- 2 days ago
Why the USS Pillsbury attempted to board a sinking enemy submarine rigged with explosives during WW2 — and pulled off something the US Navy hadn't done in 129 years. This World War 2 story reveals how eight American sailors jumped onto a circling U-boat and risked everything.
June 4, 1944. Lieutenant Junior Grade Albert David, assistant engineering officer aboard USS Pillsbury, watched a German submarine break the surface 700 yards away. The U-boat was damaged, flooding, and rigged with demolition charges set to explode. Every naval protocol said destroy it immediately. No American warship had boarded an enemy vessel at sea since 1815. Command said it was impossible.
They were all wrong.
What David discovered that Sunday morning wasn't about destroying the enemy. It was about capturing something in a way that contradicted everything the Navy had trained him for. He had minutes before the submarine sank. German sailors had already opened the sea valves. The clock was ticking.
What his eight-man team found inside that U-boat — and why the Navy kept it classified for over a year — changed the course of the Atlantic war. Three thousand American sailors who witnessed the capture kep
June 4, 1944. Lieutenant Junior Grade Albert David, assistant engineering officer aboard USS Pillsbury, watched a German submarine break the surface 700 yards away. The U-boat was damaged, flooding, and rigged with demolition charges set to explode. Every naval protocol said destroy it immediately. No American warship had boarded an enemy vessel at sea since 1815. Command said it was impossible.
They were all wrong.
What David discovered that Sunday morning wasn't about destroying the enemy. It was about capturing something in a way that contradicted everything the Navy had trained him for. He had minutes before the submarine sank. German sailors had already opened the sea valves. The clock was ticking.
What his eight-man team found inside that U-boat — and why the Navy kept it classified for over a year — changed the course of the Atlantic war. Three thousand American sailors who witnessed the capture kep
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00At 11.15 on the morning of April 9th, 1944,
00:04Lieutenant Commander George Castleman stood on the bridge of USS Pillsbury
00:08watching a German submarine break the surface 700 yards off his starboard bow.
00:13Ten months commanding a destroyer escort.
00:16Dozens of depth-charge attacks.
00:18Zero captures.
00:19The U-boat that had just surfaced was U-515,
00:23commanded by one of Germany's deadliest submarine aces.
00:27Werner Henke had sunk 25 Allied ships.
00:30Over 600 men, women, and children had drowned
00:33when he torpedoed the British troopship Ceramic in December 1942.
00:38Now Henke's boat was crippled,
00:40forced to the surface by hours of relentless depth-charging from Pillsbury and her sister ships.
00:46The German crew scrambled onto the deck.
00:48Some manned their guns.
00:50Others jumped into the Atlantic.
00:52Castleman's ship opened fire.
00:54So did USS Flaherty.
00:56Machine guns raked the submarine's conning tower.
00:59Rockets streaked across the water from aircrafts circling overhead.
01:03Within minutes, U-515's bow lifted toward the sky.
01:07She slid backward into the Atlantic and disappeared.
01:11Forty-four German sailors were pulled from the water, including Henke himself.
01:15The task group had destroyed one of Germany's most successful U-boats.
01:19By every measure, it was a victory.
01:21But Captain Daniel Gallery, commanding the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal and the entire hunter-killer group, saw something else entirely.
01:30He saw a missed opportunity.
01:32Gallery had watched U-515 float on the surface for nearly ten minutes before she sank.
01:38Ten minutes.
01:39In that time, his ships had done exactly what the Navy had trained them to do.
01:44They had destroyed the enemy.
01:46But Gallery realized that if he had been ready, if he had trained boarding parties in advance, he might have
01:51captured the submarine instead.
01:53The intelligence value would have been extraordinary.
01:56German codebooks, Enigma cipher machines, torpedo guidance systems, acoustic homing technology.
02:03The Allies had been trying to crack German naval codes for years.
02:06A captured U-boat could hand them everything.
02:08No American warship had boarded and captured an enemy vessel at sea since 1815, the War of 1812.
02:17One hundred and twenty-nine years.
02:19The Navy did not train sailors for boarding actions.
02:22There were no procedures, no protocols.
02:25No one had even considered it possible.
02:28Gallery decided to change that.
02:30The problem was immense.
02:32German U-boat crews were trained to scuttle their boats within minutes of surfacing.
02:36They opened sea valves.
02:37They set demolition charges.
02:39They destroyed codebooks and smashed equipment.
02:42Even if American sailors could reach a surface submarine,
02:45they would be boarding a sinking ship rigged with explosives.
02:48The Germans would rather die than let their secrets fall into Allied hands.
