Picture this. June 4th, 1944. The Atlantic Ocean, 150 mi west of Cape Blanco, Africa. 58 German submariners break the surface of the cold Atlantic waters. Hands raised in surrender. Their yubot crippled and taking on water beneath them. They’re floating in enemy waters, surrounded by American warships, expecting to be machine gunned in the water or dragged aboard for brutal interrogation before execution. They’ve just become the first enemy naval crew captured on the high seas by the US Navy since the War of 1812.
But what Captain Daniel Gallery decided to do next would shock these hardened German veterans changed naval history forever and create one of World War II’s most extraordinary stories of honor in the midst of total war. This is not the story you think you know.
To understand why this moment was so incredible, you need to know what yubot meant in 1944. The German U505 had been terrorizing Allied shipping for 2 years. Every ship she sank carried not just military supplies, but letters from soldiers to their wives, photographs of children, medicine for field hospitals, and food for starving populations in liberated territories. When a yubot struck, it wasn’t just military strategy. It was personal tragedy multiplied across dozens of families. By 1944, submarine warfare had become savage beyond imagination.
German hubot were under orders to sink anything flying an Allied flag, often without warning. Allied forces in turn had adopted a policy of destroying yubot on site, rarely bothering to rescue survivors. Both sides had abandoned the gentlemanly traditions of naval warfare. It was in this context of mutual brutality that our story begins. The man who would change everything was Captain Daniel Gallery, a Chicago born Irish American who thought three moves ahead and wasn’t afraid to break rules.
Gallery had grown up in a working-class neighborhood where your word was your bond and treating people right mattered more than following rules to the letter. By 1943, Gallery commanded task group 22. Three, hunting yubot in the Atlantic with his escort carrier USS Guaddle Canal and five destroyer escorts. But Gallery was obsessed with an impossible idea. He didn’t just want to sink yubot. He wanted to capture one intact. Not since the War of 1812 had the US Navy captured an enemy warship on the high seas.
His superiors thought he was insane. Yubot were designed to sink quickly when damaged, and German crews had strict orders to scuttle their boats rather than let them fall into enemy hands. Gallery started drilling his men anyway. What Gallery couldn’t have imagined was that in less than 8 months he’d be staring at 58 terrified German sailors in the water and the decision he made in that moment would be talked about for the next 80 years. But what Gallery didn’t know was that 3,000 mi away, a German submarine was about to make a fatal mistake that would put his impossible plan to the ultimate test.
And the young German commander making that mistake, he was about to learn something about American honor that would change his life forever. Meanwhile, U505 was having the worst patrol of her career. Her previous commander had suffered a complete psychological breakdown during a depth charge attack in October 1943. In front of his entire crew, Capitan Litman Peter Sheek had drawn his pistol and shot himself in the head rather than face capture. The traumatic incident had shattered crew morale and left them with a superstitious belief that their boat was cursed.
New commander Harold Lang, at 40, one of the oldest Yubot commanders, but inexperienced with U505, was under enormous pressure. By June 4th, 1944, they’d been at sea 2 months without sinking a single Allied vessel. The crew was exhausted, supplies were running low, and morale was at rock bottom. What Langanger didn’t know was the gallery’s task group was hunting them. On that Sunday morning, Lieutenant William T. Tolen was conducting a routine patrol in his Grumman TBF Avenger when something caught his eye.
At 11:09 a.m., he spotted a dark shape moving beneath the surface. The distinctive shadow of a large submarine. What happened next unfolded in just 6 minutes, but hidden in those 6 minutes was a single 7-second decision by a panicked German sailor that would save everyone’s life, though nobody would realize it until much later. Tolen’s depth charge attack caught U505 completely by surprise. The explosion damaged the submarine’s diving planes and electrical system, forcing Lang to make a fateful decision.
Surface immediately or risk losing the boat entirely. At 11:15 a.m., U505 broke the surface like a wounded whale. Water streaming from her hull, her diesel engines coughing to life as her crew desperately tried to get fresh air into the boat. Gallery, monitoring radio traffic from the bridge of the Guadal Canal, knew this was his moment. Gallery had seconds to decide. Follow standard procedure and blow the submarine out of the water or attempt something that hadn’t been done in 132 years.
