AC Studio
USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60) lying alongside captured U-505
The U-505 has an dramatic history... The Captain committed suicide during a patrol, and at a later patrol the ship was captured by US, the first enemy ship captured by US navy since the War of 1812. Today the U-505 becomes an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL
More photos of U-505 in the US:
www.uboatarchive.net/U-505.htm
These are some of the contents I copied straight from Wikipedia:
For details please refer to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-505
Any one interested should read this.
Tenth patrol – Zschech's (Captain) suicide
After ten months in Lorient, U-505 departed for her tenth Atlantic patrol, seeking to break her run of bad luck and bad morale. On 24 October 1943, not long after transiting the Bay of Biscay, U-505 was spotted by British destroyers east of the Azores and was forced to submerge and endure a severe and lengthy depth charge attack.
In a testament to both the intensity of the attack and his own instability, Zschech snapped under the strain and committed suicide in the submarine's control room, shooting himself in the head in front of his crew. The first watch officer, Paul Meyer, quickly took command, rode out the rest of the attack and returned the boat to port with minimal damage. Despite his quick thinking, Meyer was not rewarded, merely "absolved from all blame" by the Kriegsmarine for the embarrassing incident. Zschech is recorded as the first submariner in history to commit suicide underwater in response to the stress of a prolonged depth charging, and the first (and thus far only) officer to commit suicide while commanding a warship in battle.a Experts[who?] have speculated bad morale and poor command influence demonstrated (and encouraged) by this series of humiliating failures might help explain the crew's later failure to scuttle U-505 properly before abandoning her, although this is disputed by some crew members.
Museum ship
U-505 had been sitting neglected at the Portsmouth Navy Yard for nearly ten years; just about every removable part had been stripped from her interior. She was in no condition to serve as an exhibit.
Admiral Gallery proposed a possible solution. At his suggestion, Lohr contacted the German manufacturers who had supplied U-505's original components and parts, asking for replacements. As the Admiral reported in his autobiography, Eight Bells and All's Well, to his and the museum's surprise, every company supplied the requested parts without charge. Most included letters that said in effect, "We are sorry that you have our U-boat, but since she's going to be there for many years, we want her to be a credit to German technology.
USS Guadalcanal (CVE-60) lying alongside captured U-505
The U-505 has an dramatic history... The Captain committed suicide during a patrol, and at a later patrol the ship was captured by US, the first enemy ship captured by US navy since the War of 1812. Today the U-505 becomes an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, IL
More photos of U-505 in the US:
www.uboatarchive.net/U-505.htm
These are some of the contents I copied straight from Wikipedia:
For details please refer to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-505
Any one interested should read this.
Tenth patrol – Zschech's (Captain) suicide
After ten months in Lorient, U-505 departed for her tenth Atlantic patrol, seeking to break her run of bad luck and bad morale. On 24 October 1943, not long after transiting the Bay of Biscay, U-505 was spotted by British destroyers east of the Azores and was forced to submerge and endure a severe and lengthy depth charge attack.
In a testament to both the intensity of the attack and his own instability, Zschech snapped under the strain and committed suicide in the submarine's control room, shooting himself in the head in front of his crew. The first watch officer, Paul Meyer, quickly took command, rode out the rest of the attack and returned the boat to port with minimal damage. Despite his quick thinking, Meyer was not rewarded, merely "absolved from all blame" by the Kriegsmarine for the embarrassing incident. Zschech is recorded as the first submariner in history to commit suicide underwater in response to the stress of a prolonged depth charging, and the first (and thus far only) officer to commit suicide while commanding a warship in battle.a Experts[who?] have speculated bad morale and poor command influence demonstrated (and encouraged) by this series of humiliating failures might help explain the crew's later failure to scuttle U-505 properly before abandoning her, although this is disputed by some crew members.
Museum ship
U-505 had been sitting neglected at the Portsmouth Navy Yard for nearly ten years; just about every removable part had been stripped from her interior. She was in no condition to serve as an exhibit.
Admiral Gallery proposed a possible solution. At his suggestion, Lohr contacted the German manufacturers who had supplied U-505's original components and parts, asking for replacements. As the Admiral reported in his autobiography, Eight Bells and All's Well, to his and the museum's surprise, every company supplied the requested parts without charge. Most included letters that said in effect, "We are sorry that you have our U-boat, but since she's going to be there for many years, we want her to be a credit to German technology.