02:53And the statistics were brutal.
02:54In 1943 alone, German submarines had sunk over 300 Allied merchant ships.
03:01American destroyer escorts hunting U-boats faced a simple equation.
03:05Find the submarine, destroy it before it destroys you.
03:09There was no time for boarding parties.
03:11No margin for error.
03:12However, every second a U-boat remained afloat was another second it could fire torpedoes.
03:18Castleman's Pillsbury was an Edsel-class destroyer escort.
03:221,200 tons.
03:24Three-inch guns.
03:25Depth charges and hedgehog mortars.
03:27She was built to hunt and kill submarines.
03:30Not to capture them.
03:31But Gallery had given the order.
03:33Every ship in Task Group 22.3 would form a boarding party.
03:38They would train.
03:39They would prepare.
03:40And on their next patrol, they would try something the United States Navy had not attempted in over a century.
03:46If you want to see how Castleman's crew prepared for an impossible mission, please hit that like button.
03:51It helps us bring these forgotten stories to more viewers.
03:55Subscribe if you haven't already.
03:57Back to Pillsbury.
03:58The Task Group returned to Norfolk in late April.
04:01Castleman assembled his best men.
04:03He told them they were going to board a German submarine.
04:06They had six weeks to figure out how.
04:08On May 15, 1944, Pillsbury sailed from Norfolk with a new mission.
04:14The official orders said routine anti-submarine patrol.
04:17But Gallery had received secret authorization from the highest levels of naval command.
04:22Bring one back alive.
04:25The boarding party from Pillsbury consisted of eight men.
04:29Lieutenant Junior Grade Albert David would lead them.
04:32He was 41 years old, a former enlisted sailor who had worked his way up through the ranks over 25
04:37years in the Navy.
04:39He served as the ship's assistant engineering officer.
04:42He knew machinery.
04:43He knew pipes and valves and how ships stayed afloat.
04:47David had never boarded an enemy vessel.
04:49No one in the United States Navy had.
04:52Not in living memory.
04:53The training began immediately after Pillsbury left Norfolk.
04:57Every day, David drilled his men on the fantail.
05:00They practiced climbing over railings.
05:02They rehearsed jumping from a whale boat onto a moving deck.
05:06They memorized the general layout of a German Type 9 submarine based on intelligence photographs and technical drawings.
05:13The challenges were staggering.
05:14A surfaced U-boat would be circling erratically, its rudder likely jammed by depth charge damage.
05:21The deck would be slick with seawater and fuel oil.
05:24German sailors might still be aboard, armed and desperate.
05:27The submarine could dive at any moment, taking the boarding party down with it.
05:32And then there were the explosives.
05:34German commanders followed strict protocols for scuttling.
05:37The moment a U-boat surfaced under attack, the captain would order demolition charges armed.
05:42These were placed throughout the submarine, designed to detonate and send the boat to the bottom within minutes.
05:48The crew would also open sea valves, flooding the engine room and control spaces.
05:53Even if American sailors reached the submarine, they would be entering a vessel that was simultaneously sinking and rigged to
06:00explode.
06:01David's team had to work fast.
06:03They estimated three to five minutes from boarding to catastrophic flooding.
06:06In that window, they needed to locate and disarm demolition charges, find and close sea valves,
06:13and stop whatever other scuttling measures the Germans had initiated,
06:16all while navigating the cramped, unfamiliar interior of a foreign submarine in near darkness.
06:23The tools were basic.
06:25Wrenches, flashlights, sidearms.
06:28There was no specialized equipment for capturing enemy submarines because no one had ever needed any.
06:33Gallery held conferences with his destroyer escort captains throughout the three-week voyage.
06:39Commander Frederick Hall coordinated the tactical approach.
06:42The plan called for careful use of weapons once a U-boat surfaced.
06:46Ships would fire small-caliber guns only, enough to drive the German crew overboard, but not enough to sink the
06:53submarine.
06:54Aircraft would strafe the decks to prevent the enemy from manning their guns,
06:58but pilots were ordered to avoid hits below the waterline.
07:01The goal was to wound the submarine, not kill it.
07:05Pillsbury's role was critical.
07:06She would be the first ship to lower a boarding party.
07:09Castleman positioned his whale boat crews for rapid deployment.
07:13The moment a U-boat broke the surface, David and his men would be over the side and racing toward
07:18it.
07:19There was no guarantee the plan would work.
07:21The Navy had never attempted anything like this.
07:24Intelligence suggested that German crews could complete scuttling procedures in under four minutes.
