattern of depth charges.
09:03The Atlantic erupted.
09:05Columns of white water shot skyward.
09:07The concussions rolled outward in violent shockwaves.
09:10Oil began bubbling to the surface.
09:12The submarine had been hit.
09:14For six and a half minutes, the escorts pressed the attack.
09:18Depth charges thundered into the sea.
09:20The Wildcats strafed the waterline to mark the submarine's position.
09:24Inside U-505, the damage was catastrophic.
09:28The rudder jammed hard to starboard.
09:30Electrical systems failed.
09:31Lights went out.
09:32Seawater poured into the engine room through.
09:35Cracked pipes.
09:36The boat lost steering and began circling blindly beneath the surface.
09:40Her captain, Captain Lieutenant Harold Lange, understood the situation immediately.
09:45If he remained submerged, they would crush him.
09:49At 11.21, just minutes after the first attack, U-505 blew her ballast tanks and burst through
09:57the surface bow first, gray steel rising out of the Atlantic in a spray of foam.
10:02She was crippled.
10:03She could not steer.
10:04She was already flooding.
10:06She was already flooding.
10:06German sailors scrambled onto the deck.
10:08Some tried to reach the anti-aircraft guns.
10:11They never got the chance.
10:13Machine gun fire from the escorts raked the conning tower.
10:16The Wildcats dove low, their tracers stitching the hull.
10:20One German sailor fell dead where he stood.
10:22Others raised their hands or leapt into the sea.
10:25U-505 began circling helplessly at five knots, her stern settling lower with each passing second.
10:32On the bridge of USS Pillsbury, Lieutenant Commander Castleman watched through binoculars.
10:38This was the moment they, oh, had trained for.
10:41The submarine was afloat, but not for long.
10:44Castleman turned to his deck officer.
10:47Lower the whale boat.
10:48On the fan tail, Albert David and his eight-man boarding party were already waiting.
10:53Six weeks of training.
10:54Now they had minutes.
10:56The whale boat hit the water hard.
10:58Albert David dropped in first, followed by eight men carrying nothing more than flight.
11:02Flashlights, sidearms, and heavy wrenches.
11:05Behind them, U-505 circled like a wounded animal, her bow swinging wide, her stern settling lower
11:11with each rotation.
11:13Oil spread across the surface in a black sheen.
11:16German sailors thrashed in the water nearby, shouting for rescue.
11:20The Americans ignored them.
11:21The submarine was still moving.
11:24If she slipped beneath the surface before they reached her, the opportunity would vanish forever.
11:29The coxswain pushed the small boat forward at full power, cutting inside the submarine's turning arc.
11:35The gray hull loomed larger with every second.
11:39Steel streaked with rust.
11:40Scarred by gunfire, water pouring from open hatches.
11:44They pulled alongside.
11:46David grabbed a railing slick with oil and seawater and hauled himself onto the deck.
11:51The steel was unstable beneath his boots.
11:53The submarine rolled slowly, continuing its helpless circle.
11:58One German sailor lay motionless near the conning tower hatch.
12:01No one else remained aboard.
12:04David did not hesitate.
12:05He climbed through the hatch and dropped into the control room.
12:08Inside, the air was thick with diesel fumes and saltwater mist.
12:12Emergency red lights cast long shadows across unfamiliar machinery.
12:17Gauges were shattered.
12:18Electrical panels sparked weakly.
12:20The deck was tilted sharply, the stern already lower than the bow.
12:24Water was rushing somewhere below.
12:26The Germans had opened the sea valves before abandoning ship.
12:30David's men poured in behind him and spread out exactly as they had practiced.
12:34They had perhaps three minutes.
12:35One sailor located the main sea strainer valve, its cover removed and tossed aside.
12:41Ocean water was pouring into the engine spaces.
12:44He found the missing plate nearby, half submerged,
12:47and forced it back into position while another man tightened the bolts with shaking hands.
12:52Elsewhere in the submarine, others began searching for demolition charges.
12:56They found them quickly.
12:58Explosives wired into key compartments, engine rooms, torpedo spaces, control areas,
13:03each designed to finish what the flooding had begun.
13:06Thirteen charges in total.
13:08Some had been armed.
13:09David's men worked in near darkness, crawling through oily water up to their calves,
13:14tracing wires by touch, pulling detonators, disconnecting firing mechanisms they had only
13:20studied in theory.
13:21Every unfamiliar device could have been a trigger.
13:25Every mistake could have been fatal.
13:27Above them, the situation grew more dangerous.
13:30With her rudder jammed, U-505 continued circling,
13:34and her wide arc was carrying her directly toward USS Pillsbury.
13:38Castleman was forced to maneuver his destroyer, escort hard to avoid collision.
13:43In the chaos, the whale boat that had delivered David's team was crushed between the two hulls
13:49and destroyed.
