# The Capture of U-505



## mikec1 (Oct 27, 2013)

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Greetings Guys Gals;




Some photos of the capture of U-505.


After the U-boat was depth charged and forced to the surface the crew abandoned
the boat. Before they left they opened the Sea Cocks in an attempt to sink the
boat.

Capt. Gallery, ((In the US Navy) a Captain is equivalent to a Colonel in the USAF), other personnel boarded
the boat to search for classified material. In the mean time the sailors had secured the Sea Cocks and done
a quick estimate of the damage done to the U-boat. It was determined that with emergency repair work, and
by using portable pumps they might be able to keep her from sinking.

As a bonus they recovered the Emaga message coding machine, maps, and two large sacks of classified material.
With the Emaga the US Navy could un-code the messages that where sent to, and from the German Naval
Command.

Note: in these photos how close the U-boat came to sinking ............ 









Photographs............ US Naval Archives 



Enjoy,


Mike


PS: I am bringing this post out of the submarine thread, so that it does not get lost.


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## stona (Oct 27, 2013)

Errrrr, the US Navy was using decryption machines (bombes), based on the British design, to decrypt enigma long before U 505 was captured. The US Navy received full blue prints of the British system in July 1942. The first operational US bombe worked in May 1943.
Cheers
Steve


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## tyrodtom (Oct 27, 2013)

Bringing that captured U-boat back almost resulted in a court martial for the officer in command.

Capturing the latest enigma coding machine, and latest codes was a good thing, but announcing it to the world by towing the sub to port was not smart.

The Germans should have already suspected we were reading some of their codes, finding out the allies had captured a intact sub surely would have alerted them to that fact.

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## stona (Oct 27, 2013)

And yet the original capture of a machine etc on U-110 by HMS Bulldog in April 1941 is oddly similar. An attempt was made to tow the submarine back to Scapa Flow but it sank.

I suppose the fact that this happened _before_ the US entered the war might have been a problem for the producers of the awful "U-571"!

Although Alan Turing and the others at Bletchley Park receive much credit for the breaking of enigma a nod should be given to the Polish mathematicians who managed to get into earlier versions and shared their data with the British and French.

Cheers

Steve


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## redcoat (Oct 27, 2013)

The first U-boat to be captured and taken back to port was the U-570 in August 1941. She later served in the RN as HMS Graph.

HMS Graph - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## stona (Oct 27, 2013)

redcoat said:


> The first U-boat to be captured and taken back to port was the U-570 in August 1941. She later served in the RN as HMS Graph.]



U-570's crew did destroy their enigma machine and code books. It's still an amazing story.

Cheers

Steve


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## mikec1 (Oct 27, 2013)

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Greetings Guys;


All things said is true...... but, you may be missing the point of the post.

This is a great set of photographs, that where taken during war time.

For the Model Builders, and Historians, U-505 is an excellent study of a Second World
U-boat. It does not get much better than this........ 8)

Moving U-505 to her new home.




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So Enjoy the photos ........... 

An excellent set of photos of U-505 in the Chicago, Museum of Science Technology, may be found 
here: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/ww2-general/wwii-submarines-13909-7.html#post1064509



Mike
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## The Basket (Oct 27, 2013)

The U-570 story is truly amazing. 

For a German captain to surrender his vessel is extraordinary.


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## Milosh (Oct 28, 2013)

Back in Aug I posted *Codebreaker: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes*, a 59 minute video worth watching

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/ww2-general/codebreaker-bletchley-parks-lost-heroes-38310.html

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## mikec1 (Oct 28, 2013)

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Greetings Milosh:



....... Yes it is, I have seen this vid...... it is a excellent source of historical Ref.
for the people that are interested in this subject............. 




Mike
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## Wavelength (Nov 4, 2013)

According to the discussion here portions of the naval enigma were never broken:

German Navy Forum | Bismarck Class | Churchill vs Bismarck


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## redcoat (Nov 4, 2013)

Wavelength said:


> According to the discussion here portions of the naval enigma were never broken:
> 
> German Navy Forum | Bismarck Class | Churchill vs Bismarck


The main value of Enigma was the re-routing of convoys away from U-boat concentrations, but the secret weapon most responsible for the Allies being able to find the location of individual subs and hunt them down was something called Huff-Duff
The High Frequency Direction Finder (HF/DF) - Technical pages - Fighting the U-boats - uboat.net


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## stona (Nov 4, 2013)

The "breaking" Enigma, which was never complete, was not just used in the Battle of the Atlantic. It gave crucial information about many aspects of the Wermacht and its dispositions and much else which was decisive in the defeat of Germany.

Partial decrypts were passed to code breakers who treated them rather like a crossword puzzle, but with access to a large card based database.

It was in fact the Luftwaffe's operators, not the Navy or Army's, who were notably lazy about altering the settings. 

It is one of the mysteries of WW2, why the Germans never realised that the system had been compromised.

Cheers

Steve


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## redcoat (Nov 4, 2013)

stona said:


> The "breaking" Enigma, which was never complete, was not just used in the Battle of the Atlantic. It gave crucial information about many aspects of the Wermacht and its dispositions and much else which was decisive in the defeat of Germany.


Possibly one of the most important roles Enigma played was in the Allied deception plans for D-Day. The ability of the Allies to read what the Germans were thinking about in regards to the Allies invasion plans was vital in tailoring the deception to reinforce any mistakes the Germans had made in their planning.


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