Hunt and Kill

by Theodore P. Savas

  189. NARA, RG 38, U-505 Documents, memorandum “U.S.S. NEMO,” December 11, 1944. Cited hereafter as NARA, RG 38, Nemo Documents, Nemo Memorandum.

  190. NARA, RG 38, Nemo Documents, Nemo Memorandum, 3.

  191. Y’Blood, Hunter-Killer, 197.

  192. NARA, RG 38, Messages, message 242045, COMINCH to COMDT NOB BERMUDA, June 24, 1944.

  193. Ibid.

  194. NARA, RG 38, Messages, message 271437, COMINCH to COMDT NOB BERMUDA, June 27, 1944; NARA, RG 38, Messages, message 042143, COMINCH to Admiralty, July 4, 1944.

  195. NARA, RG 38, OP-16-Z (Special Activities Branch); 1941-1945; Interrogations: U-505 to U-512; folder “U-505;” U-505 Rough Interrogations; interrogation of Mechanikerobergefreiter Karl Heinz Werner Hönemann. Cited hereafter as NARA, RG 38, Interrogations.

  196. NARA, RG 38, Messages, message 012111, COMINCH to CINCLANT, July 1, 1944. Emphasis added.

  197. NARA, RG 38, Messages, message 282217, NOB BERMUDA to COMINCH, June 28, 1944.

  198. NARA, RG 38, Messages, message 081330, NOB BERMUDA to COMINCH, July 8, 1944; message 031834, NOB BERMUDA to COMINCH, July 3, 1944; message 171457, NOB BERMUDA to COMINCH, July 17, 1944.

  199. NARA, RG 38, Messages, message 061617, BAD to Admiralty, September 6, 1944.

  200. NARA, RG 457, COMINT History, 229-230.

  201. NARA, RG 38, Interrogations.

  202. NARA, RG 38, Interrogations, interrogation of Hönemann.

  203. NARA, RG 38, Interrogations, interrogations of Hönemann and Maschinenobergefreiter Willi Karl Kneisel.

  204. NARA, RG 38, Interrogations, interrogations of Funkobergefreiter Erich Wilhelm Kalbitz and Funkgefreiter Erich Hans Laun.

  205. NARA, RG 38, Interrogations. The crew was apparently interrogated further after their arrival in the United States, but the author could not locate any notes for smooth interrogations in RG 38.

  206. NARA, RG 38, Messages, Memorandum for the Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, from Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, January 25, 1945; C. Herbert Gilliland and Robert Shenk, Admiral Dan Gallery: The Life and Wit of a Navy Original (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 129.

  207. NARA, RG 38, U-505 documents, message 051407, GCCS to OP-20-G, June 5, 1944. Emphasis added.

  208. NARA, RG 38, memorandum from Wenger to Smith-Hutton, June 5, 1944, attached to message 051407, June 5, 1944.

  209. Ibid.

  210. NARA, RG 38, COMINT History, 227.

  Collision Course: Task Group 22.3 and the Hunt for U-505

  by Lawrence Paterson

  1. NARA, RG 38, U-Boat Intelligence Summary 52, April 28, 1944. For a good history of these offensive carrier groups and their operations, see William T. Y’Blood, Hunter-Killer: U.S. Escort Carriers in the Battle of the Atlantic (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983).

  2. Daniel Gallery, Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea (Chicago, IL: Regnery, 1956), 273. An outstanding biography of Werner Henke and the history of U-515, including its final days and aftermath that led to the death of this U-boat ace, can be found in Timothy P. Mulligan, Lone Wolf: The Life and Death of U-Boat Ace Werner Henke (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993).

  3. TG22.3, “Report on Capture of German Submarine U-505,” Action Report of Task Group 22.3, June 19, 1944, RG 38, NA-CP (TG22.3 Report); Gallery, Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea, 247-79.

  4. “Oral History—Battle of the Atlantic, 1941-1945”; Daniel V. Gallery Interview, recorded May 26, 1945, Box 11/World War II Interviews, Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center, Washington (hereafter Gallery Interview, May 26, 1945).

  5. Captain Henri H. Smith-Hutton, USN (Ret.), Reminiscences of Captain Henri Smith-Hutton, U.S. Navy (Retired), 2 vols. (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1976), vol. 2, August 22, 1974. Interview, 402, provided courtesy of Mark E. Wise, USNR.

  6. War Diary of U-505, PG 30542/1-7; T1022, 3065-3066.

  7. Ibid., 4186.

  8. Hans Joachim Decker, “404 Days! The War Patrol Life of the German U-505,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 86, No. 3 (March 1960), 44-45.