07:29If David's team was even 30 seconds too slow, they would go down with the submarine.
07:35The task group sailed south toward the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa.
07:40Intelligence reports indicated U-boat activity in the shipping lanes.
07:44Guadalcanal's aircraft flew constant patrols, searching for periscopes and snorkel masts.
07:49Days passed without contact.
07:52The men grew restless.
07:53David continued drilling his boarding party, but the repetition wore on them.
07:57They had memorized every procedure.
08:00They had rehearsed every scenario.
08:02Now, they simply waited.
08:04On the morning of June 4, 1944, the task group was 150 miles west of Cape Blanco.
08:11Gallery had ordered a course change to head for Casablanca to refuel.
08:15The patrol seemed finished.
08:16At 11.09, the sonar operator aboard USS Chatelaine reported contact.
08:22Bearing 045, range 800 yards.
08:25A submarine was running submerged directly toward the carrier Guadalcanal.
08:30David's team had trained for six weeks.
08:33Now, they had minutes.
08:37Chatelaine turned hard to starboard and accelerated toward the contact.
08:40Two FM2 Wildcat fighters from Guadalcanal dove toward the sea, their pilots spotting the dark
08:47shape of a submarine running just below the surface.
08:49They opened fire with their machine guns, stitching lines of spray across the water to
08:54mark the position for the destroyers below.
08:56At 11.16, Chatelaine released her first pattern of depth charges.
09:01The explosion sent white columns of water erupting skyward.
09:05Oil bubbled to the surface.
09:07The submarine was hit.
09:08Six and a half minutes after the first attack, the U-boat broke the surface 700 yards from
09:13Chatelaine.
09:14She came up bow first, her gray hull streaming seawater, her conning tower scarred with rust.
09:20The depth charges had jammed her rudder.
09:23Her lights were out.
09:24Seawater poured through cracked pipes in her engine room.
09:27The submarine began circling to starboard at five or six knots, unable to steer.
09:33German sailors scrambled through the hatches onto the deck.
09:36Some tried to reach their deck guns.
09:38Chatelaine and the other escorts opened fire with everything that would bear.
09:42Machine gun rounds sparked off the conning tower.
09:45A German sailor fell dead on the deck.
09:47The rest threw up their hands and began jumping into the Atlantic.
09:51On Pillsbury's Bridge, Castleman watched the submarine spiral through the water.
09:56This was the moment.
09:57He gave the order to lower the whale boat.
10:00David and his eight-man team were already waiting.
10:03They dropped into the boat and cast off, the coxswain steering directly into the submarine's
10:08circling path.
10:09The U-boat was still moving, still turning.
10:12They would have to intercept it like chasing a wounded animal.
10:16The whale boat cut inside the submarine's arc.
10:18The men could see the gray hull looming larger with each second.
10:22Oil slicked the water around them.
10:25German sailors thrashed in the waves nearby, shouting and waving for rescue.
10:29David ignored them.
10:31His focus was the submarine.
10:33The whale boat pulled alongside.
10:35The hull was slick with oil and seawater.
10:38David grabbed a railing and pulled himself onto the deck.
10:41His men followed.
10:42The submarine rolled beneath their feet, still circling, still sinking by the stern.
10:48One German body lay face down near the conning tower hatch.
10:52No other enemy sailors were visible.
10:55David did not hesitate.
10:57He climbed through the hatch and dropped into the control room.
11:00The interior was nearly dark.
11:02Emergency lighting cast red shadows across unfamiliar machinery.
11:07Water sprayed from broken pipes.
11:09The deck was tilted at an angle.
11:11The submarine was flooding.
11:13David could hear the rush of seawater somewhere below.
11:17The Germans had opened the sea valves before abandoning ship.
11:20He had minutes, maybe less, before the boat went down.
11:24His men spread through the compartments.
11:26One found the sea strainer valve, a large pipe allowing ocean water to flood the bilges.
11:32The cover had been removed and thrown aside.
11:35He located it nearby and screwed it back into place.
11:38The flooding slowed.
11:39Others searched for demolition charges.
11:42They found 13 throughout the submarine, placed in the engine room, the torpedo compartments, the control spaces.
11:49Each one had to be located, examined, and disarmed.
11:53The charges had timers.
11:55Some were set to detonate within minutes.
11:57David's team worked in near darkness, crawling through oily water, tracing unfamiliar pipes and cables.
12:03They pulled wires.
12:05They removed detonators.
12:06They sealed valves and hatches.
12:08The submarine continued to settle by the stern, her aft deck already submerged.
12:13Above them, the circling submarine posed a new danger.
