The Capture of U-505 by Mark Lardas

Author:Mark Lardas
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781472849267
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2022-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

The composite squadron aboard an escort carrier in an antisubmarine task group was independent of the carrier, assigned as available. VC-8 was the on-deck unit when TG 22.3 sailed in May. It flew out of Norfolk Naval Air Station (shown) to land aboard Guadalcanal, already at sea. (USNHHC)

Lange had sent a contact report from U-505 on May 14, coincidentally the day before TG 22.3 sailed. It was intercepted by Knowles’s intelligence team. Before then, U-505 was one of three U-boats patrolling “close to the coast in the Gulf of Guinea.” U-505’s location was included on the May 15 location list. This used a position based on a direction-finding fix on U-505. Thereafter the tracking room in Washington DC began plotting U-505’s travels. Their positions, while not completely accurate, were 50 percent better than Dönitz’s headquarters own estimates of its position. Between May 17 and 20 the position estimate reported U-505 “will return May 21.” When U-505 decided to return to France, COMINCH began feeding those estimates to Gallery.

The May 23 dispatch included U-505’s specific position, but not its identity. If the Germans discovered the reports, U-boat positions could be explained away as derived from radio direction finding. The Kriegsmarine knew about RDF, and would not be alarmed about U-boat positions being detected that way.

RDF did not provide the identity of a U-boat. Only codebreaking could yield that. Although – or rather because – the Allies had been deciphering U-boat messages for over a year by May 1943, they went to extreme lengths to conceal that from the Germans. It was a closely held secret, and would remain closely held for years after the war ended.

Gallery was not read in to the Ultra secret and was unaware of it, and his seeking to capture a U-boat with its code machine might compromise the secret if he succeeded. Cooperating with Gallery’s effort seemed the best way to guard the Ultra secret, however. To order him to drop the effort required awkward explanations of why COMINCH did not want a U-boat captured. The intelligence group almost certainly viewed the odds of actual success so low as to not be worth worry. Gallery’s plan would only be executed if a U-boat were first abandoned. It required incredible good fortune to prevent the U-boat from sinking before being secured.

Gallery heartily welcomed the position reports. Even as late as the last week of May, U-505 was one of three Nazi U-boats homeward bound from Africa. TG 22.3 reached the Azores by May 22 and began hunting U-boats. Finding targets proved as frustrating for TG 22.3 as it had been earlier for U-505. Gallery later wrote: “We flew around the clock day after day and night after night without even a false alarm for our efforts.” U-boats were avoiding areas likely to be patrolled by escort carrier groups. Despairing of finding a U-boat near the Azores, Gallery switched his area of operations to the Cape Verde Islands. It proved as barren of U-boats as the Azores. He searched for three weeks, coming up empty.

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