He Captured a Nazi U-Boat Intact. His Own Navy Almost Court-Martialed Him For It.

On June 4, 1944 — two days before D-Day — Captain Daniel Gallery gave an order no officer of the United States Navy had given since the War of 1812. His task group had just forced the German submarine U-505 to the surface off the coast of West Africa. Standard doctrine said sink it immediately. Gallery said something else: "I want to capture that bastard if possible." Then: "Away all boarding parties." He'd been planning this for weeks — training boarding parties in secret, without full authorization, betting that capturing an intact U-boat would be worth more to the war than sinking one more submarine. Lieutenant Albert David led three men down the conning tower hatch not knowing whether armed Germans or live demolition charges waited below. What they found was an intact Enigma machine, over 900 pounds of German naval codebooks, and two acoustic torpedoes — one of the great intelligence hauls of the naval war. It should have been a triumph. Instead, Admiral Ernest King was reportedly furious enough to consider court-martialing Gallery — because if Germany ever learned an American task group had captured a U-boat complete with her cipher machine, every naval code in the Kriegsmarine would change overnight, and the entire Ultra intelligence advantage that was helping win the Battle of the Atlantic would be gone. The secret held for nearly a year. The 58 German prisoners were isolated from the Red Cross and their families were told they were dead. And a decade later, Gallery saved the submarine a second time — talking the Navy out of sinking her as a target, and getting her towed nearly 3,000 miles to Chicago, where U-505 still sits today beneath a sign that once read "Drive Carefully — Submarine Crossing." This is the full story of Daniel Gallery, Albert David, and the capture of U-505. Primary source: Daniel V. Gallery, Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea (1956) Naval History and Heritage Command, "Defeating the Sharks: The Capture of U-505" Museum: U-505 on permanent display, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago