Word: u-boats
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...Grumman Wildcats droned over the Atlantic, 100 miles off Cap Blanc, on search mission. At almost the same moment, each pilot spotted what he was looking for: the dark, sharklike outline of a German U-boat, slipping along just under the waves. Simultaneously, the two planes flashed the warning, "Sighted sub," back to their flattop, the Guadalcanal, known to her crew as the Can Do. As the carrier's five destroyer escorts closed in and depth charges spumed up, the submarine jammed her diving planes into the down position...
When the Nazi submariners emerged from the U-boat, they were greeted with a rataplan of small-caliber fire from encircling destroyers. Planes growled overhead, and depth charges still geysered around the stricken submarine. The Ger mans lost no time going overboard, and when Commander F. S. Hall, destroyer division commander, estimated that the entire crew had left, he ordered a ceasefire. From the Germans, bobbing in the waves, came three cheers for the sinking U-505. From the Pillsbury's loudspeakers came a rarely heard order: "Away boarding parties...
...running, and the boat was moving in a tight, righthand circle when Lieut, (j.g.) Albert David and eight crewmen from the destroyer Pillsbury jumped aboard, minutes after the last live German had left (the body of one Nazi, the only fatality in the whole operation, was found aboard the U-boat). Racing below, the boarders shut the seacocks, stopped the engines and searched for booby traps. That evening the U-5O5 -rechristened Can Do, Jr.-rode at the end of a towline behind the Guadalcanal...
After the war the battered sub was moved to Portsmouth Navy Yard to be reduced to scrap, but the Korean war postponed that fate. Last year a group of citizens began a campaign to bring the U-boat to Chicago, Dan Gallery's home town. The Navy was agreeable, and on June 26 Junior was welcomed to Chicago. This week, if weather and Lake Michigan permit, Junior will be hauled ashore in a momentous engineering operation and lugged across South Lake Shore Drive (traffic will be halted for twelve hours) to her final berth at the museum...
Wolf Packs & Traps. The destroyer was a sound fighting ship; the question was how to use it. At first, mistakes were made. While the destroyers went out futilely chasing U-boats in the Atlantic, the U-boats had a field day sinking unescorted Allied ships. The picture changed with improved technique (e.g., the improved use of radar, coordination of air and surface weapons) and the firm policy of destroyer-escorted convoys. Soon, hunter-killer teams of destroyers, destroyer-escorts and carrier-based aircraft had turned the tables on the U-boat wolf packs. By 1945, two U-boats were being...