Photo Story Challenge: Letter «U»

This week, Frizz challenge is for the letter «U»….

Uhhhhh…It is quite complicated!!!! But I have remembered one nice thing I have seen in the «Museum of Science and Industry of Chicago»..

«U» stands for «U-505»

An U-boat is a submarine…The abbreviation comes from «unterseeboot», a German word that means «undersea boat»…

Periscope and Torpedo

     

U-boats were a terrible menace for the Allied ship´s, and they were really elusive..To get an idea, this only U-505 sank eight Allied ships in 1942. So, they became one major target for them..

The U.S. Navy organized special antisubmarine escort ships in units called Hunter-Killer Task Groups.The U-boat 505 was captured by the Guadalcanal Task Force, leaded by Captain Daniel Gallery (from Chicago) on June 4, 1944, North of the Cape Verde Islands.

Rear of the U-505

It was a really important capture: being intact, it allowed the Allies to study it and being able to defend their ships better..And what is more, it was a wonderful source of intelligence: apart from acoustic torpedoes,  it had two Enigma machines inside, as well as codebooks…That saved a lot of hours of decoding work to the Allies!

M-4 Enigma Machine (left). Rotor and Codebook (right)

      

It is the only U-boat of its type in the States, and one of the only five left in the whole world. Now,  in Chicago, it is a memorial to the 55.000 American sailors who died in the Atlantic Ocean during the WWI and the WWII..

This is the link to the Museum exhibition http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/u-505/story/world-at-war/us-navy-responds/

And, if you have time, please, there is a wonderful teacher´s manual:http://www.msichicago.org/fileadmin/Education/pdf/U-505_Instructors_Manual.pdf