13:50Three compartments aboard Pillsbury flooded from the impact,
13:54but the boarding party remained inside the submarine.
13:57Retreat was no longer simple.
14:00Inside, U-505, the stern dipped lower,
14:03water climbed past boots, then knees in the aft compartments,
14:07pumps were dead, systems were foreign, labels were in German, nothing was intuitive.
14:13David moved compartment to compartment, steady, methodical.
14:16Close the valves, remove the detonators, secure the charges, stop the flooding.
14:22Minutes stretched unbearably.
14:23Then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, the list began to ease.
14:28The flooding slowed.
14:30The submarine stopped settling.
14:32The tilt stabilized.
14:33The violent circle through the Atlantic grew wider and slower.
14:38They had done it.
14:39U-505 was no longer sinking.
14:42But saving her from the ocean was only the first step.
14:45Now they had to keep her alive.
14:47Long enough to discover what secrets the Germans had tried so desperately to destroy.
14:52The first crisis was over.
14:54The submarine was no longer sinking.
14:56Now the men inside U-505 could finally see what they had risked their lives to save.
15:03Commander Earl Trosino, the chief engineer from Guadalcanal, soon joined David below decks.
15:09A former merchant marine engineer, he moved carefully through the unfamiliar interior,
15:14tracing pipelines by hand, learning the layout as he went.
15:17The stern was still partially flooded.
15:20Seawater seeped through cracked pipes and ruptured tanks.
15:23Pumps had to be restarted.
15:25Power restored where possible.
15:27Above them, American sailors were towing a captured enemy submarine through open ocean.
15:33Below, David's team began searching in earnest.
15:36In the control room, near the radio equipment, they found it.
15:39An Enigma cipher machine.
15:41Intact.
15:42Not smashed.
15:44Not burned.
15:45Not thrown overboard.
15:46The Germans had not had time.
15:48The machine sat bolted in place, its rotors.
15:51Still inside.
15:52The mechanical heart of the Kriegsmarine's encrypted communications.
15:56For years, Allied cryptographers in Britain and America had struggled to break the naval enigma
16:02consistently.
16:03They had achieved partial successes, but the German Navy changed settings frequently.
16:08Each change could plunge the Atlantic back into darkness.
16:12Nearby were code books, signal documents, operating instructions, daily key settings, stacked, bundled,
16:19hurriedly abandoned.
16:20They gathered everything.
16:22In drawers and lockers, they found patrol charts mapping U-boat positions across the Atlantic.
16:27Rendezvous coordinates.
16:28Refueling points.
16:29Convoy routes marked for interception.
16:32In total, nearly 900 pounds of classified material.
16:36But the discoveries did not stop there.
16:39Forward, in the torpedo room, American sailors uncovered something even more unsettling.
16:44Two acoustic homing torpedoes.
16:47The Germans called them Zaunkonig.
16:50Unlike conventional torpedoes, these weapons did not run, straight toward a predicted intercept
16:55point.
16:56They listened.
16:58They hunted the sound of a ship's propellers, adjusting course automatically, tracking noise
17:03beneath the sea.
17:04Allied escorts had already begun reporting strange new torpedo behavior.
17:08Weapons that curved unexpectedly, that seemed almost alive.
17:12Now, the mystery lay in front of them.
17:15Understanding how these torpedoes worked could mean survival for hundreds of ships.
17:19On the surface, Captain Gallery faced a problem no American commander had confronted in more
17:24than a century.
17:25He now possessed a captured German submarine.
17:29Fifty-eight prisoners, including the commanding officer, had been pulled from the Atlantic and
17:34confined below decks on Guadalcanal.
17:36The U-boat itself could not move under its own power.
17:39It was damaged, vulnerable, and sitting 150 miles off the African coast.
17:45And in two days, Allied forces were scheduled to land in Normandy.
17:49If Germany learned that one of its submarines had been captured intact, with codebooks and
17:55cipher machines still aboard, the consequences could be catastrophic.
17:59The Kriegsmarine would change its codes immediately.
18:02Every decrypted message, every intercepted transmission, every advantage gained in secret, gone overnight.
18:09The Atlantic would grow dark again.
18:11Gallery made his decision.
18:13No radio transmissions.
18:14No log entries describing the capture.
18:17No mention in official records.
18:193,000 American sailors had just witnessed something extraordinary.
18:23Now they would have to pretend it never happened.
18:26The hardest part of the mission began after the shooting stopped.
18:30U-505 was still afloat.
18:32Barely.
18:32But she was helpless.
18:34Her engines were dead.
18:35Her steering was ruined.
18:36She could not dive.
18:38She could not defend herself.
18:39And she could not be allowed to exist.
18:42Captain Daniel Gallery understood the stakes immediately.