12:17Without steering, the U-boat swung toward Pillsbury herself.
12:21Castleman had to maneuver his ship to avoid collision.
12:24The whale boat that had delivered David's team was crushed between the two hulls.
12:29Three of Pillsbury's compartments flooded from the impact, but the boarding party stayed aboard the submarine.
12:35They had stopped the scuttling.
12:37The U-boat was wounded, but she was not sinking.
12:40At 11.30, a second boarding party arrived from Guadalcanal, led by Commander Earl Trosino, the carrier's chief engineer.
12:48He found David's men still working in the flooded compartments, still pulling demolition charges from hidden corners.
12:54They had captured a German submarine.
12:57Now they had to keep her afloat.
13:01Commander Trosino crawled through the flooded compartments for hours.
13:04He was a merchant marine engineer before the war, experienced with ship's systems and machinery.
13:10But he had never been inside a German submarine.
13:13No American had.
13:15The Type 9 U-boat was larger than he expected.
13:18Over 250 feet long.
13:2011 compartments connected by watertight hatches.
13:23The design was foreign.
13:25The labels in German.
13:27The equipment unfamiliar.
13:29Trosino traced pipelines by hand,
13:31following them through the oily bilge water until he understood how the submarine's systems connected.
13:37The stern was already underwater.
13:39The depth charge damage had cracked pipes and ruptured tanks throughout the aft section.
13:45Seawater continued to seep in through dozens of small leaks.
13:48If they could not stop the flooding, the submarine would sink within hours.
13:53Trosino organized the salvage effort.
13:55He directed men to specific valves.
13:57He identified which pumps still functioned.
14:00He jury-rigged connections between compartments to redirect the flow of water.
14:04Slowly, the flooding stabilized.
14:07While Trosino worked on keeping the submarine afloat,
14:10David's team collected intelligence materials.
14:12They found two Enigma cipher machines intact, complete with their coding rotors.
14:18They gathered stacks of code books, signal documents, and operational orders.
14:22They located charts showing U-boat patrol zones across the Atlantic.
14:27900 pounds of classified German naval documents.
14:30The haul was extraordinary.
14:33Allied code breakers at Bletchley Park in Britain had been working to crack German naval communications for years.
14:39They had achieved partial success, but the Germans regularly changed their cipher settings.
14:45Fresh code books and an intact Enigma machine could unlock months of intercepted messages.
14:50But there was more.
14:52In the forward torpedo room, the salvage teams found two acoustic homing torpedoes.
14:57The Germans called them Zaun-König.
15:00The Allies had heard rumors of these weapons, but had never examined one.
15:04The torpedoes used sound to track their targets, homing in on the propeller noise of Allied ships.
15:10Understanding how they worked could save hundreds of lives.
15:14Captain Gallery faced an immediate problem.
15:17His task group was now responsible for a captured enemy submarine 150 miles off the African coast.
15:24The U-boat could not move under her own power.
15:27She was barely staying afloat.
15:29And 3,000 American sailors had just witnessed her capture.
15:32If the Germans learned that U-505 had been taken intact, they would change their codes immediately.
15:40Every advantage gained from the captured materials would vanish.
15:44The entire operation would be worthless.
15:46Gallery ordered absolute secrecy.
15:49No radio transmissions about the capture.
15:51No written records in ship logs.
15:53The German prisoners, 58 men including their wounded captain, were confined below decks on Guadalcanal, forbidden from speaking with anyone.
16:03Then, Gallery received new orders from Washington.
16:06The original plan had been to tow the submarine to Casablanca.
16:10Now, he was directed to take her to Bermuda instead.
16:142,500 miles across the open Atlantic.
16:17The timing was critical.
16:19Allied forces were about to invade Normandy.
16:21D-Day was scheduled for June 5th, pushed to June 6th due to weather.
16:26If German intelligence discovered that their codes had been compromised days before the largest amphibious invasion in history, the consequences
16:34could be catastrophic.
16:36Pillsbury attempted to take the submarine undertow, but the collision during the capture had damaged her hull.
16:43Three compartments were flooded.
16:44She could not maintain the strain.
16:46Guadalcanal herself rigged a tow line from the carrier to the U-boat and began the slow journey north.
16:53The voyage took 15 days.
16:55Storms threatened to swamp the waterlogged submarine.
16:59Salvage crews remained aboard around the clock, pumping water and monitoring leaks.
17:03The fleet tug, USS Abnaki, eventually took over towing duties, but the danger never lessened.
17:10On June 19th, the task group entered Port Royal Bay, Bermuda.
