Your Mine Now, U-Boat
U-505 Under Tow By The USS Guadalcanal

After voyage repairs at Norfolk, Guadalcanal and her escorts departed Hampton Roads for sea again on 15 May 1944. Two weeks of cruising brought no contacts, and Gallery decided to head the Task Group for the coast of Africa to refuel. However, on 4 June 1944, ten minutes after reversing course 150 miles West of Cape Blanco in French West Africa, Chatelain detected U-505 as it was returning to its base in after an 80-day patrol in the Gulf of Guinea. The destroyer loosed one depth charge attack; then made a second, more accurate drop, guided in by circling aircraft from Guadalcanal. This pattern blew relief valves all over the U-boat, cracked pipes in her engine room, and rolled her on her beam ends. Shouts of panic from the engine room led Oberleutnant Harald Lange, making his first patrol as her captain, to believe his boat was mortally wounded. To save his crew, he blew his tanks and surfaced, coming up barely 700 yards from Chatelain. The destroyer fired a torpedo, which missed, and the surfaced submarine then came under the combined fire of the escorts and aircraft as her crew abandoned ship.

Captain Gallery had been waiting and planning for such an opportunity, and had trained and equipped boarding parties. He ordered Pillsbury to send a boat with a boarding party to the U-boat. Under the command of Lieutenant, junior grade Albert David, the party leaped onto the slowly circling submarine and found her abandoned. Lt. David and his men quickly seized all important papers, code books, and the boat's Enigma machine while closing valves and stopping leaks. As Pillsbury attempted to get a tow-line on her the party managed to stop her engines. A larger salvage party from Guadalcanal arrived, led by Commander Earl Trosino, Guadalcanal's Chief Engineer, and prepared U-505 for towing. After securing the tow-line and picking up the German survivors from the sea, Guadalcanal started for Bermuda with her priceless prize in tow. The fleet tug USS Abnaki rendezvoused with the task group and took over towing duties. The group arrived in Bermuda on 19 June after a 2,500-mile tow. Trosino, a chief engineer in the civilian Merchant Marine before the war, had figured out the U-boat's engines, and wanted to bring her into port under her own power. Gallery refused permission; he later apologized to Trosino for doubting his skill.

U-505 was the first enemy warship captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy since 1815. For their daring and skillful teamwork in this remarkable capture, Guadalcanal and her escorts shared in a Presidential Unit Citation. Lieutenant David received the Medal of Honor for leading the boarding party, and Captain Gallery received the Legion of Merit for conceiving the operation that led to U-505's capture. 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.