18:45The submarine was not just a prize.
18:47It was a liability.
18:49If Berlin learned that U-505 had been captured intact, the German Navy would
18:54assume the worst, that their codes, procedures, and technology had fallen into Allied hands.
19:00They would change everything.
19:02So Gallery ordered absolute silence.
19:05No radio transmissions describing the capture.
19:08No signals to shore.
19:09No mention in official logs.
19:12The 58 German prisoners, including their commanding officer, Capitan-Leutnant Harald Langa,
19:18were confined below decks on Guadalcanal.
19:21They were told nothing.
19:22They were allowed to see nothing.
19:25They were forbidden to communicate.
19:26To the outside world, U-505 had vanished like so many other submarines in 1944, sunk with
19:34all hands.
19:35The deception had to be perfect.
19:37But secrecy alone was not enough.
19:40The submarine still had to be moved.
19:43Pillsbury attempted to take U-505 under tow first, but damage sustained during the chaotic
19:48boarding made the strain too much.
19:51Eventually, Guadalcanal herself rigged a towing line and began the slow journey across the Atlantic.
19:56The distance to Bermuda was more than 2,500 miles.
20:02Storms rolled in.
20:04Swells battered the already damaged hull.
20:07Salvage crews remained aboard around the clock, pumping water, reinforcing bulkheads,
20:12checking for renewed flooding.
20:14Every day the submarine survived increased the risk of discovery.
20:18Every day also increased the value of what she carried.
20:21Back in Europe, the Allied invasion of Normandy loomed.
20:25D-Day was scheduled for June 5th, delayed only by weather to June 6th.
20:30If the Germans suspected their naval codes were compromised in the days leading up to the
20:34largest amphibious invasion in history, the consequences could ripple far beyond the Atlantic.
20:413,000 American sailors now carried that knowledge.
20:44They wrote letters home.
20:45They described patrols, weather, routine.
20:49They did not describe the submarine.
20:51Not one breach occurred.
20:53The Atlantic remained silent.
20:54And because it remained silent, Germany never realized what had been taken from her.
21:00Within weeks, the captured materials from U-505 were in the hands of Allied Intelligence.
21:07At Bletchley Park in Britain, cryptographers who had spent years wrestling with the German
21:12naval Enigma machine received something they had rarely enjoyed in this war, certainty.
21:18The machine taken from U-505 confirmed rotor configurations.
21:23The codebooks provided current key settings.
21:26Signal procedures that had been guessed at were now verified.
21:29Intercepted German naval messages that had once appeared as meaningless strings of letters
21:34began to resolve into clarity.
21:36Positions.
21:37Patrol routes.
21:38Refueling rendezvous.
21:40Convoy attack orders.
21:41Across the Atlantic, U-boat commanders continued transmitting.
21:45Unaware that their words were no longer secret, Allied convoy commanders quietly adjusted course.
21:51Hunter-killer groups were dispatched not into empty ocean, but toward precise coordinates.
21:56Shipping lanes shifted away from danger zones before torpedoes ever entered the water.
22:01To the sailors aboard merchant ships, nothing seemed different.
22:05The sea remained gray and vast and uncertain.
22:09But fewer ships were dying.
22:11And then there were the torpedoes.
22:14The acoustic homing weapons recovered from U-505 were shipped to American laboratories.
22:19Engineers disassembled them piece by piece, studying their guidance systems, their hydrophones,
22:25the logic behind their design.
22:27The torpedoes hunted sound.
22:30Specifically, the cavitation created by spinning propellers.
22:34The solution was elegant.
22:36If the torpedo followed noise, give it something louder to chase.
22:40Within months, Allied escort ships began towing noisemaking decoys behind them, devices called
22:46foxers.
22:47They produced exaggerated propeller sounds, stronger than the ship itself.
22:51When an acoustic torpedo entered the water, it locked onto the decoy instead of the hull
22:57it was meant to destroy.
22:59German submarine commanders noticed something was wrong.
23:02Reports filtered back to headquarters describing torpedoes that veered away at the last moment
23:06or detonated harmlessly behind their targets.
23:09They suspected Allied countermeasures.
23:12They never connected it to U-505.
23:15The German naval command assumed the submarine had been sunk like hundreds of others in 1944.
23:20No special warnings were issued.
23:23No urgent code changes were implemented because of her loss.
23:27The deception held.
23:29Throughout the summer of 1944, as Allied armies fought their way through Normandy and across France,
23:35the Atlantic supply lines remained open.
23:38Troops crossed safely.
23:40Fuel arrived.
23:41Ammunition flowed.
23:42Somewhere in that vast logistical machine, in the quiet success of convoys that reached
23:48port without incident, the capture of one submarine played its silent role.
23:53Eight men had boarded a sinking U-boat in rising water.
