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U-505 was one of 41 IX-C type
submarines built for the German Navy
during World War Two. This class of
submarine completed a test dive of 328
feet. They had a range of 13,450 miles on
the surface or 63 miles submerged.
Throughout World War Two, Germany built
ten different types of submarines, 1,158
in all. U-505 was based at
Lorient/France to be operated in the
Atlantic attacking Allied convoys.
Throughout 1942, U-505 sunk
eight Allied merchant ships totaling
47,000 tons. An attack by a British
seaplane November 11th 1942 extensively
damaged U-505. The
explosions from the depth charges also
brought down the seaplane with the loss
of its crew. After the completion of
repairs and returning to service,
destroyers picked up U-505 on
their sonar’s October 24th
1943.
The following sustained depth charge
assault led to the submarines captain
shooting himself with his service
revolver. Although U-505
was damaged by that attack and the
captain had died, the crew managed to
return her to Lorient for repairs. After
the British destroyers Aubretia,
Bulldog and Broadway
captured the German submarine
U-110 and her Enigma
machine May 9th 1941, British
intelligence began working out how to
decipher German radio messages. One such
message picked up from
U-505 June 4th 1944 allowed
the British to direct an American
taskforce to her position near the Cape
Verde Islands. The following depth charge
attack forced U-505 to
surface and surrender to the US warships.
After the war, U-505 was
handed over to the Chicago Museum of
Science and Industry. She has been open
to the public as a museum since 1954.
Germany lost 637 submarines and about
20,000 submariners during the war. They
sunk approximately 2,000 Allied ships
totaling over 20 million tons with the
loss of around 20,000 merchant seamen,
navy crew and passengers.
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