Capture of U-505

4 June 1944, Atlantic, off Cape Blanco, West Africa

American success; U-505 captured

Captain Daniel Gallery's hunter-killer group, the escort carrier Guadalcanal and five destroyer escorts, had been searching for U-boats off West Africa for weeks, helped by codebreaking, and Gallery had made a plan to capture one. On the morning of 4 June 1944 Chatelain picked up U-505 on sonar, and her depth charges, guided by fighters from the carrier, holed her and forced her to the surface. Her crew abandoned ship under fire, and one man was killed. A boarding party from Pillsbury under Lieutenant (jg) Albert David climbed down the conning tower, shut a sea cock the Germans had opened, pulled away scuttling charges, and took her Enigma machine and code books. Guadalcanal took her in tow. Her 58 surviving crew were held apart from other prisoners so that Germany would believe she had sunk. She was the first enemy warship captured at sea by the US Navy since 1815, and is now a museum ship in Chicago.