23:57Because they did, the Atlantic grew a little less deadly, and the German Navy never understood
24:02why.
24:03When Task Group 22.3 reached Bermuda on June 19, 1944, U-505 did not arrive as a trophy.
24:12She arrived as a secret.
24:14The submarine was hidden in a remote corner of the naval base.
24:17Her gray hull was repainted.
24:20Her markings were altered.
24:22Officially, she did not exist.
24:24The 58 German prisoners were transferred to a detention camp in Louisiana under strict isolation.
24:30The Red Cross was denied access.
24:32Their families in Germany were informed that they were missing at sea, presumed dead.
24:37They would not learn the truth until after the war.
24:41Admiral Ernest King, commander-in-chief of the United States fleet, reviewed the operation
24:46carefully.
24:47The intelligence value was undeniable.
24:50The risk had been enormous.
24:52If even one sailor had written home describing the capture, if one careless signal had reached
24:58the wrong ears, if Germany had changed its naval codes days before D-Day, the consequences might
25:05have been catastrophic.
25:07Captain Daniel Gallery was awarded the Legion of Merit for his audacity.
25:11He was also privately warned the secrecy had to hold.
25:15For Albert David and the men who had followed him into the submarine, there were commendations, but no celebration.
25:22No public recognition.
25:24No headlines.
25:26David received the Medal of Honor for leading the boarding party into a vessel that could
25:30have exploded or sunk beneath him at any moment.
25:32It was the only Medal of Honor awarded to a Navy sailor in the entire Atlantic theater of
25:37the war.
25:38He never lived to wear it.
25:40On September 17, 1945, just weeks before he was scheduled to receive the decoration at
25:46the White House, Albert David died of a heart attack at the age of 43.
25:51The medal was presented to his widow instead.
25:54For nearly a year after the capture, 3,000 American sailors carried the story in silence.
26:00They wrote letters home describing long patrols and empty seas.
26:04They never mentioned the submarine.
26:06They never mentioned the code books.
26:08They never mentioned the day they stepped onto a sinking enemy warship and refused to let
26:13it disappear.
26:15The Atlantic campaign moved on.
26:17Battles were fought.
26:19Cities were liberated.
26:20Germany surrendered.
26:22And still, U-505 remained officially lost.
26:26When the war ended in Europe, the secret could finally breathe.
26:31U-505 was no longer a liability.
26:34She was no longer a ghost.
26:36The submarine that had vanished in June 1944 could now be shown to the world.
26:41The Navy repainted her once more, this time not to hide her, but to display her.
26:47She toured American ports during the Seventh War loan drive.
26:51Civilians lined up to walk through the steel compartments where American sailors had crawled
26:55through rising water.
26:56They peered at the control panels, the torpedo tubes, the narrow bunks.
27:00They saw, for the first time, the machine that had once hunted their sons across the Atlantic.
27:06The story of her capture raised millions of dollars in war bonds.
27:10And then, when the tours ended, the Navy made a practical decision.
27:15The submarine had served her purpose.
27:18Plans were drawn up to tow her out to sea and sink her with gunfire.
27:22A final, unceremonious end, like so many other U-boats.
27:26But one man refused to let that happen.
27:29Rear Admiral Farr
27:31Daniel Gallery, the same officer who had ordered boarding parties formed when no one believed it possible,
27:37began lobbying to preserve the submarine.
27:39He contacted civic leaders in his hometown of Chicago.
27:43He argued that U-505 was not just a captured vessel.
27:47She was proof.
27:49Proof that intelligence could win battles.
27:52Proof that courage could alter strategy.
27:54Proof that eight men, acting in minutes, could influence a war measured in years.
28:00In 1954, engineers undertook one of the strangest voyages in naval history.
28:06The submarine was towed down the Atlantic coast, through the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Mississippi River system.
28:13From there, she was hauled overland on massive rollers through the streets of Chicago.
28:18Thousands gathered to watch a German warship creep past storefronts and traffic lights.
28:24On September 25, 1954, U-505 was dedicated as a permanent memorial at the Museum of Science and Industry.
28:33Decades later, she was moved indoors, preserved in a climate-controlled hall.
28:39Visitors today can stand in the same control room where Albert David first dropped through the hatch.
28:44They can see the Enigma machine, the torpedo tubes, the valves that once flooded the engine room.
28:50The submarine that was meant to sink into darkness now rests in quiet permanence.
28:55It is still the only time since the War of 1812 that the United States Navy captured an enemy warship
29:02at sea.
29:03It happened because eight men climbed onto a dying submarine, not knowing if it would explode,
29:09not knowing if it would drag them under, and refused to let it disappear.
29:14If you found this story worth remembering, consider subscribing for more untold stories from the Second World War.
29:21Some victories are loud, others survive in silence. This one did both.
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