Dear Pilot,
We are finding it colder than usual this winter, U-505 especially.
Last month, his guides came outside to tell him that Admiral Gallery had passed away. U-505 doesn’t talk much about him usually. I’ve always assumed it was because he didn’t have much nice to say, and so felt it better to say nothing. He told us though (well, he told me really, but 999 and 2903 have tried to be mindful too) that it was more complicated than his English permitted before. He didn’t want to risk being misunderstood in his feelings and so kept them “classified”, as he put it.
Preservation is difficult for most engines, particularly at first. Even 999 and I, who have spent much of our careers doing what we do now, left revenue service still wanting. But she and I got to retire as monuments to the accomplishments of our railways and even our country. It’s always been much more difficult for U-505 because he serves instead as a trophy to our victory in the war and Gallery’s success in particular. There is indignity to his disposition (though he was quick to assure our guides that the museum keeps him very well and it was nothing they could help.)
Had he been given the choice, he would have preferred to be scrapped or scuttled as part of Operation Deadlight, along with all the rest of Germany’s naval fleet. It was agreed after the war that all of the German ships surrendered to the Allies would be sunk or broken up. Gallery argued that since U-505 hadn’t been surrendered by Germany, but had been captured before the war ended, he was exempt from the operation. The navy agreed that he was right on a technicality, but they didn’t know what else to do with U-505 so it wasn’t long before they started talking about using him for gunnery and torpedo practice anyway.
U-505 would have preferred this to preservation as well. I’m sure it’s just as shocking to you to read this as it was for us to hear, but he says this would have been an honorable end of service for a military unit. He tried to explain it to us. He says that the purpose of machines like him is to fight until a victor emerges and the conflict is resolved. Once peace is restored – whether his side wins or loses – he should be obsolete. And so, being destroyed in either event is an honorable exit, one that all of his allies and enemies alike were given.
I do follow what he means, but I think I am not drawn to really understand it the way he does.
Unbeknownst to U-505 though, Gallery was already working on getting him another stay of execution. Almost as soon as the navy agreed U-505 would be exempt from Deadlight, Gallery’s brother, a pastor here in Chicago, supposed that U-505 might make a good war memorial. They were both Navymen and had noted that there were many war memorials around the country for land battles, but not many for ones at sea. Reverend Gallery happened to mention this idea to Mr. Lohr, the museum president at the time. The museum had wanted a submarine from the start since the Deutsches Museum had one, so he thought bringing U-505 here was a great idea.
It took them nine years to figure everything out and make arrangements. All the while, U-505 sat moored waiting and expecting to be blown up. It all finally started being put in motion in 1953 and he only then realized what must be happening when museum staff started coming to inspect him. The finer points of that part of the story were… colorful and he does not wish us to commit it to print. To put it shortly, he had never been more dismayed, not even when they prevented him from sinking in the first place.
But, he says, all of this was Captain Gallery’s right as victor. And disappointed as he was at the time, U-505 has come to think of his disposition as a fair trade.
As mentioned before, U-505 is not just a captured war prize put on exhibit, but also serves as a memorial to American seamen lost at sea. Often – and especially at war – when a ship sinks, she takes her crew with her to the bottom of the ocean. No ship knows this better, U-505 told us, than the U-boat. Near the end of his service, he and his crew thought it was all but an inevitability that they would never return home. Nearly three out of four German submariners died at sea.
But U-505’s crew didn’t.
It’s a funny thing (an ironic thing, which is a type of humor I find U-505 is partial to) that in capturing his crew and taking them prisoner, Captain Gallery very probably saved their lives. More to the point, as far as U-505 is concerned, Gallery didn’t have to rescue them and did anyway. In fact, it was both a very large imposition to take on 58 prisoners and it also meant they’d be violating the Geneva Convention and committing a war crime because they couldn’t tell anyone about it if they wanted to keep U-505’s capture a secret. In doing so, U-505 suspects that Gallery was actually showing off. Observing prize rules as he did when capturing a submarine is also ironic, since submarine warfare is why those rules were abandoned. But it remains that all but one of U-505’s crewmen survived the war, thanks to Captain Gallery’s orders to rescue them.
U-505 would have preferred any of the less permanent dispositions Gallery made it his business to deny him, but things having shook out as they have, he says he would serve as he does “58 times over”. I was obviously happy to hear this from him after all that talk of him being blown up! For as much as he sees Gallery’s interventions as missed chances at an honorable end of service, I selfishly can’t help but think how lucky I am to be in a yard with him now. I hope one day he’ll see his service here now as being as noble as rusting away at the bottom of the ocean would have been. In any event, we both have reason to remember Admiral Gallery in gratitude. (U-505 is scoffing at me now, but I don’t think he dislikes what I said.)
The story of your CA&E 321 and her sisters lingered about the yard for a while as well. Scrap is a strange subject around here. Though we’ve all ended up preserved, we’ve each been confronted with the possibility of being scrapped. Whether it’s preferable to preservation has proven to be a question for every engine to answer alone. The idea that our parts could go on after us to keep another engine, especially a sibling, in service was a new possibility we’d never thought of though. Melted down and rebuilt into something else entirely like the City of Salina or replaced entirely by another piece of equipment like 525 almost was, sure, but being broken up and used to repair other engines? It’s obviously a done thing – it’d be wasteful otherwise – but it hadn’t occurred to any of us. U-boats just didn’t end that way usually, 999 and I are so specific to our builds, and yet 2903 had enough siblings that he doesn’t think they would have bothered.
Having considered the idea though, it has its appeal if scrap were inevitable. It
Speaking of continuing Usefulness, there’s an art exhibit about another preserved ship here presently. They are showing a collection of paintings and drawings of the USS Constitution. They call her “Old Ironsides” even though she is a wooden sailing ship because her hull was so thick that cannonballs just bounced off it. U-505 sounded quite impressed by that and I asked him if he would like a thick wooden hull. He still has holes in his, but he says he wouldn’t have been able to dive if he was made of wood.
They tell us the actual USS Constitution is still in service, the oldest commissioned warship still afloat in fact! She has a museum in Boston all about her, but she still goes out for events. She even led Operation Sail, the bicentennial parade that Christian Raddich had come to America to perform in. Small world!
Imagine being built in 1797 and still leading parades? I can’t even imagine 1797 itself! 999 was built in 1893 and she says the world was so different then even compared to the 30’s. The 30’s seem so different compared to now and that’s only 40 or so years. It’s incredible to think a ship could still be around and still in service after almost two hundred!
Soon enough, they’ll say the same thing about all of us. Maybe they already do and just don’t let us hear it, haha.
Your friend,
Pioneer