  9. NARA, RG 38, Daily Locations, May 21, 1944; Naval Historical Center, BdU War Logs, May 21, 1944, provided courtesy of Mark E. Wise, USNR.

  10. NARA, RG 38, KTB, 59.

  11. Daniel V. Gallery Interview, May 26, 1945.

  12. Diary Excerpt from V. J. Verdolini, RM2/c, USS Guadal canal (CVE-60).

  13. NARA, RG 38, Daily Locations, May 22-June 1, 1944; Naval Historical Center, BdU War Logs, May 22-June 1, 1944, provided courtesy of Mark E. Wise, USNR.

  14. TG22.3 Report.

  15. NARA, RG 38, TG22.3 Report, entry for 4 June 1944, Commander USS Chatelain to Commander Task Group 22.3; VC-8, ASW6 After Action Report.

  16. Decker, “404 Days! The War Patrol Life of the German U-505,” 45.

  Desperate Decisions: The German Loss of U-505

  by Jordan Vause

  1. A pair of other U-boats had been captured by the time of Gallery’s exploit. The details of their seizure, however, were kept secret and BdU (German submarine command headquarters) never knew anything about them. Kptlt. Fritz Julius Lemp’s U-110 was temporarily captured by British forces after several depth-charge attacks (even her crew did not realize the boat was boarded by enemy forces) but sank while under tow. Unfortunately for the Germans, records found aboard included a top secret Enigma machine and secret documents relating to it. On August 27, 1941, U-570 was damaged by a British Hudson aircraft and her commander, Kptlt. Hans Rahmlow, surrendered to the plane without any surface ships in the vicinity. The British towed her to Thorlakshafn, Iceland, and converted her into the HMS Graph on September 19, 1941.

  2. Jürgen Oesten, E-mail, 27 July 1998. Oesten, a recipient of the Knight’s Cross, was the commander of U-61, a Type II boat, and U-106 and U-861, both Type IX boats. U-106 was very similar to U-505. Oesten is an outspoken man who will not hesitate to share his views on anything, including the U-505 affair. His input is always helpful.

  3. Peter Hansen, Letter, September 12, 1998. Hansen was a Kriegsmarine officer who worked for the Abwehr during the war. For that reason he seems to know a lot more about the men and the affairs of the U-Bootwaffe than most people would suspect. When U-505 was hit with sabotage in Lorient, Hansen was part of the investigative team and had the opportunity to speak with several of her crew.

  4. Siegfried Koitschka, Letter, September 6, 1991. Koitschka, another Knight’s Cross holder, was the captain of two boats, U-7 (a Type II U-Bootschulflottille, or school boat) and U-616 (a Type VIIC). He was captured two weeks before the U-505 incident when his U-616 was hunted to exhaustion for three days east of Spain in May of 1944. He surfaced, saved everyone in his crew, and his U-boat sank. Koitschka died in 2002.

  5. Oesten, E-mail, October 13, 1999.

  6. Koitschka Letter.

  7. Statement of Commanding Officer, U-505. This can be found online at http://uboat.net/allies/ships/uss-guadalcanal-5.htm, or in Appendix C herein.

  8. Taking U-505 in tow with some or all of her crewmen still aboard would have been foolhardy. If the boat went down while attached to a towing hawser, major complications would have ensued for the towing ship. If the boat fired a torpedo up the hawser at the towing ship, it could not miss.

  9. Hans Jacob Goebeler and John Vanzo, Steel Boats, Iron Hearts: The Wartime Saga of Hans Goebeler and the U-505 (Wagnerian Publications, 1999). Goebeler was a Maschinengefreiter (fireman) who had served in the crew since the days of the boat’s first skipper, Axel-Olaf Loewe. On the morning U-505 was bombed to the surface he was in the control room, one of the team who tried so hard to pull the boat out of its uncontrolled dive just before she surfaced. Some controversy surrounded Goebeler in his later years (he died shortly after his book was published). To put it bluntly, he was not entirely trusted by certain elements of the U-Bootwaffe community who thought he exaggerated his role during the final minutes of U-505. Goebeler’s firsthand version is the most complete German account we have of the events of June 4
, 1944. Many of the concerns about Goebeler can be traced to the political squabbles within the U-Bootwaffe community (and to some of those outside this exclusive community who think fancifully they are part of it). Like several other U-Boat veterans, Goebeler has become a symbol of a greater struggle.