Instead of ordering his ships to finish off the submarine with gunfire, he gave the order his crew had been drilling for. Away all boats. We’re going to board her. German sailors were pouring out of U505’s conning tower and jumping into the Atlantic. Some were wounded, others terrified. But thick black smoke was pouring from the submarine’s hull. Clear evidence she was badly damaged and potentially about to explode. But here’s what neither the Americans nor Germans knew. A single mistake by one panicked sailor was about to change everything.
Among the German crew abandoning ship was petty officer Gotfrieded Fischer, ordered to set the scuttling charges that would send U505 to the bottom within minutes. But in his panic, Fischer made a critical error. He set the timer for 7 minutes instead of 30 seconds. This mistake would save everyone, but the Americans boarding U505 had no idea they were racing against a 7-minute clock. They thought they had maybe 30 seconds before the submarine exploded beneath them. Lieutenant Albert David of the USS Pillsbury was preparing to lead the boarding party onto an enemy submarine.
At 23 years old, David knew he was volunteering for a suicide mission. Boarding a damaged enemy submarine that could explode at any moment, potentially under fire from remaining crew members with no way of knowing what booby traps waited below, David didn’t hesitate. With radio man Stanley Wedo and signalman Arthur Kispull, he climbed into a small boat and approached the smoking U505. As they climbed aboard, they could hear the ominous ticking of scuttling charges somewhere below. Water was entering through opened valves and electrical fires were spreading through the control room.
David made the decision that would save U505 and potentially the German crew still floating in the water. Instead of retreating, he ordered his men below decks to find and disarm the charges. Working by flashlight in the smoke fil submarine, David located the main scuttling valve and closed it, stopping the flooding. Vovviaak found the timing mechanism and with no training in German demolitions carefully disconnected the wires. One wrong move could have sent them all to the bottom. Within an hour, U505 was stabilized and undertoe.
But the real challenge was just beginning. Because what Gallery was about to discover inside that submarine would be worth more than sinking 100 Ubot, but only if he could solve an impossible puzzle. When David’s boarding party descended into U505’s control room, they found an intelligence officer’s dream. In their panic to abandoned ship, the German crew had left behind virtually everything. Code books, charts, technical manuals, and most importantly, an Enigma machine still set up with the day’s encryption settings.
The intelligence was pure gold. Codes, charts, and secrets that would save thousands of Allied lives. Technical manuals revealed German improvements in torpedo design and submarine construction. Charts showed previously unknown patrol routes and refueling locations. But all of this would be worthless if the Germans learned that U505 had been captured. If Berlin discovered their codes were compromised, they would immediately change their entire communication system. Gallery was about to make a decision that would shock his own crew almost as much as it shocked the Germans.
A decision so unusual that it would remain classified for decades. Not because it was ruthless, but because it was too merciful for wartime. This created an unprecedented problem. How do you hide the capture of a 252 ft submarine and 58 prisoners of war? While his boarding party secured U505, Gallery faced an equally complex challenge. What to do with 58 German sailors who had just watched their submarine captured intact. Standard procedure was clear. Interrogate the prisoners, then ship them to P camps.
But Gallery knew that following procedure would compromise the incredible intelligence windfall they had just obtained. The German crew floating in the Atlantic swells expected to die. Capitan Litant Langer later wrote that he felt certain he and his crew would be executed. Stories of submarine crews being killed rather than rescued were common on both sides. But as American boats approached to rescue the German survivors, something unprecedented happened. Instead of rough handling or immediate interrogation, the German sailors were pulled aboard American vessels and immediately given medical attention, dry clothes, and hot food.
Gallery had made a decision that went against decades of naval warfare precedent. He would treat the German prisoners not as defeated enemies. But as fellow sailors who had fought honorably and deserved respect, this wasn’t sentimentality. It was brilliant psychology. Well-treated prisoners were more likely to cooperate, less likely to attempt escape, and more likely to maintain the absolute secrecy the intelligence operation required. When Lang was brought aboard the USS Guadal Canal, he expected harsh interrogation in cramped quarters.
Instead, he found himself treated with what he later described as unexpected American courtesy. Gallery personally met with the senior German officers and explained the situation. Their submarine had been captured legitimately. They were now prisoners, but would be treated with military honor. Due to intelligence requirements, they would need to be kept separate from other German prisoners. What Gallery didn’t tell them was that their temporary isolation would last for the remainder of the war. But the real test wasn’t capturing the submarine.
