U-505 is a German Type IXC submarine built for Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. She was captured by the United States Navy on 4 June 1944 and survives as a museum ship in Chicago.

In her career, she had the distinction of being the "most heavily damaged U-boat to successfully return to port" in World War II, suffering six botched patrols, and becoming the only submarine in which a commanding officer killed himself in combat conditions. On 4 June 1944, she was captured by United States Navy Task Group 22.3 (TG 22.3), one of six U-boats that were captured at sea by Allied forces during the war. All but one of U-505s crew were rescued by the Navy task group. The submarine was towed to Bermuda in secret, and her crew was interned in an American prisoner-of-war camp, where they were kept in isolation. The Navy classified the capture as top secret and went to great lengths to prevent the Germans from discovering it.

In 1954, U-505 was donated to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois. She is now one of four German World War II U-boats that survive as museum ships, and one of just two Type IXCs still in existence, along with .

Design

German Type IXC submarines were slightly larger than the original Type IXBs. U-505 had a displacement of when at the surface and while submerged. The U-boat had a total length of , a pressure hull length of , a beam of , a height of , and a draft of . The submarine was powered by two MAN M 9 V 40/46 supercharged four-stroke, nine-cylinder diesel engines producing a total of for use while surfaced, two Siemens-Schuckert 2 GU 345/34 double-acting electric motors producing a total of for use while submerged. She had two shafts and two propellers. The boat was capable of operating at depths down to .

The submarine had a maximum surface speed of and a maximum submerged speed of . When submerged, the boat could operate for at ; when surfaced, she could travel at . U-505 was fitted with six torpedo tubes (four fitted at the bow and two at the stern), 22 torpedoes, one SK C/32 naval gun, 180 rounds, and a SK C/30, as well as a C/30 antiaircraft gun. The boat had a complement of 48 crew.

Service history

U-505s keel was laid down on 12 June 1940 by Deutsche Werft in Hamburg, Germany, as yard number 295. She was launched on 24 May 1941 and commissioned on 26 August with Kapitänleutnant Axel-Olaf Loewe in command. On 6 September 1942, Loewe was relieved by Kptlt. Peter Zschech. On 24 October 1943, Oberleutnant zur See Paul Meyer took command for about two weeks until he was relieved on 8 November by Oblt.z.S. Harald Lange, who commanded the boat until her capture on 4 June 1944.

Second patrol

U-505 left Lorient on 11 February 1942 on her second patrol. In 86 days, she traveled to the west coast of Africa, where she sank her first vessels. In less than one month, U-505 sank four ships: British Benmohr, Norwegian Sydhav, American West Irmo, and Dutch Alphacca for a total of . On 18 April, U-505 was attacked by an Allied aircraft in the mid-Atlantic, but suffered little damage.

Third patrol

U-505 began her third patrol on 7 June 1942, after leaving her home port of Lorient. She sank the American ships and and the Colombian Urious in the Caribbean Sea. Urious was a sailing ship belonging to a Colombian diplomat, and her sinking was one of a long series of incidents that gave Colombia political grounds to declare war on Germany a year later. U-505 then returned to Lorient on 25 August after 80 days on patrol without being attacked.

Fourth patrol

U-505s fourth patrol sent her to the northern coast of South America. She left Lorient on 4 October, 1942 and sank the British vessel Ocean Justice off the coast of Venezuela on 7 November. On near Trinidad, U-505 was surprised on the surface by a Lockheed Hudson maritime patrol aircraft from No. 53 Squadron, Royal Air Force, which made a low-level attack, landing a bomb directly on the deck from just above water level. The explosion killed one watch officer and wounded another in the conning tower. It also tore the antiaircraft gun off its mounting and severely damaged the boat's pressure hull. The aircraft was hit by fragmentation from the bomb's explosion and crashed into the ocean near U-505, killing the pilot Flight Sergeant Ronald Sillcock (RAAF) and his entire crew. With the pumps inoperative and water flooding the engine room in several places, Kptlt. Zschech ordered the crew to abandon ship, but the technical staff (led by Chief Petty Officer Otto Fricke) insisted on trying to save her. The vessel was made water-tight after almost two weeks of repair work. After sending the wounded watch officer to the supply submarine ("milk cow") , U-505 limped back to Lorient on reduced power.

Aborted patrols

After six months in Lorient for repairs, U-505 started her fifth patrol. She left Lorient on 1 July 1943 and returned after 13 days, after an attack by three British destroyers that had stalked her for over 30 hours. While U-505 was not badly damaged in this encounter, she had to return to France for repairs. U-505s next four patrols were all aborted after only a few days at sea, due to equipment failure and sabotage by French dockworkers working for the Resistance. Faults found included sabotaged electrical and radar equipment, a hole deliberately drilled in a diesel fuel tank, and faulty welds on parts repaired by French workers. This happened so many times that she became the butt of jokes throughout the base at Lorient. Upon returning from one botched patrol, her crew found a sign painted in the docking area reading: "U-505s Hunting Ground". At a time when many U-boats were being sunk, U-505s commander, Kptlt. Zschech, overheard another commander joke, "There is one commander who will always come back ... Zschech."