  10. Oesten, E-mail, July 27, 1998. As a follow-up to this comment, Oesten was asked whether it was more important to save the crew or to prevent the boat’s capture. His response was interesting and reflects the cynicism he began to experience as the war progressed. “My answer is bound to be pure speculation—to be or not to be a hero…and the answer might differ whether it concerns my first, second, or third boat. As I knew that the war was definitely lost since the beginning of 1942, I guess I would not have taken an unnecessary risk on the third boat and would have tried to save my crew.”

  11. Oesten, E-mail.

  12. Information on members of U-505’s crew was taken from Naval Archives Record Group 38, Records of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Office of Naval Intelligence (OP 16-Z), 1942-45.

  13. Goebeler, Steel Boats, Iron Hearts, 96.

  14. Ibid., 152.

  15. Engineering officers in the Kriegsmarine were trained differently than line officers, and normally did not rise to command. It is worth noting, however, that any officer, Hauser included, would have been expected to take command in the absence of an eligible line officer. The most striking example of this occurred in 1943, when U-441 was brought home under the command of its doctor after her other officers had been incapacitated in a firefight.

  16. Not all boats were outfitted with explosive charges. Jürgen Oesten states flatly that none of the three boats he commanded had demolition charges on board. Oesten, E-mail, November 24, 1999.

  17. Hansen, Letter, September 12, 1998.

  18. Goebeler, Steel Boats, Iron Hearts, 152.

  19. Hansen, Letter, December 18, 1999.

  20. Oesten, E-mail, November 24, 1999.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Goebeler, 126.

  23. Oesten, E-mail, November 24, 1999.

  24. This point was emphasized well in Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s novel (and movie) Das Boot.

  25. Oesten, E-mail, November 24, 1999.

  26. This is the point where some people start to get edgy about Hans Goebeler’s credibility—after all, he was the only one present. But when the onion is peeled back and the circumstances examined closely, there does not seem to be any real debate about the facts he presented.

  27. Jordan Vause, U-Boat Ace: The Story of Wolfgang Lüth (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990), 81-85. In February 1941, U-43 sank at her berth in Lorient, a victim not of torpedoes or bombs, but of the wrong sequence of valves being left open by an unknown crewman. She took at least twelve hours to go down.

  28. For what it is worth, Oesten cannot think of a better fitting to have selected if there was time to open only one.

  29. Goebeler, Steel Boats, Iron Hearts, 152.

  30. Hansen, Letter, September 12, 1998.

  Project 356: U-505 and the Journey to Chicago

  by Keith R. Gill

  1. Jay Pridmore, Inventive Genius: The History of the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago, IL: Museum Books, 1996), 16.

  2. U-1 is presented in full cutaway view so visitors can see into the boat for its entire length. This helps them understand the more important compartments and how sailors lived and worked in a foreign environment. U-1 was commissioned on December 6, 1906, and eventually used as a training boat for WWI crews. The museum attempted unsuccessfully to acquire several different submarines. These included Simon Lake’s historic Argonaut and a variety of different classes of American boats (H, L, O and S), including O-12, which was renamed Nautilus.

  3. The summary of Daniel V. Gallery’s postwar assignments was taken from C. Herbert Gilliland and Robert Shenk, Admiral Dan Gallery: The Life and Wit of a Navy Original (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 132-139.

  4. Lenox Lohr Appointment Calendar for September 25 and 26, 1947, File 1069, Museum of Science and Industry Executive Calendar, Jan.-Dec., 1947, University of Illinois Chicago Special Collections Department.

  5. Letter from E. R. Henning to Lenox R. Lohr, October 6, 1947, Box 5/12, Series IV, file 5-4, Correspondence 1954, Bringing U-505 to Chicago, Museum of Science and Industry Archives, hereafter referred to as MSI Archives. It is likely Gallery was working behind the scenes in Washington to do everything he could to save U-505. At this time Gallery did not have any meaningful connection with MSI, and the correspondence between Gallery and museum staff was of a formal nature. Once Gallery and Lohr began a regular discussion about U-505, however, they grew to admire each other, quickly moved to a first name basis, and even shared many inside jokes.

  6. Dan Gallery’s fingerprints coat Henning’s report. He had long been pushing the publicity angle, was the officer behind the temporary sinking stay, and had originally pushed for the most obvious place to exhibit the boat—Annapolis. U-505 did appear at Annapolis on the Navy’s 150th anniversary in 1945.

  7. Both telegrams are located in Box 5/12, Series IV, file 5-4, Correspondence 1954, “Bringing U-505 to Chicago,” MSI Archives.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Letter from Harry C. Watts to Charles C. Dawes, October 20, 1947, Box 5/12, Series IV, file 5-4, Correspondence 1954, “Bringing U-505 to Chicago,” MSI Archives. Watts was quoting Gallery’s letter. Gallery’s letter to Watts was not available to the author.