17:14The U-boat was immediately hidden in a remote corner of the naval base.
17:18She was repainted to disguise her German origins and given a new designation, USS Nemo.
17:24The 58 German prisoners were transferred to a secret camp in Louisiana.
17:29The Red Cross was denied access.
17:31Their families in Germany received notifications that they were missing, presumed dead.
17:36They would not learn the truth until 1947.
17:39Admiral Ernest King, commander-in-chief of the United States Fleet, reviewed the intelligence hall.
17:44The codebooks alone were invaluable.
17:46But King had another concern.
17:48Gallery had taken an enormous risk.
17:51If the capture had failed, if the Germans had learned their codes were compromised,
17:55the damage to Allied operations could have been incalculable.
17:59The Admiral's response was measured.
18:01Gallery would receive the Legion of Merit, but he would also receive a private warning.
18:06The secrecy had to hold.
18:07If it did not, there would be consequences.
18:12The German Navy never learned what happened to U-505.
18:15Admiral Carl Donitz, commander of the U-boat fleet, received the final transmission from
18:20the submarine on June 3rd.
18:22She reported her position off the African coast and indicated she was returning to base in
18:27Lorient, France.
18:29After June 4th, silence.
18:32This was not unusual.
18:34U-boats disappeared constantly in 1944.
18:37Allied hunter-killer groups and long-range aircraft had turned the Atlantic into a killing
18:42ground for German submarines.
18:43Donitz assumed U-505 had been sunk by depth charges or aerial attack, like hundreds of
18:49others before her.
18:51He ordered no changes to German codes.
18:53He issued no warnings about compromised communications.
18:57The Kriegsmarine continued using the same Enigma settings, the same cipher procedures, the same
19:02operational protocols.
19:04The secrecy held.
19:053,000 American sailors who had witnessed the capture said nothing.
19:09They wrote no letters home describing what they had seen.
19:12They made no mentions in personal diaries.
19:15Captain Gallery had explained the stakes during the voyage to Bermuda.
19:19If word reached the Germans, the intelligence value would be destroyed.
19:23Allied sailors and soldiers would die because of loose talk.
19:26The men understood.
19:28Not a single breach occurred.
19:30At Bletchley Park in England, British codebreakers received the captured materials within weeks.
19:35The Enigma machine and its rotors confirmed their understanding of German cipher methods.
19:41The codebooks provided settings valid through the summer of 1944.
19:45Intercepted U-boat transmissions that had been gibberish suddenly became readable.
19:49The intelligence revealed German submarine positions across the Atlantic.
19:53It exposed patrol patterns and attack strategies.
19:56It identified supply routes and rendezvous points.
20:00Allied convoy commanders adjusted their courses to avoid known U-boat concentrations.
20:05Hunter-killer groups received precise coordinates for their targets.
20:09The acoustic homing torpedoes proved equally valuable.
20:12American engineers at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington disassembled the zonkonik weapons and analyzed every component.
20:20They discovered the torpedoes tracked the cavitation noise created by ship propellers.
20:25Within months, the Navy developed countermeasures.
20:28Ships began towing noisemakers called foxers, decoys that produced louder cavitation sounds than the ships themselves.
20:36The torpedoes chased the decoys instead of their intended targets.
20:39German U-boat commanders noticed the change.
20:42Their acoustic torpedoes, which had been devastating Allied escorts, suddenly missed with alarming frequency.
20:48They reported the failures to headquarters.
20:51Donitz suspected the Allies had developed some form of countermeasure, but he never connected it to U-505.
20:57He assumed the technology had been captured from a torpedo that failed to detonate, not from a submarine taken intact.
21:04The war in the Atlantic continued through the summer and fall of 1944.
21:09U-boat losses mounted.
21:11New submarines left German shipyards equipped with snorkels, devices that allowed them to run their diesel engines while submerged.
21:18The technology extended their underwater endurance and made them harder to detect.
21:23But the Allies had the codes.
21:24They knew where the new submarines were going before they arrived.
21:28Hunter-killer groups intercepted them in mid-ocean.
21:31Aircraft caught them during surface transits.
21:33The Battle of the Atlantic, which had threatened to strangle Britain's supply lines for four years, was effectively won.
21:40Pillsbury returned to operations after repairs in Norfolk.
21:43The collision with U-505 had damaged three compartments, but the shipyard crews restored her within weeks.
21:50By late summer, she was back on patrol with Task Group 22.3.
21:55The hunter-killer group continued sweeping the Atlantic through the fall.
21:59They found no submarines.
22:00German U-boat activity had collapsed in the Central Ocean.
