U-505 Resurfaces

U-505 Resurfaces Indoors At Chicago’s MSI

by Tom Lounges

(first published in The Times)

Designed as a weapon that would turn the tides of World War II and give Nazi Germany a victory at sea over the Allied Forces, German U-Boat submarines, were fierce predators.

Scattered across the Atlantic by the thousands, the U-Boats were responsible for sinking over 1,600 Allied supply ships during the first three years of the war.

The German steel mills of Hamburg manufactured two wholly different types of submarines. The first was a Type 7, the infamous “Wolf Pack” sub immortalized in the film, “Das Boat.” The other was the larger and more deadly, Type 9, designed to be a “Lone Wolf”.

The U-505 was one of the latter, Type 9 submarines, a scourge of the high seas that dealt death to many sea-faring ships during its four years in commission.

“Hitler’s strategy was to have his U-Boats prowl the ocean and cut off all supply transports, so as to wear down and exhaust the Allies,” explained Keith Gill, curator of the new U-505 Submarine exhibit which opens this month (June 5) at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry (57^th Street & Lake Shore Drive), just in time to mark the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II.

The steely determination of Chicago native, Navy Captain Daniel Gallery, the skipper of the U.S.S. Guadalcanal and the commander of Naval Task Group 22.3 helped to quash Adolph Hitler’s well laid plans, when he and his crew captured the underwater killing machine.

Not content to simply continue pursuing and sinking the Nazi U-Boats, Gallery became committed to the idea of actually capturing an enemy submarine and learning it’s dark and deadly secrets.

At 11:00am on Sunday, June 4, 1944, Gallery embraced his destiny. After weeks of chasing an evasive submarine blip on his ship’s sonar screen, Gallery came face to face with the U-505 in the warm, tropic waters between The Canary Islands and Dakar, Africa.

After nearly losing the sub again due to clever decoy ploys, an intense but brief firefight took place. After an 11-minute encounter that utilized depth charges, torpedoes and machine-gunning fighter planes, the U-505’s crew under the command of Captain Harald Lange, abandoned ship. Gallery and his men made maritime and military history that day, as the U-505 was the first enemy vessel captured in battle by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812.

The U-505’s capture gave the Allied Forces a mother load of German military intelligence. A total of nine mailbags totaling 1,100 pounds of code books, maps, charts and Enigma Code machines were confiscated and flown to Naval Headquarters, helping to escalate the end the war on the European Front and aiding in the success of the D-Day Invasion just 48-hours later on the beaches of Normandy, France.

A far cry from the original U-505 exhibit, which opened in 1954 and closed in January 2004, the Museum of Science And Industry’s expansive and expensive $35 million dollar overhaul is a remarkable, interactive exhibit, which takes considerable time to journey through and fully digest.

“We had a five million dollar leadership gift from the McCormick Tribune Foundation, that started things rolling for this exhibit,” noted Gill. “We had another seven million dollars come in through over 4,000 individual donors. These individual gifts of $5, $10, $20 and more all added up and helped make this possible.”

That the public took such an active role in helping to fund the U-505 project makes Gill very happy. “It’s great to see the people of Chicago are still excited about the U-505 and were willing to support us on this,” he enthused. “It was much the same back in 1954, when the U-505 was first brought to the museum. Boy Scout and Girl Scout groups, school groups, and loose change donations...is what made it possible to fund that original exhibit and bring the sub to Chicago.”

In the 1950s, it was Daniel Gallery, by then promoted to the rank of Admiral, who lead the campaign to save the U-505 from the scrap yard and make it a lasting memorial to all the sea-faring warriors who lost their lives in the two world wars.

“Being as he was from Chicago, he really wanted the ship brought here,” noted Gill. “Getting it here from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where it had sat for ten years was a task in itself.”

With Admiral Gallery overseeing things, the U-505 made one last journey up around Canada, down the St. Lawrence Seaway and to the Great Lakes. The last few hundred yards were the toughest, as the 700-ton vessel had to travel over land. Going from the shores of Lake Michigan to the side of the museum was a long and laborious process. The U-505 slide along tracks, across Lake Shore Drive, at a rate of only 8 inches per minute, only to sit for 50 years surrounded by a fence.

Gill beamed like a proud father as he pointed out things on the 252-foot submarine, while discussing the U-505’s amazing history and the state-of-the art technology which saved the wartime relic from the considerable damage it sustained after standing for half a century outdoors at the mercy of pollution and Chicago’s harsh winters.

“For the first time it in it’s life, the U-505 is finally resting indoors and is protected for future generations to enjoy and learn from,” noted Gill, whose work crew was busily completing the final touches on the exhibit prior to this weekend’s opening. “She’s an amazing ship and such an important part of American military history, that to see this wonderful exhibit finally come together and open to the public is so rewarding.”