  10. Ibid. It would take almost seven years of letter writing, lobbying, telegrams, and discussions before the museum finally altered its tack and followed the recommended procedure for gaining title to the elusive boat. The indefatigable Gallery, meanwhile, even with the actual move to Chicago underway, was still laboring to have the Navy pay for part of the tow. He finally met with some success when the U.S. Coast Guard agreed to tow the boat at its expense on the final third of its trip.

  11. Letter from Daniel Gallery to Major Lohr, November 24, 1947, Box 5/12, Series IV, MSI Archives.

  12. Letter from Lenox Lohr to Admiral Daniel V. Gallery, November 21, 1947, Box 5/12, Series IV, Bringing U-505 to Chicago, MSI Archives.

  13. Letter from Harry C. Watts to Charles Dawes, February 18, 1948, Box 5/12, Series IV, File 5-4, Correspondence 1954, Bringing U-505 to Chicago, MSI Archives.

  14. Journal, City Council, Chicago, “Secretary of Navy Requested to Present Nazi Submarine U-505 to City of Chicago and proposed resolution,” January 20, 1950, 5, 782.

  15. Journal, City Council, Chicago, Communications, “Transfer of Nazi Submarine U-505 to City of Chicago, April 13, 1950, 6028.

  16. “City Told: Act or Lose U-boat as War Trophy,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 8, 1953.

  17. “Tribune Offers Use of Ship to Tow U-505 Here,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 18, 1953. Lenox Lohr told the press a previous proposal from the Naval Reserve to bring the submarine to Chicago failed principally because of lack of interim storage facilities, a problem the Tribune Company’s offer seemed to solve.

  18. “Praise Tribune Offer to Tow Nazi Sub Here, Spur Drive to Get U-505 as War memorial,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 19, 1953.

  19. “Kennelly Vows New Efforts To Bring Sub Here,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, March 29, 1953.

  20. This name change appears first in a memo from Francis Low, head of 10th fleet to the Commander of the 10th fleet. Two new names were being offered for consideration. “Under the assumption that U-505 is successfully towed to Bermuda, it is suggested that she be given an appropriate cover name of which the following are submitted: a) Ark and b) Nemo.” The name Ark was likely a biblical reference to the literal boat load of information contained in the submarine. The final decision on USS Nemo is credited to a fascination with Jules Verne and was transmitted in a secret radio message to CTG 22.3 that U-505 should be referred to as USS Nemo. On several occasions reminders went out when U-505 was used in some messages instead of Nemo. Both items in NA RG38 CNSG Library.

/>   21. Ibid.

  22. “Kennelly to Fly to White House for Conference,” Chicago Herald Tribune, March 30, 1953.

  23. “Navy to Help City get U-505,” Chicago Herald-American, April 9, 1953.

  24. See Gilliland and Shenk, Gallery, 187.

  25. Gallery, Daniel V., U-505 (Paperback Library, 1956), 282-283. (originally titled Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea). See also, Gilliland and Shenk, Gallery, 188, which cites a letter to Gallery from R. A. Ofstie dated April 1, 1953, at the Nimitz Library in the Gallery Papers: “It was the view of the Chief [CNO] that your action in going outside the Department with the intent of applying pressure toward the accomplishment of this business was quite inappropriate. I think, Dan, that you can readily understand this conclusion, which seems obvious to me as well. ‘Nuff said!’” In an unrelated incident Gallery won an official reprimand that almost resulted in a court martial hearing in January 1950. It is this 1950 reprimand during the “Revolt of the Admirals” crisis that the author believes has been confused by some historians who state that Gallery was almost court-martialed by E. J. King for threatening to blow the scheduled Normandy invasion when he captured U-505 without authorization—a preposterous claim.

  26. The transfer of Constellation to Baltimore provides an interesting example of how the Navy worked. The media made it appear as though the Navy was picking up the tab for much of the preparation and towing of that frigate, when in fact, the city of Baltimore was paying the Navy for the work it did on the ship. The author thanks Gloria Carvahlo of the U.S. Navy, Naval Sea Systems Command, Navy Ship Donation Program, for providing the transfer agreements for the USS Texas BB and the USF Constellation which provided the source of these statements.

  27. Hy Delman, “Drive Opens for Nazi Sub,” Chicago Herald-American, Friday April 3, 1953, 5.

  28. Ibid., Tuesday, April 7, 1953.

  29. Hy Delman, “Historical Relic Sought: U-Boat Aid Asked Navy, City Group Wants Sub Put in Tow Able Condition,” Chicago American, Tuesday April 7, 1953, 3.