It was what came next. Gallery’s solution was as audacious as capturing U505 itself. Working with naval intelligence, he arranged for the German crew to be secretly transported to a specially prepared facility at Camp Rustin, Louisiana, where they would be kept in complete isolation from the outside world. The German crew was transported in small groups, blindfolded, and under guard with cover stories prepared. As far as official records showed, these prisoners had been captured in North Africa and required special handling due to their knowledge of sensitive technology.
What the Germans found at Camp Rustin shocked them more than their treatment aboard the American ships. Instead of harsh prison conditions, they were housed in clean barracks, provided with regular meals that were often better than what American soldiers were eating overseas, and allowed recreational activities. Gallery’s orders were specific. The U505 crew was to be treated as professional military prisoners, not criminals. They would work for wages, receive male privileges, and maintain military discipline within their own ranks. This wasn’t just humanitarian, it was strategically essential.
Well-treated prisoners were far less likely to attempt escape, which could compromise the entire operation. Moreover, intelligence officers found that the Germans gratitude made them remarkably cooperative in providing technical information. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone. German submarine crews, portrayed in Allied propaganda as ruthless killers, were proving to be professional sailors who responded to professional treatment with professional behavior. While the U505 crew settled into their strange new life in Louisiana, the intelligence from their submarine was already changing the war.
The Enigma machine and code books provided Allied codereakers with unprecedented insights into German naval communications, helping to save hundreds of Allied ships and thousands of lives. Technical intelligence revealed German improvements that were immediately shared with Allied designers. The detailed charts helped convoy planners route shipping away from German submarine concentrations. But Gallery’s most significant contribution may have been proving that treating enemy prisoners with dignity wasn’t just morally right. It was strategically smart. His approach became a model for prisoner operations throughout the remainder of the war.
Word of Gallery’s success spread quietly through intelligence circles. Other commanders began adopting similar approaches with captured personnel with consistently positive results, better intelligence, fewer escape attempts, and fewer security problem. Gallery’s decision had profound personal impacts, too. American sailors who participated in the capture later said it was the most meaningful moment of their naval service. Not because they captured an enemy vessel, but because they had shown humanity in the midst of war. For the German crew, the experience was equally transformative.
Men indoctrinated to see Americans as barbaric enemies discovered their captives were professional sailors much like themselves, capable of both military effectiveness and personal honor. The secret of U505’s capture was maintained throughout the war and for several years afterward. The German crew was finally released and repatriated to Germany in 1946, more than 2 years after their capture. When the former prisoners returned to Germany, they found a country devastated and struggling to rebuild. Many of their fellow Yubot veterans hadn’t survived.
German submarine service had one of the highest casualty rates of any military branch with more than 75% of crews killed in action. The crew’s stories of their treatment initially met with skepticism from other German veterans. But as details emerged, the U505 experience became a powerful example of how enemies could treat each other with honor, even in total war. Captain Gallery proved that even in humanity’s darkest hours, individuals could choose dignity over brutality. Harold Lang, the young commander who expected execution that June morning, lived until 2003, frequently speaking about the respect he received from his American captives.
Lang often said that Gallery’s decision had restored his faith that decency could survive even in total war. Think about this for a moment. These German sailors expected to die. Instead, they experienced something that made them question everything they’d been told about their American enemies. The U505 crew proved remarkably cooperative during their detention at Camp Rustin, a testament to how respectful treatment can transform enemies into allies. Years later, Harold Lang reflected that the dignified treatment made cooperation feel like the honorable choice rather than betrayal.
And here’s something remarkable. When U505 was moved to the Chicago Museum in 1954, German Yubot veterans who had immigrated to America volunteered to help preserve their former enemy. These men who once fought against Allied ships worked alongside American veterans to ensure this story of honor in warfare would never be forgotten. The capture of U505 reminds us that the greatest generation wasn’t just great because they won World War II. They were great because of how they chose to fight it.
When Captain Daniel Gallery had the opportunity to follow the brutal precedence of submarine warfare, he chose instead to follow his conscience and his sense of honor. Gallery could have sunk U505 and left her crew to drown. He could have captured them and subjected them to harsh imprisonment. Military necessity and wartime hatred would have justified either choice. Instead, he chose a third path. One that required more courage, more leadership and more faith in human decency than simply following orders ever would have.
Gallery’s decision didn’t just save 58 German lives or provide valuable intelligence. It demonstrated that victory achieved through honor is more meaningful than victory achieved through brutality. It proved that even in humanity’s darkest hours, individuals can make choices that honor our better angels.
