When Americans Captured This Nazi Sub Alive — They Found Hitler’s Secret Weapon
When Americans Took a Nazi Submarine Alive — and Opened Hitler’s Darkest Secret
At 11:16 a.m. on June 4, 1944, the Atlantic Ocean broke open.
A German submarine erupted from the water 700 yards off the bow of USS Chatelain, her steel hull scarred, bleeding oil, her rudder jammed. She surfaced bow-first like a wounded animal forced into the light.
Inside that submarine—U-505—was everything the Allies had been desperate to find.
And everything the Germans would have died to destroy.
For Captain Daniel Gallery, watching from the escort carrier Guadalcanal, this was not just another kill.
It was the moment history could change.
A Missed Chance That Would Not Happen Again
Two months earlier, Gallery had watched another German submarine, U-515, float helplessly on the surface for nearly ten minutes before sinking. Ten minutes—an eternity in war. Enough time to board her. Enough time to seize her secrets.
But no one had tried.
The U.S. Navy didn’t capture enemy warships anymore. It hadn’t happened since 1815. Submarines were hunted, not taken. They were sunk before they could kill you.
Gallery realized the terrible truth: the Navy was winning battles—but missing intelligence that could save thousands of lives.
So he made a decision no doctrine supported and no manual explained.
He would take one alive.
Training for the Impossible
For six weeks, aboard the destroyer escort USS Pillsbury, eight men trained for a mission no American sailor had attempted in over a century.
Their leader was Lieutenant (junior grade) Albert David—a 41-year-old former enlisted man who understood engines, valves, and the anatomy of ships. He wasn’t a boarding-action hero. He was a mechanic.
Which is exactly why Gallery chose him.
David and his men memorized grainy intelligence photos of German Type IX submarines. They rehearsed jumping from a small boat onto a moving deck slick with oil. They practiced in darkness. They drilled knowing the truth:
A German submarine crew could scuttle their boat in under four minutes.
They opened sea valves. They set demolition charges. They smashed codebooks. If David’s team was even thirty seconds late, they would drown—or vanish in an explosion.
There would be no second chances.
Contact
On the morning of June 4th, sonar operators reported a submerged contact racing toward Guadalcanal.
Depth charges detonated.
Oil surfaced.
Six minutes later, U-505 broke through the waves.
German sailors scrambled onto the deck. Some tried to reach the deck gun. American machine-gun fire swept the conning tower. One German sailor collapsed. The rest jumped into the sea.
On Pillsbury’s bridge, Captain George Castleman didn’t hesitate.
“Lower the whaleboat.”
David and his men were already moving.
Boarding a Sinking Enemy
The whaleboat raced toward the circling submarine. The U-boat was still moving—still dangerous. Oil coated the water. German sailors flailed nearby, shouting.
David ignored them.
He grabbed a railing and hauled himself onto the deck. His boots slipped. The steel rolled beneath his feet. One German body lay face-down near the hatch.
David dropped into the conning tower.
Inside, the submarine was almost dark.
Water sprayed from shattered pipes. The deck tilted. Somewhere below, the ocean was pouring in.
The Germans had done their job.
David had minutes.
Inside the Steel Coffin
The boarding party split up.
One man found a sea valve ripped open, flooding the engine room. He located the cover and sealed it shut. The rushing water slowed—but did not stop.
Others found demolition charges.
Thirteen of them.
Each wired to detonate.
Each placed to ensure the submarine would never be taken.
In cramped compartments filled with oil and seawater, David’s men pulled detonators with bare hands. They cut wires they barely understood. They crawled through spaces designed for men smaller than themselves.
Above them, the submarine kept turning.
Then disaster struck.
U-505 drifted directly into Pillsbury.
The collision crushed the whaleboat. Three compartments aboard Pillsbury flooded instantly. But David’s men stayed inside the submarine.
If they left now, everything would be lost.
Holding the Line
A second boarding party arrived, led by Commander Earl Trosino, Guadalcanal’s chief engineer. He crawled through the flooded submarine for hours, tracing German-labeled pipes by hand, improvising repairs no manual had prepared him for.
Slowly—miraculously—the flooding stabilized.
U-505 lived.
Then came the discovery.
Hitler’s Secrets in American Hands
Deep inside the submarine, the boarding teams found two intact Enigma cipher machines.
Codebooks.
Operational orders.
Charts marking German submarine patrol zones across the Atlantic.
Nine hundred pounds of classified intelligence.
And in the torpedo room—something even more dangerous.
Acoustic homing torpedoes.
Weapons that followed sound. Weapons that hunted propellers.
Weapons that had already sunk Allied ships.
Now, for the first time, the Allies could tear them apart.
Gallery ordered absolute secrecy.
No radio messages. No log entries. The German prisoners—58 men—were told the world believed they were dead.
If Germany learned the truth, they would change their codes immediately.
And D-Day was days away.
Silence That Saved a War
Three thousand American sailors knew what had happened.
Not one spoke.
U-505 was towed 2,500 miles to Bermuda, barely afloat. Salvage crews stayed aboard around the clock. Storms threatened to swallow her whole.
But the secret held.
At Bletchley Park, British codebreakers opened the captured books—and suddenly, the Atlantic spoke.
German messages once unreadable became clear.
Submarine positions. Attack plans. Patrol routes.
Convoys rerouted. Hunter-killer groups struck with precision.
The Battle of the Atlantic was effectively won.
The Cost of Courage
Lieutenant Albert David never lived to see what he accomplished.
Three weeks after the capture, he died of a heart attack—exhausted, worn down by years of service.
President Truman awarded his Medal of Honor to his widow.
It was the only Medal of Honor awarded to a Navy sailor in the Atlantic during World War II.
The submarine almost met the fate of hundreds of others—towed out to sea and sunk.
But Gallery refused.
Instead, U-505 was hauled thousands of miles inland and placed in a museum in Chicago.
Today, millions walk through her steel corridors.
They see the valves that stopped the flooding.
They stand where eight Americans entered a sinking enemy warship armed with nothing but courage and minutes to live.
The Only Time It Ever Happened
The capture of U-505 remains the only time the United States Navy seized an enemy warship at sea since the War of 1812.
It has never happened again.
Steel, silence, and eight men who ran toward death instead of away from it.
Not to destroy.
But to understand.
And in doing so, they helped end a war.
