Beginning
with the knowledge of the ultimate outcome, it would be easy for a casual
student of history to believe that the Allies were destined to win World War II
and that Nazi Germany and the Axis powers would be defeated. What few Americans
comprehend – even now – is the fact that right up into 1944, an Allied win was
not a sure thing. One reason was the toll Nazi submarines were taking on Allied
merchant shipping and the real possibility that with 40% of the war supplies
she desperately needed going to the bottom month after month, England might not
be able to hold out.
In all, Nazi Germany launched 1174
submarines in the course of the war under the leadership of Admiral Karl Dӧnitz,
a genius in undersea warfare and an officer revered by his crews. With the fall
of France, U-boats were conveniently deployed from protected “pens” at
Ste.Nazaire and Lorient, where they could be outfitted for long-distance war
patrols, both singly, and later in “wolf packs”. By war’s end, they would sink nearly 4,000
Allied ships taking at least 36,000 sailors to the bottom with them in what is
known as “The Battle of the Atlantic”.
One of those U-boats (untersee boots) was the U-505, a type VII-C
boat which carried a crew of about 60, and a war load of 24 torpedoes. In the
German Navy as in those of other WWII nations, there were submarines which
would be known as “lucky boats” to those who served aboard, and there would be
those that earned the opposite reputation. Right from its launching in May 1941,
U-505 would be an “unlucky boat”. Plagued by a series of mechanical failures
and aborted missions, they just barely survived such a terrific mauling by
Allied depth charges and aircraft attacks on their 4th patrol that
they set a record as the most heavily-damaged U-boat to make its way back to
port for repairs. As if things weren’t bad enough, their second Commanding
Officer – dazed by constant undersea bombardment on the 10th patrol
- went mad and shot himself in the head in the presence of his traumatized
crew!
Hoping to restore crew morale and
stability, U-505 was deployed on its 12th patrol in late April, 1944
with a new and very experienced Commander, 41-year old Oberleutenant zur See
Harold Lange., who, unfortunately, and through no fault of his own, was about
to meet up with U.S. Navy Captain Daniel Gallery and his Task Group 22.3 off
the coast of North Africa. With his Aircraft Carrier “USS Guadalcanal” and a squadron of specially trained destroyer
escorts, Dan Gallery had set out to find, damage and capture an enemy U-boat intact,
seaworthy and – most importantly – the secret German Naval codes which
would be locked in the commander’s safe.
The amazing story of how this
wartime “coup” came about has been well and often written about, with several
excellent television documentaries still current, and so I need spend little
space on that part of the account. There
are however several side-bar stories worth revisiting. For one thing, there is
much to admire in the decisions made by Captain Lange: with his boat forced to
the surface and under heavy machine-gun fire from Gallery’s destroyers, he had
only minutes to decide how to protect his craft’s secrets, honor his
obligations as a German officer, and yet save the lives of his crew. He managed
to do all of that, with the loss of only one life. On the other hand, Dan
Gallery’s superbly-trained assault team managed to thwart the scuttling
actions, secure the heavily-damaged U-boat and recover the secret German codes
which – together with a captured “Enigma machine” - changed the course of WWII
in the Atlantic.
To me, as a passionate researcher
and history buff, there remains a largely-untold and tantalizing side
story. For the purloined code book and
other documents to be worth all the effort of planning, training and acts of
courage involved, it was absolutely imperative that the whole thing be kept
secret from the Germans, who must believe that the U-505 was simply “lost at
sea with all hands”. For that creative fiction to be maintained, the 58 German
officers and men had to be held in secret custody, their families unaware of
their survival, while the three thousand U.S. sailors involved in Task Group
22.3 must remain silent until war’s end. That all of that took place is itself
one of the remarkable stories of World War II.
Ironically, as June 4th,
2012 dawns and I contemplate this article posted 67 years later to the day, I
hold in my hands a document from the archives listing the names and postings of
those 58 German submariners of U-505’s final patrol, along with pages from the
carefully-kept personal diary of Oberfunkmaat
(Signalman 1st class) Gottfried Fischer, the only man to lose his
life that day.
A FINAL NOTE: U.S. Navy Admiral Daniel Gallery of Chicago,
(1901 – 1977) and former German Navy Captain Harald Lange, of Hamburg, (1903 –
1967) remained friends throughout their lives. U-505 also lives on at the
Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago, Illinois where it has been visited
by millions. (Another story.) The death
rate for German submariners in WWII was 75%.
28,000 U-boat crewmen failed to return home from their final patrol.
Photo
Caption: Boarded and saved from
sinking with minutes to spare by brave sailors of the Destroyer Escort U.S.S.
Spillsbury, the foundering U-505, with American colors flying from the conning
tower, is taken into tow for its long and secret voyage to Bermuda, on June 4th,
1944. U.S. Navy Archives
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