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)

M-4 Enigma Machine       Rotor and codebook

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

And, if you have time, please, there is a wonderful teacher´s manual:


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