Tenth patrol and Zschech's suicide

After ten months in Lorient, U-505 departed for her tenth Atlantic patrol, seeking to break her run of bad morale. British destroyers spotted her east of the Azores on 24 October 1943, not long after crossing the Bay of Biscay, and she was forced to submerge and endure a severe depth-charge attack. Zschech committed suicide in the submarine's control room, shooting himself in the head in front of his crew. First-watch officer Paul Meyer took command and returned the boat to port with minimal damage. Meyer was "absolved from all blame" by the Kriegsmarine for the incident. Zschech is recorded as the only known submariner during the war to commit suicide underwater in response to the stress of a prolonged depth charging.

U-505 took part in Wolfpack Hela from 28 December 1943 until 1 January 1944. The US Navy dispatched Task Group 22.3 to the area, a hunter-killer group commanded by Captain Daniel V. Gallery. TG 22.3 consisted of the escort aircraft carrier and the destroyer escorts , , , , and under Commander Frederick S. Hall. The group sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, on 15 May 1944 and began searching for U-boats in the area in late May, using high-frequency direction-finding fixes ("huff-duff") and air and surface reconnaissance.

Detection and attack

At 11:09 on 4 June 1944, TG 22.3 made sonar (ASDIC) contact with U-505 at , about off the coast of Río de Oro (Spanish Sahara)

thumb|right|Depth charges explode near the German submarine U-505 in the Atlantic Ocean on 4 June 1944

Chatelain was so close to U-505 that depth charges would not sink fast enough to intercept the U-boat, so she fired Hedgehog antisubmarine mortars before passing the submarine and turning to make a follow-up attack with depth charges. Less than seven minutes after Chatelains first attack began, the badly damaged submarine surfaced less than away.

Chatelain and Jenks collected survivors, while an eight-man party from Pillsbury led by Lt. Albert David came alongside the submarine in a boat and entered through the conning tower. They found the body of Signalman First Class Gottfried Fischer on the deck, the only fatality of the combat, and U505 was deserted. They secured charts and codebooks, closed scuttling valves, disarmed demolition charges, and stopped her engines. The vessel was low in the water and down by the stern.

Pillsbury attempted to take the submarine in tow, but repeatedly collided with her and had to move away with three compartments flooded. A second boarding party from Guadalcanal then rigged a towline from the aircraft carrier to the U-boat. Secrecy was so important to the mission that the submarine's flag was kept under the personal care of the Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet during the duration of the war. The submarine's crewmen were isolated from other prisoners of war, and the Red Cross was denied access to them. The Kriegsmarine finally declared the crew dead and informed the families to that effect, and the crew was not returned until 1947.

Awards

Historian Clay Blair states that United States Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest King was furious with Gallery for endangering Ultra, the intelligence gained from Enigma decrypts, and considered court-martialling him.

If the knowledge that a U-boat had been captured had reached Germany, the U-boat Arm would have made changes to tighten Enigma security, leading to an intelligence blackout on the eve of the Normandy landings. Since the British had gained access to Enigma with the captures of U-110 in 1941 and U-559 in 1942 the standard practice was to sink Uboats outright rather than trying to board and capture them, for this reason. However, "cooler heads prevailed".

At the end of the war in Europe, she was used to promote E War Bond sales as part of the "Mighty 7th" War Loan drive. Anyone who purchased a bond could also purchase a ticket to board and inspect her. In June 1945, she visited New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Captain Gallery was present for the opening of the exhibition in Washington, DC.

The Navy had no further use for U-505 after the war. Experts had thoroughly examined her in Bermuda, and she was moored derelict at the Portsmouth Navy Yard, so the Navy decided to use her as a target for gunnery and torpedo practice until she sank.

The museum dedicated her on 25 September 1954 as a permanent exhibit and a war memorial to all the sailors who died in the first and second Atlantic campaigns.

Museum ship

thumb|right|Marker at the Museum of Science and Industry

Nearly every removable part had been stripped from the boat's interior by the time she went to the museum; she was in no condition to serve as an exhibit, so museum director Lohr asked for replacements from the German manufacturers who had supplied the boat's original components and parts. Admiral Gallery reports in his autobiography Eight Bells and All's Well that every company supplied the requested parts without charge. Most included letters to the effect that the manufacturers wanted her to be a credit to German technology.

A reunion was held at the museum in 1964, 20 years after the ship's capture, where Gallery returned to Lange some binoculars from the ship that had belonged to him.

