U-505 was the first enemy warship the US Navy captured at sea since
1812. This is a new account of how Captain Gallery planned and executed
the raid on his own initiative, and how his success almost endangered
the war against the U-boats.
On June 4, 1944 a US Navy antisubmarine task group in the Atlantic
captured an enemy U-boat on the high seas. It was not the first time the
Allies had taken a German U-boat as a prize, but the capture of U-505
was different. Captain Gallery and his Task Group 22.3 devised a risky
plan to capture scuttled U-boats.
This book analyses in detail Gallery's dangerous strategy, using
contemporary sources to explore why he thought the reward was worth the
risk: instead of attempting to sink the next U-boat that surfaced among
them, a destroyer escort would send off its whaleboat. Everyone else was
to smother the U-boat with light gunfire to encourage its crew to
abandon quickly. Unaware that the Allies had already cracked the
German's codes and the capture of a U-boat could endanger that secret,
Gallery hoped to capture the vessel's codes and coding equipment to read
U-boat message traffic. The plan culminated in the capture of U-505 in
early June, which nearly caused the exposure of the Bletchley Park
codebreaking secret.
Featuring contemporary photographs, specially commissioned artwork and
3D maps, this book is a fascinating exploration of one of the most
controversial and dangerous raids, which could have changed the outcome
of World War II as we know it.
