U-505 (Submarine, Museum Ship) 1941

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Arturo
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U-505 (Submarine, Museum Ship) 1941

Post by Arturo » Thu Apr 09, 2015 7:58 pm

U-505 is a German Type IXC U-boat built for service in Nazi Germany's “Kriegsmarine” during World War II. She was captured on 4 June 1944 by United States Navy Task Group 22.3. Her codebooks, Enigma machine, and other secret materials found on board assisted Allied code breaking operations.

All but one of U-505 's crew were rescued by the Navy task group. The submarine was towed to Bermuda in secret and her crew was interned at a prisoner of war camp. The Navy classified the capture as top secret and prevented its discovery by the Germans. In 1954, U-505 was donated to the Museum in Chicago, and is now a museum ship.

She is one of six U-boats that were captured by Allied forces during World War II, and the first warship to be captured by U.S. forces on the high seas since the War of 1812. In her uniquely unlucky career with the “Kriegsmarine”, she also had the distinction of being the "most heavily damaged U-boat to successfully return to port" in World War II and the only submarine in which a commanding officer took his own life in combat conditions.

U-505 's keel was laid down on 12 June 1940 by “Deutsche Werft” in Hamburg, Germany as yard number 295. She was launched on 25 May 1941 and commissioned on 26 August 1941. She conducted twelve patrols in her career, sinking eight ships totaling 44,962 gross register tons (GRT). Three of these were American, two British, one Norwegian, one Dutch, and one Colombian ships.

U-505 left Lorient on 11 February 1942 on her second patrol. In 86 days, she traveled down to the west coast of Africa where she sank her first vessels. In less than one month, U-505 sank four ships: the British Benmohr, the Norwegian Sydhav, the American West Irmo, and the Dutch Alphacca for a total of 25,041 GRT. On 18 April, U-505 was attacked by an Allied aircraft in the mid-Atlantic but suffered little damage.

U-505 began her third patrol on 7 June 1942, after leaving her home port of Lorient. She sank the American ships Sea Thrush and Thomas McKean and the Colombian Roamar in the Caribbean Sea. The Roamar was a sailing ship belonging to a Colombian diplomat, so its sinking gave Colombia political grounds to declare war on Germany. U-505 then returned to Lorient on 25 August after 80 days on patrol without being attacked.

U-505 's fourth patrol sent her to the northern coast of South America. She left Lorient on 4 October and sank the British vessel Ocean Justice off the coast of Venezuela on 7 November. On 10 November 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 250 lb (110 kg) 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 anti-aircraft gun off its mounting and severely damaged the ship's pressure hull. The aircraft was hit by shrapnel from the bomb's explosion and crashed into the ocean near U-505, killing the 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-462, U-505 limped back to Lorient on reduced power, earning the distinction of being the "most heavily damaged U-boat to successfully return to port".

After six months in Lorient for repairs, she left Lorient on 1 July 1943 but returned after only 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-505's 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.

After ten months in Lorient, U-505 departed. On 24 October 1943, not long after crossing the Bay of Biscay, U-505 was spotted by British destroyers east of the Azores and was forced to submerge and endure a severe and lengthy depth-charge attack.

In a testament to both the intensity of the attack and his own instability, Kptlt. Zschech snapped under the strain and committed suicide in the submarine's control room, shooting himself in the head in front of his crew. The first watch officer, Paul Meyer, quickly took command, rode out the rest of the attack, and returned the boat to port with minimal damage.

Zschech is recorded as the first submariner in history to commit suicide underwater in response to the stress of a prolonged depth charging, and the first (and thus far only) officer to commit suicide while commanding a warship in battle.

Ultra intelligence from decrypted German cipher messages had informed the Allies that U-boats were operating near Cape Verde, but had not revealed their exact locations. The U.S. Navy dispatched Task Group 22.3, a "Hunter-Killer" group, commanded by Captain Daniel V. Gallery, USN, to the area. TG 22.3 consisted of Gallery's escort aircraft carrier Guadalcanal, and five destroyer escorts under Commander Frederick S. Hall: Pillsbury, Pope, Flaherty, Chatelain, and Jenks. On 15 May 1944, TG 22.3 sailed from Norfolk, Virginia. Starting in late May, the task group began searching for U-boats in the area, using high-frequency direction-finding fixes ("Huff-Duff") and air and surface reconnaissance.

At 11:09 on 4 June 1944, TG 22.3 made sonar (ASDIC) contact with U-505 at about 150 nmi off the coast of Río de Oro. The sonar contact was only 800 yards (700 m) away off Chatelain 's starboard bow. The escorts immediately moved towards the contact, while Guadalcanal moved away at top speed and launched an F4F Wildcat fighter to join another Wildcat and a TBM Avenger which were already airborne.

Chatelain was so close to U-505 that depth charges would not sink fast enough to intercept the U-boat, so instead she fired Hedgehogs before passing the submarine and turning to make a follow-up attack with depth charges. At around this time, one of the aircraft sighted U-505 and fired into the water to mark the position while Chatelain dropped depth charges. Immediately after the detonation of the charges a large oil slick spread on the water and the fighter pilot overhead radioed, "You struck oil! Sub is surfacing!" Less than seven minutes after Chatelain 's first attack began, the badly damaged U-505 surfaced less than 600 metres (700 yd) away. Chatelain immediately commenced fire on U-505 with all available automatic weapons, joined by other ships of the task force as well as the two Wildcats.

Believing U-505 to be seriously damaged, Oblt.z.S. Lange ordered his crew to abandon ship. This order was obeyed so promptly that scuttling was not completed, (although some valves were opened) and the engines were left running. With the engines still functioning and the rudder damaged by depth charges, U-505 circled clockwise at approximately 7 knots. Seeing the U-boat turning toward him and believing she was preparing to attack, the commanding officer of Chatelain ordered a single torpedo to be fired at the submarine; the torpedo missed, passing ahead of the now-abandoned U-505.

While Chatelain and Jenks collected survivors, an eight-man party from Pillsbury led by Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Albert David came alongside U-505 in a boat and entered through the conning tower. There was a dead man on the deck (the only fatality of the action), but U-505 was otherwise deserted. The boarding party secured charts and codebooks, closed scuttling valves, and disarmed demolition charges. They stopped the water coming in, and although low in the water and down by the stern, U-505 remained afloat. They also stopped her engines.

While the boarding party secured U-505, Pillsbury attempted to take her in tow, but collided repeatedly with her and had to move away with three compartments flooded. Instead, a second boarding party from Guadalcanal rigged a towline from the aircraft carrier to the U-boat.

After three days of towing, Guadalcanal transferred U-505 to the fleet tug Abnaki. On Monday, 19 June, U-505 entered Port Royal Bay, Bermuda, after a tow of 1,700 nautical miles.

This action was the first time the U.S. Navy had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the War of 1812. 58 prisoners were taken from U-505, three of them wounded (including Lange); only one of the crew was killed in the action. U-505 's crew was interned at Camp Ruston, near Ruston, Louisiana.

The cipher materials captured on U-505 included the special "coordinate" code, the regular and officer Enigma settings for June 1944, the current short weather codebook, the short signal codebook, and bigram tables due to come into effect in July and August respectively.

That U-505 was captured and towed—rather than merely sunk after the codebooks had been taken—was considered to have endangered the Ultra secret. The U.S.Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral King, considered court-martialling Captain Gallery. To protect the secret, U-505 's crewmen, who knew of the U-boat's capture, were isolated from other prisoners of war; the Red Cross were denied access to them. Ultimately, the “Kriegsmarine” declared the crew dead and informed the families to that effect. The last of the German crew was not returned until 1947.

U-505 was kept at the navy base in Bermuda and intensively studied by U.S. Navy intelligence and engineering officers. Some of what was learned was included in postwar diesel submarine designs. To maintain the illusion that she had been sunk rather than captured, she was temporarily renamed USS Nemo.

On 25 September 1954, U-505 was dedicated as a permanent exhibit and a war memorial to all the sailors who lost their lives in the two Battles of the Atlantic.

St Thomas & Principe 2008, S.G.?, Scott: 1829.

Source: Wikipedia.
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