The Navy had removed the periscope and placed it in a water tank used for research at its Arctic Submarine Laboratory in Point Loma, California, where it was forgotten. It was salvaged before the lab was demolished in 2003, and the Navy donated it to the museum to be displayed along with the submarine.

By 2004, the U-boat's exterior had suffered noticeable damage from the weather, so the museum moved her to a new climate-controlled location (under ground next to the MSI) in April 2004. They restored and reopened her to the public on 5 June 2005.

Captain Gallery recounted the capture of U-505 in his 1951 memoir Clear the Decks. Gary Moore recounts a dramatized story of the captured crew in his 2006 historical fiction book Playing with the Enemy. Hans Goebeler recounts the story of the boat's patrols and her crew in his 2005 memoir Steel Boats, Iron Hearts: A U-Boat Crewman's Life Aboard U-505. Alexander Rose extensively documents the story of the Navy's pursuit of the boat in his 2025 historical narrative Phantom Fleet: The Hunt for Nazi Submarine U-505 and World War II’s Most Daring Heist.

Summary of raiding history

{| class="wikitable sortable" style="margin: 1em 1em ;"|-

! Date

! Ship

! Nationality

! Tonnage<br />(GRT)

! Fate

|-

|align="right"|5 March 1942

|align="left" |Benmohr

|align="left" |

|align="right"|5,920

|align="left" |Sunk

|-

|align="right"|6 March 1942

|align="left" |Sydhav

|align="left" |

|align="right"|7,587

|align="left" |Sunk

|-

|align="right"|3 April 1942

|align="left" |West Irmo

|align="left" |

|align="right"|5,775

|align="left" |Sunk

|-

|align="right"|4 April 1942

|align="left" |Alphacca

|align="left" |

|align="right"|5,759

|align="left" |Sunk

|-

|align="right"|28 June 1942

|align="left" |Sea Thrush

|align="left" |

|align="right"|5,447

|align="left" |Sunk

|-

|align="right"|29 June 1942

|align="left" |

|align="left" |

|align="right"|7,191

|align="left" |Sunk

|-

|align="right"|22 July 1942

|align="left" |Urious

|align="left" |

|align="right"|153

|align="left" |Sunk

|-

|align="right"|7 November 1942

|align="left" |Ocean Justice

|align="left" |

|align="right"|7,173

|align="left" |Sunk

|}

See also

Wartime captured German U-boats

  • , later HMS Graph

Surviving German U-boats

  • SM U-1

Other

  • List of submarine museums
  • Playing With the Enemy
  • U-571

References

Bibliography

  • Clay Blair : Hitler's U-Boat War Vol II:The Hunted 1942-1945 (1998).
  • Gallery, Daniel V. (1958). We Captured a U-Boat. London: The Popular Book Company.
  • Gallery, Daniel V. (1978). U-505. New York: Warner Books.
  • Goebeler, Hans Jacob, with Vanzo, John. (1999) Steel Boats, Iron Hearts: The Wartime Saga of Hans Goebeler and U-505 (Wagnerian Publications). OCLC . This privately distributed paperback book was later reprinted as
  • Harris, Wesley. (2006). Fish Out of Water: Nazi Submariners as Prisoners in North Louisiana During World War II. RoughEdge Publications.
  • Kohnen, David. "Tombstone of Victory: Tracking the U-505 From German Commerce Raider to American War Memorial, 1944–1954" in The Journal of America's Military Past (Winter 2007).
  • Kohnen, David. Commanders Winn and Knowles: Winning the U-boat War with Intelligence, 1939–1943 (Enigma Press, 1999).
  • Kohnen, David. "F-21 and F-211: A Fresh Look into the Secret Room" in Randy C. Bolano and Craig L. Symonds, ed., New Sources in Naval History: Selected Papers from the Fourteenth Naval History Symposium (Naval Institute, 2001).
  • Moore, Gary W. (2006) Playing with the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams. Savas Beatie LLC, New York.
  • Popular description of the capture of U-505 by a former naval officer and professor.
  • Savas, Theodore P., Editor. (2004) Hunt and Kill: U-505 and the U-boat War in the Atlantic. Savas Beatie LLC, New York.
  • U-505 at MSIChicago.org
  • U-505 at uboatarchive.net
  • U-505 at HNSA Ship (archived)
  • Panel Discussion , Pritzker Military Library, 4 February 2013, about the U-505 moderated by John Allen Williams with panelists Marc Milner, Stephen Budiansky and Kurt Haunfelner
  • Oberfunkmatt Gottfried Fischer's personal diary
  • Mark Felton's video report on U-505
  • Away Boarders! - the US Governments official film on the capture of U-505
  • Steel Boat, Iron Hearts: A U-boat Crewman's Life Aboard U-505 The story of the U-505 and its dramatic capture by the US Navy during WWII—told by one of its crewmen, Hans Goebeler.