By Christopher Miskimon

Germany’s Enigma device provided its navy with secure coding equipment for secret communications. On his own initiative, U.S. Navy Captain Daniel V. Gallery decided to capture a German U-Boat and get an example of Enigma. With no approval from his superiors, Gallery planned the operation, trained his subordinates, and eventually executed his plan successfully. His command, Task Group 2.23, found, crippled and boarded U-505 on June 4, 1944. It was an astounding feat, but ultimately useless; Gallery could not have known the Allies had already cracked the Enigma code. To preserve that secret the fact that an enemy submarine was captured with its Enigma device intact and its crew taken prisoner was kept a secret until after the war.

The story of U-505’s capture is thoroughly analyzed in this new book. The author reveals how the mission was planned and prepared for, and then executed. The book contains good maps, numerous photographs and several original pieces of art depicting the seizure of U-505.

The Capture of U-505: The US Navy’s Controversial Enigma Raid, Atlantic Ocean 1944 (Mark Lardas, Osprey Publishing, Oxford UK, 2022, 80 pp., maps, photographs, bibliography, index, $22, softcover)