22:04The few boats still operating hugged the European coastline or lurked in distant waters where Allied air cover was thin.
22:11The war in Europe approached its end.
22:14By April 1945, Allied armies had crossed the Rhine and were driving into Germany.
22:21The Soviet forces closed on Berlin from the east.
22:24Hitler's Reich was collapsing.
22:26But the U-boat war was not finished.
22:29German Naval Command had one final operation planned.
22:33A group of submarines equipped with the latest technology would cross the Atlantic and strike the American coast.
22:39The mission was desperate.
22:41A last attempt to prove that Germany could still threaten the enemy homeland.
22:46On April 8, 1945, Pillsbury sailed from Norfolk as part of a new task group.
22:52Their mission was to intercept the incoming submarines before they reached American waters.
22:57The operation was called Teardrop.
23:02Operation Teardrop was born from fear.
23:05Allied intelligence had detected a group of German submarines heading west across the Atlantic in early April 1945.
23:12The boats were Type 9 long-range submarines capable of reaching the American coastline.
23:17But what alarmed naval planners was the cargo they might be carrying.
23:21Rumors had circulated for months about German plans to launch V-1 flying bombs or V-2 rockets from submarine
23:28platforms.
23:29The weapons had devastated London.
23:31A single V-2 striking New York or Washington could kill thousands.
23:36American intelligence could not confirm whether the approaching submarines carried such weapons, but they could not rule it out.
23:42The Navy assembled two barrier forces to intercept the incoming boats.
23:47Task Group 22.7 included the escort carriers Bogue and Corps, along with over a dozen destroyer escorts.
23:55Pillsbury was assigned to the screen.
23:57The barrier stretched across the western Atlantic approaches, a net of ships and aircraft designed to catch any submarine attempting
24:04to reach American waters.
24:05For two weeks, the task group patrolled in shifting fog and heavy seas.
24:11Aircraft flew constant searches.
24:13Sonar operators listened for contacts.
24:16The submarines were out there somewhere, running silent beneath the gray swells.
24:20On April 16th, the barrier scored its first kills.
24:24Destroyer escorts located U-1235 and U-880 within hours of each other.
24:30Depth charges sent both to the bottom.
24:32Six days later, aircraft and surface ships destroyed U-518, three submarines down.
24:39The barrier was working.
24:40But the Germans kept coming.
24:42On the morning of April 24th, USS Frederick C. Davis was patrolling 650 miles northwest of the Azores.
24:50At 8.29, her sonar operator reported contact.
24:54The range was 2,000 yards.
24:56A submarine was attempting to slip through the barrier.
25:00Frederick C. Davis maneuvered to attack.
25:02The contact faded, lost in her own wake.
25:05Her officer of the deck ordered a hard turn to relocate the target.
25:09At 8.39, with the submarine at only 650 yards, a torpedo struck her port side.
25:16The acoustic homing weapon detonated in the forward engine room.
25:19The explosion broke the destroyer escort in half.
25:22Her bow section sank immediately.
25:25Her stern floated for five minutes while survivors scrambled into the water.
25:30115 men died.
25:32Only 77 were rescued.
25:34Frederick C. Davis was the last American warship sunk by enemy action in the Atlantic.
25:39The submarine that killed her was U-546, commanded by Capitan Lieutenant Paul Just.
25:46She had slipped through the barrier undetected, fired her torpedo at point-blank range, and now dove deep to escape.
25:53Pillsbury was 12 miles away when the distress call came.
25:57Castleman ordered flank speed.
25:59Within an hour, eight destroyer escorts had converged on the datum point.
26:04Flaherty arrived first and made sonar contact at 9.23.
26:07She attacked with depth charges.
26:10The contact faded.
26:11The hunt lasted 10 hours.
26:14U-546 dove to 600 feet and ran silent.
26:18The destroyer escorts spread across the search area, their sonar beams probing the depths.
26:23Contact came and went.
26:25The submarine maneuvered constantly, using thermal layers and her quiet electric motors to evade detection.
26:32Pillsbury circled the perimeter while Flaherty coordinated the attacks.
26:35Chatelaine, Nunzer, Varian, Hubbard, Jansen, and Keith joined the pursuit.
26:41They dropped depth charges in overlapping patterns.
26:44They fired hedgehog salvos at suspected positions.
26:48Each attack forced U-546 deeper, but she refused to surface.
26:52By late afternoon, the submarine's batteries were nearly exhausted.
26:56She had been submerged for eight hours.
26:59Her air was foul.
27:00Her crew was exhausted.