Two members of the original U-505 crew are flying over from Germany for a private unveiling ceremony happening tomorrow evening at the Museum. Other guests of honor will include some of the surviving U.S. naval veterans who helped capture the infamous submarine.

Now housed in a brand new 35,000-square foot, two-level building, the exhibit tells the story of the U-505 through more than 200 artifacts, many collected through diligently tracking down the U-505 battle veterans and their families.

Among the artifacts are: an M4 Enigma Code Machine, Nazi code books, medals, the Aerial-Navigation Periscope, G7e (T5) Acoustic Torpedoes, the Sea Strainer hatch cover which the Germans removed while trying to scuttle the sub, and the Oath Of Secrecy document that all the U.S. personnel involved in the capture were required to sign under penalty of death.

There are also open cans of K-Rations, Gold Dollar Cigarettes, POW letters, uniforms and jackets, vintage phonograph records, medals and other fascinating items.

Those curious about the kind of life U-Boat crews endured while huddled together in cramped quarters for months at a time can actually walk through the various compartments of the U-505. The walk reveals a food galley with three battery-powered electric burners that is barely large enough for one cook; 35 tiny bunks shared by the 58 crew members in shifts; the tiny communications room where sonar vigils were done 24 hours a day, and the torpedo rooms from where the German crew dealt death to hundreds of Allied ships during the U-505’s reign of terror between 1940 and 1944.

While access to the exhibit itself is included in the basic museum admission charge, there is an additional $5.00 charge for the guided, 15-minute long walk-through tour. Those on board will hear authentic audio sounds from the 1940s, including the rumble of the sub’s diesel engines, sonar blips, bilge pumps, and the scratchy German language 78rpm records played for recreation deep beneath the waves.

“When the U-505 was outdoors, visitors could only do a short walk through of the submarine or look at it outside from ground level through a fence,” noted Gill. “Now they can stand on the upper level and actually look down upon the [wooden] deck, the gun turrets, railing and the conning tower. They can walk down, look under the boat and actually touch the hull and the propellers.”

The twin brass propellers have been painstakingly restored to their natural luster, color and appearance. “The props were black from having been outdoors and not cleaned for fifty years,” said Gill, who explained that high-powered lasers were used to clean the blades so meticulously, that factory tool marks numbers etched into the blades can once again be seen.

Under the direction of Gill and Kurt Haunfelner, the Vice President of Exhibits and Collections, the U-505 has been completely refurbished both inside and out. An estimated 1,000 man-hours were burned up just to restore the ship itself to its former glory in terms of physical appearance.

“Both the exterior and interior of the U-505 has been restored back to its original colors. In most cases the colors are exact as when it came out of the [Hamburg, Germany] factory in 1940, because we had color chips to work from and we had the good fortune of being able to travel to the National Archives in Germany to look for the answers we needed,” said Gill, pointing out the various shades of gray that trail down the ship’s outer hull.

Aside from the submarine itself and the many artifacts from it, the new exhibit features an array of multi-media stop points that educate and amaze.

Among them are a series of taped interviews where visitors can listen to the actual voices of surviving members of the Task Group and U-505 crews as they recall their personal memories of the battle and capture; archival newspapers, photography and digitally enhanced videos narrated by award-winning Chicago newsman, Bill Kurtis; and a mini-theatre which loops a 1964 film made at the museum commemorating the 20-year reunion of the combative skippers, Gallery and Lange.

Kids of all ages will love the chance to use a pair of inter-active periscopes to navigate their submarine or launch torpedoes at enemy ships. There is also a recreation of selected areas of the U-505, where one can actually lay on the same kind of bunk, climb through a regulation hatch and step into both a galley and communications room.

One of the exhibit highlights is the recreation of the events that led to the capture of the U-505 and the team work between Gallery’s crew at sea and the dedicated ladies of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) who worked at U.S. Navy’s secret F-21 submarine tracking room, plotting and confirming intelligence for the “Hunter-Killer” Task Groups.

This special effects-designed exhibit is akin to being a living diorama. In it, the WAVES are seen as life-size, moving, hologram-like ghost figures going about their important business of tracking and reporting U-Boat activities. Standing there, one feels as though they are privy to peering 60 years into the past and reliving the experience as it happened.

A replica of the F-21 room in Washington was recreate at the museum, semi-transparent curtains are flashed with high-definition video projections of five actors dressed in authentic World War II Navy uniforms, running through a script depicting the historically events and transmissions from the morning of June 4, 1944 between them and Captain Gallery.

Guests exit the U-505 exhibit through “Tribute Hall”, where the names and ranks of the 2,200 brave members of Naval Task Force 22.3 are listed, along with those of Merchant Marines, the WAVES and the German crew of the U-505.

Kudos to the staff of the Science And Industry Museum for their great attention to detail and for the great respect shown in the creation of what is truly a lasting memorial to those involved in one of the great moments in 20th Century history.

For more information, call (773) 684-1414 or log online at: www.msichicago.org

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