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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 ...
Daniel Vincent Gallery (July 10, 1901 – January 16, 1977) was a rear admiral in the United States Navy.He saw extensive action during World War II, fighting U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic, where his most notable achievement was the June 4, 1944 capture of the German submarine U-505.
Zenon B. Lukosius (August 24, 1918 – August 12, 2006) was an American World War II veteran who was a member of the U.S. Navy crew that captured the German submarine U-505, in 1944. This was the first time that the US Navy had captured an enemy ship since the nineteenth century.
The U-boat's captain, five officers, and fifty-three of her crew were rescued, taken prisoner, then held incommunicado to keep the boat's capture secret. U-505 was towed 2,500 miles to Bermuda and revealed some of the German Navy's most guarded secrets. The U-505 is now permanently displayed at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. [2] [3]
A second attack by Chatelain, this time with depth charges, holed U-505 ' s outer hull and forced her to surface, her crew jumping overboard as she broke water. Now the task group seized its chance to carry out the boarding operation it had been planning for months, for the first capture by Americans of an intact German submarine.
On 10 October 1943, U-505 finally managed to leave successfully on patrol after six failed attempts. After only 14 days, she drew the attention of a pair of Allied destroyers while surfaced off the Azores and came under concentrated depth charge attack, a procedure all too common for U-boat crews by this point in the war.
Two U-boats that survived Operation Deadlight are today museum ships. U-505 was earmarked for scuttling, but American Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery argued successfully that she did not fall under Operation Deadlight. United States Navy Task Group 22.3, under then-Captain Gallery, had captured U-505 in battle on 4 June 1944.
The captured submarine proved to be of inestimable value to American intelligence. For the remainder of the war she was operated by the U.S. Navy as the USS Nemo to learn the secrets of German U-boats. Her true fate was kept secret until the end of the war. U-505 is now an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.