27:01At 1943, after a final hedgehog attack from Flaherty, U-546 blew her tanks and broke the surface.
27:10The destroyer escorts opened fire immediately.
27:12U-546's captain ordered two torpedoes launched at Flaherty as a final act of defiance.
27:19Both missed.
27:20Machine gun fire swept the submarine's deck.
27:23The German crew abandoned ship.
27:25Thirty-three survivors were pulled from the water, including Capitan-Lutnant Ust.
27:31He was taken aboard the escort carrier Bogue for interrogation.
27:35The Navy needed to know one thing.
27:38Were there more submarines carrying secret weapons?
27:42Ust had the answer.
27:45The interrogation of Capitan-Lutnant Paul Just lasted for days.
27:50Navy intelligence officers pressed him about secret weapons.
27:53Submarine-launched rockets.
27:55Plans to strike American cities.
27:57Just answered their questions.
27:59There were no V-weapons aboard the German submarines.
28:02There never had been.
28:03The boats crossing the Atlantic carried standard torpedoes and nothing more.
28:07The mission was a final conventional attack.
28:10A desperate gesture by a dying navy.
28:12The feared rocket assault on the American homeland was a phantom.
28:16Operation Teardrop had succeeded.
28:18The barrier forces had destroyed five of the seven submarines sent against the United States.
28:24U-546 was the last.
28:26The remaining two boats surrendered when Germany capitulated on May 8, 1945.
28:32Pillsbury was present for that surrender as well.
28:34She and her sister ship, Pope, escorted U-858 from Mid-Atlantic to Cape May, New Jersey, after placing a
28:41prize crew aboard.
28:42The war in the Atlantic was over.
28:44The final accounting revealed the scale of Pillsbury's contribution.
28:48In 13 months of combat operations, the small destroyer escort had participated in the destruction of two German submarines and
28:56the capture of a third.
28:57No other American warship could claim such a record.
29:01U-515 had been one of the most successful U-boats in the German navy.
29:04Her commander, Werner Henck, had summed 25 Allied ships totaling over 150,000 tons.
29:12Pillsbury's depth charges had forced her to the surface in April, 1944.
29:17U-505 was the only German submarine captured by American forces during the entire war.
29:23The intelligence materials recovered from her hull had provided months of insight into German naval operations.
29:29The Enigma machine and codebooks had allowed Allied cryptographers to read enemy communications during the critical summer of 1944,
29:37when the Normandy invasion hung in the balance.
29:40U-546 was the last German submarine to sink an American warship.
29:45Pillsbury had joined the 10-hour hunt that brought her to the surface and ended her threat.
29:49The Navy recognized the achievement with its highest unit honor.
29:54Task Group 22.3 received the Presidential Unit Citation for the capture of U-505.
30:01The citation praised the coordinated attack, the swift boarding action,
30:05and the successful preservation of invaluable intelligence materials.
30:10Lieutenant Albert David received the Medal of Honor for leading the boarding party onto the circling submarine.
30:15His citation described how he had plunged through the conning tower hatch,
30:20fully aware that the U-boat might sink or explode at any moment.
30:24He had risked his life above and beyond the call of duty.
30:27It was the only Medal of Honor awarded to a Navy sailor in the entire Atlantic Theater of World War
30:33II.
30:34Two members of David's boarding party,
30:36Radioman 2nd Class Stanley Wadoviak and Torpedoman 3rd Class Arthur Knispel,
30:41received the Navy Cross.
30:43The remaining boarders received silver stars.
30:46Captain Daniel Gallery received the Legion of Merit.
30:50But the recognition came with a shadow.
30:53Admiral King had made clear that the secrecy surrounding U-505 had to hold until the war ended.
30:59Gallery had taken an enormous risk.
31:01If the capture had been revealed prematurely,
31:04if the Germans had changed their codes before D-Day,
31:07the consequences could have altered the course of the invasion.
31:11King respected Gallery's audacity,
31:13but never fully forgave the danger he had created.
31:16The captured submarine remained hidden in Bermuda until Germany surrendered.
31:20Then the Navy put her to use one final time.
31:23Repainted and restored,
31:25U-505 toured American ports as part of the Seventh War Bond Drive.
31:30Citizens who purchased bonds could climb aboard
31:33and walk through the compartments where David and his men had fought to keep her afloat.
31:37The Bond Drive raised millions.
31:40The public finally learned the story that 3,000 sailors had kept secret for nearly a year.
31:45After the war, the Navy had no further use for the submarine.
31:49Plans were made to tow her out to sea and sink her with gunfire,
31:52a target for gunnery practice.
31:54She would disappear beneath the Atlantic like the hundreds of other U-boats destroyed during the war.
31:58But Gallery had other ideas.
32:01The submarine that his men had risked their lives to capture deserved a different fate.
32:07Rear Admiral Daniel Gallery, as he had become after the war,
32:11launched a campaign to save U-505.
32:14He contacted civic leaders in Chicago, his hometown.
32:17He proposed that the submarine be transported to the city
32:20and displayed as a permanent memorial to the Battle of the Atlantic.
32:24The Museum of Science and Industry agreed to host the exhibit.
32:28But getting the submarine to Chicago required moving a 750-ton vessel
32:32from the Atlantic Ocean to the shore of Lake Michigan.
32:36The journey would cover over 1,000 miles, much of it overland.
32:41In 1954, engineers floated U-505 down the Atlantic coast,
32:46through the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Mississippi River system to Chicago.
32:51The final leg required hauling the submarine across city streets on specially constructed rollers.
32:57Thousands of Chicagoans lined the route to watch the German U-boat
33:01creep past their homes and businesses.
33:03On September 25, 1954, Fleet Admiral William Halsey dedicated U-505 as a permanent war memorial.
33:12She was placed outdoors on the museum grounds,
33:14where visitors could climb aboard and walk through the same compartments
33:18that Albert David and his men had entered a decade earlier.
33:22David himself never saw the memorial.
33:25He died of a heart attack on September 17, 1945,
33:29three weeks before he was scheduled to receive the Medal of Honor.
33:32He was 43 years old.
33:35President Harry Truman presented the medal to his widow,
33:38Linda May David, at a White House ceremony the following month.
33:41The Navy honored David's memory by naming a destroyer escort after him.
33:46USS Albert David was commissioned in 1968 and served until 1990.
33:52George Castleman returned to civilian life after the war.
33:55The lieutenant commander who had watched two submarines sink
33:58and ordered the boarding of a third resumed a quiet existence far from the Atlantic.
34:04Like most veterans of his generation, he rarely spoke of what he had done.
34:08Pillsbury herself served until 1947, when she was decommissioned and placed in reserve.
34:14The Navy brought her back in 1955,
34:17converted to a radar picket ship for Cold War duty along the Atlantic barrier.
34:21She patrolled for Soviet submarines until 1960,
34:25then was decommissioned a final time.
34:27She was sold for scrap in 1966.
34:30No monument marks her service.
34:32No museum displays her artifacts.
34:34The ship that participated in the only submarine capture by American forces since 1815
34:41exists now only in photographs and official records.
34:45But U-505 endures.
34:48In 2004, the Museum of Science and Industry completed a major renovation.
34:53The submarine was moved indoors to a climate-controlled underground exhibit hall.
34:58Visitors can now tour her interior,
35:00preserved almost exactly as she appeared when David's men came through the conning tower hatch.
35:06The Medal of Honor that David never lived to receive is displayed alongside the submarine.
35:11So are the Enigma machines his team recovered,
35:14the codebooks that unlock German communications,
35:17the acoustic torpedoes that revealed enemy secrets.
35:20Over 30 million people have visited the exhibit since 1954.
35:24They walk through the control room where David searched for demolition charges.
35:29They see the valve that Trocino closed to stop the flooding.
35:32They stand in the compartments where eight American sailors saved a sinking enemy vessel
35:37through courage and determination.
35:39The capture of U-505 remains the only time the United States Navy boarded and seized an enemy warship at
35:47sea
35:47since the War of 1812.
35:49It has never happened again.
35:51If this story moved you the way it moved us,
35:54do me a favor.
35:55Hit that like button.
35:57Every single like tells YouTube to show this story to more people.
36:00Hit subscribe and turn on notifications.
36:03We are rescuing forgotten stories from dusty archives every single day.
36:08Stories about sailors who jumped onto sinking submarines
36:10and changed the course of the war.
36:13Real people.
36:14Real heroism.
36:15Drop a comment right now and tell us where you are watching from.
36:18Are you watching from the United States?
36:20United Kingdom?
36:22Canada?
36:23Australia?
36:23Our community stretches across the entire world.
36:26You are not just a viewer.
36:28You are part of keeping these memories alive.
36:30Tell us your location.
36:32Tell us if someone in your family served in the Navy.
36:35Just let us know you are here.
36:38And thank you for making sure Albert David,
36:40George Castleman,
36:41and the crew of USS Pillsbury
36:43do not disappear into silence.
36:46These men deserve to be remembered
36:47and you are helping make that happen.
Comments